PSA: 🚨 DO NOT TAKE YOUR MASK OFF INDOORS, even if there is no one else around.🚨
The virus persists in the air for HOURS because #CovidIsAirborne
Only take your mask off outdoors, and preferably use an N95 mask.
Important potentially lifesaving thread. Please RT. 1/n
Aerosols that carry the virus can float in the air for HOURS. Long after an infected person has left the room, the air is still not safe to breathe, unless there is aggressive ventilation and filtration to keep it safe.
Just because you are alone does not mean you are safe. 2/n
Do not take your mask off inside, even if you are alone. It’s not safe for you.
And if you are infected, you will be making the air unsafe for others.
Read on to understand this more fully. 3/n
Aerosols are tiny droplets produced in your respiratory tract during breathing, speaking, etc. Viruses attach to them, and this is how COVID is spread
The virus is not free-floating in the air, so all the anti-maskers who say masks *can't* work don’t understand the science. 4/n
The ones produced by breathing are the smallest. Small aerosols are most likely to persist in the environment and most likely to make it to the smallest of another person’s airways.
Quiet breathing produces smaller amounts than other expiratory activities. 5/n
Talking produces a lot more aerosols that are larger, as well as droplets. These can quickly evaporate down to small aerosols in dry air. Masks help to contain the large aerosols and prevent this.
Small aerosols are really bad because they can penetrate the lungs deeply. 6/n
If virus makes it to the smallest of your airways, it is more likely to cause severe disease.
Virus that lands in your nasal passages is less likely to cause severe disease, and it will take more virus there to get you sick. 7/n
How do you know that? Ideally talk with the building engineer.
High ventilation can make a big difference by diluting out the aerosols with fresh air. (WHO recommends a ventilation rate of 10 liters per second per person).
Aerosols can easily spread through air ducts. SARS spread via the air ducts and defective sewage traps, leading to a large outbreak in an apartment building in Hong Kong.
Many firgures are from this review article on the airborne spread of disease. This should be required reading for all people in public health, infectious disease, hospital infection control, school superintendents, architects, and HVAC engineers. 17/n
What does @POTUS need to do to get COVID under control? It's basic:
➡️Launch comprehensive educational campaign so people can understand what an airborne virus is and how they can protect themselves
➡️DPA to provide N95/equivalent elastomeric masks to ALL Americans including kids
➡️Withhold federal educational funds from all states that do not mandate masks and vaccination of all eligible staff and students
➡️Withold Medicare funds from healthcare entities that do not mandate vaccination AND require health care workers to use N95 masks at all times
➡️DPA to provide all Americans to access to cheap at-home COVID screening tests
➡️Provide science-based national guidelines for school ventilation, air filtration, and student spacing
➡️Provide critically needed support to hospitals and schools - ask them what they need
Not only did they discarded the Chinese experience showing that the virus is airborne, they actively suppressed evidence that it is airborne.
They could have simply accepted the science, and admitted that we were underprepared for an airborne pandemic.
We could have then done the best that we could to make do, by putting massive resources into the production and distribution of adequate PPE for all people, along with mitigation strategies like ventilation/opening windows/being outside.