Thread by @1goodtern

I've been avoiding covid for nearly four years, in ffp2+ respirator in public since Feb 2020, with plenty of other lifestyle changes like not eating indoors with people, cutting back on large gatherings, trying to meet outdoors, etc.
But that means I don't necessarily appreciate the changes that might be needed for someone who might be starting to avoid covid now, like someone undergoing chemotherapy or someone who has developed Long Covid and wants to avoid a further infection.
So what advice would you give to people who are just starting out on the journey of trying to reduce their risk of infection?

I think my biggest tip would be to understand airborne transmission.

That covid moves through the air like smoke particles, and can hang on the air in an unventilated room for hours.

So the key is to be breathing clean air, not that covidsmoke.

To breathe clean air you can wear a filter on your face, known as a respirator.
The more basic respirators don't look much different from masks, but they need to fit well and be designed to filter those particles: ffp2 / n95 rated respirators or higher.

You can introduce clean air from outside.
Open two windows on opposite sides of a room.

And you can run the air of a room through a filter. Hepa, merv quality air filters.

But you probably don't want to rely on just respirators or air filters.

A car doesn't have either seat belts or airbags. It has both.

You want to reduce the length of time that you're breathing in someone else's air, whatever mitigations you're using.
So reducing the duration and number of meetings indoors.

An empty room isn't a clean air room.

A room where a doctor has been working and seeing patients all day is not a clean air room just because they have put a mask on when you ask them to.

That room is full of the air they have been exhaling all day.