1/ The article "A room, a bar, and a class: how the coronavirus is spread through the air" in @elpaisinenglish has just won the Ortega y Gasset Prize, the most prestigious for the Spanish language press.
3/ The article that won the award was based on our shared-room air transmission estimator. It remains correct, although with the new variants transmission goes up some (the estimator allows taking this into account).
5/ And this is another useful article from the same team, explaining how in some apartment buildings there can be air connections between apartments that can lead to transmission:
1/ El artículo de @el_pais "Un salón, un bar, y una clase: así contagia el coronavirus en el aire" acaba de ganar el Premio Ortega y Gasset, el más prestigioso del periodismo en español.
2/ Es un artículo extraordinario, y os recomiendo mucho leerlo si no lo habíais hecho. Sigue siendo correcto (aunque habría que aumentar un poco los contagios por las variantes).
1/ A great paper by @trishgreenhalgh explaining the debate over airborne transmission during the pandemic.
Although airborne transmission is the only important mode of transmission, it was ignored by @WHO and the Public Health establishment. This paper explains why & how.
2/ "Political and policy actors at international, national, and regional level aligned—predominantly though not invariably—with medical scientific orthodoxy which promoted the droplet theory of transmission and considered aerosol transmission unproven or of doubtful relevance."
3/ "This dominant scientific sub-field centred around the clinical discipline of infectious disease control, in which leading actors were hospital clinicians aligned with the evidence-based medicine movement."
2/ "There is great disparity in the way we think about and address different sources of environmental infection. Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes"
3/ "By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or COVID-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe."
Now that @WHO and @CDCgov have finally accepted *after a year of denial and delays* that airborne transmission is a major mode for COVID-19, it is time to review the history to try to understand why this response was so poor.
2/ Remember, the evidence is overwhelming that airborne transmission (1 to 1 in close proximity, and 1 to many in shared room air = superspreading) is the dominant mode of transmission.
3/ And probably we are being charitable by saying only "dominant." Can't find any real evidence that airborne is not 99%. Airborne can explain all the epidemiological patterns, while large droplets and fomites can't, and they are pathetically lacking ev.
1/ A radical shift today by @CDCgov, finally aligning itself with science on the modes of transmission, and throwing away the 1910 error of considering "close contact" a mode of transmission!
"Modes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission are now categorized as inhalation of virus, deposition of virus on exposed mucous membranes, and touching mucous membranes with soiled hands contaminated with virus," the new guidance reads."
3/ This finally follows science, most elegantly summarized by Prof. Yuguo Li of the Univ. of Hong Kong on this recent paper: