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Lazarus Long Profile picture
@LazarusLong13
Sep 6, 2025 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Remember THAT scene from Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman - "It's Airborne." ?

SARS-COV-2 is airborne via HVAC. Just like TB is - but it is way more contagious.

Still no panic, right? We know how to be safe.

Motel 6, or AirBNB - no shared HVAC, is best.

But HOW do we know?

🧵
A recent study in South Africa used Syrian Hamsters to duplicate the study that finally convinced everyone that TB was airborne.

The TB study is interesting because the military vets in VA hospitals were getting infected disproportionately.

So, they used HVAC ducting to In 1956, tuberculosis was a major global killer, and it disproportionately affected military veterans hospitalized in the Veterans Administration hospital system. Then, as now with COVID-19, epidemiologists held that tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases were spread by large infected droplets through person-to-person contact or contaminated surfaces. But Richard L. Riley, an expert on lung physiology at the then Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, and his mentor, William F. Wells, had identified another possible mode of transmission.
connect a 6 room TB ward to 150 guinea pigs.

Of those 150, only 3 PER MONTH got infected.

Illustrating that TRANSMISSIBILITY is just a CLUE to if something is airborne.

Dr. Riley went on to patent UVC tech, and develop the Wells-Riley equation which is so important in airborne Atop the Baltimore VA Hospital, they constructed an air-tight closed ventilation system that connected a six-room tuberculosis ward to an exposure chamber with 150 guinea pigs. (Among rodent animal models, only guinea pigs could cough and sneeze, making them ideal for studying how respiratory diseases spread.) The guinea pigs were exposed to the infected air over a four-year period. A second group of 150 guinea pigs acted as controls: their air ducts were irradiated with UV-C lamps to kill TB bacilli.
In the test group, an average of three guinea pigs per month contracted TB, while no controls were infected. The experiment not only proved the airborne disease transmission of tuberculosis for the first time, but also quantified how many TB infections could be expected to result from exposure to a given number of patients over a defined interval.
The insights from the Baltimore VA Hospital studies were later used to develop the Wells-Riley equation, which quantifies infection risk and informs strategies to ensure staff and patient safety in contagious clinical environments. The model can also calculate the risks of transmission for airborne infections on planes and trains, in prisons, and in other public and institutional spaces. As chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine from 1960 to 1977, Riley warned that the danger of infection from airborne diseases was increasing as people spent more time indoors and air conditionin...
So, in South Africa they have a facility designed to study airborne very similar to the TB set up.

7 C0V1D patients' breath was routed to 216 Syrian hamsters.

58% of the hamsters got COVID antibodies in 21 days.

3 TB guinea pigs versus 100+ Syrian hamsters. Impressive! 1.Floorplan schematic of the South African Airborne Infections Research clinical facility. The facility consists of a 6-bed inpatient ward, toilet facilities, and day room, all serviced by an airtight ventilation system and manifolded to 2 animal rooms housing the sentinel animals. All exhaust from the clinical area is shunted so only a portion (approximately 10% of the total flow) enters the individually ventilated animal caging units, with the remaining 90% flow bypassing the caging but passing through the animal rooms. High-efficiency particulate air–filtered flow is supplied to the pati...
"The simplest interpretation of our results is that human-generated aerosols seroconverted 58% of exposed hamsters after traveling the 7-10 meter distance through the ventilation system of the AIR facility," the authors wrote. " The simplest interpretation of our results is that human-generated aerosols seroconverted 58% of exposed hamsters after traveling the 7-10 meter distance through the ventilation system of the AIR facility," the authors wrote. "This data indicates that exposure to exhaust air from the clinical ward containing individuals actively infectious for SARS-CoV-2 can result in transmission to susceptible animals."
About this study, Dr. Osterholm:

"This one was a classic study design, and we don't often say that in science," said Osterholm. "This study should put the nail in the coffin that SARS-CoV-2 is not transmitted by airborne routes."
CIDRAP
cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/using…

Study
academic.oup.com/ofid/article/1…

TB article
publichealth.jhu.edu/2020/the-exper…

TB study
sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1093/ox…

And yes, COVID is airborne.
One more thing....these patients were NOT prime infectious agents.

That happens BEFORE symptoms show up.

This thread is starting to go viral, so I am now anticipating some minimizers will attempt to criticize prior to reading the study.

Read the study. I have, and am ready.

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More from @LazarusLong13

Lazarus Long Profile picture
Mar 26
I've become a bit of a Dental Nerd after just getting savaged by avoiding the dentist due to COVID.

But, now, I have a Dental Nasal PAPR, know all about Stephan's Curve, use a waterpik, Oral-B iO Series 10, chew 8 pieces of xylitol gum - and the dentist just said that.....
He has never seen anyone reverse course so perfectly before.

"Immaculate."

And bonus...I ran into a fellow masker in his lobby!!

She had never heard of Readimask, so I was super happy to share the Good Word with her.

Sharing the Good Word - not COVID!
Good point.

Read 4 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Mar 16
Now, this is a very interesting PREPRINT.

We've all heard that shingles vaccination reduces risk of Alzheimer's.

And we all know that Covid increases the risk of Alzheimer's by 50-80%.

What happens when you mix them? Will the vaccination offset a different disease?

/1 Opposing effects of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 infection and recombinant zoster vaccination on the risk of late-onset Alzheimer disease View ORCID ProfileCarly M. Rose, Shiying Liu, View ORCID ProfileWilliam S. Bush, Jonathan L. Haines, Scott M. Williams, View ORCID ProfileDana C. Crawford N3C Consortium doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.21.26344555 This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Yes.

But by how much? Conclusions and Relevance SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 infection and recombinant zoster vaccination are modifiable risk factors for LOAD among older individuals, with a modestly significant interaction between the two. Recombinant zoster vaccination reduced LOAD risk regardless of sex and race, though the protection is greater in those without documented COVID-19 infection. Recombinant zoster vaccination and reduced exposure to COVID-19 infection in the later decades of life reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer disease over at least a five-year period.
Useful for below - "Late-onset Alzheimer disease (LOAD; onset age ≥65)"

"odds of LOAD are 16% higher among those with at least one reported COVID-19 infection" Image
Read 7 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Mar 3
A doctor complaining about wearing N95s? Thread foreshadow in the gif 👇.

Dr. Sax, you should read this.

The arrogance of medical doctors thinking they know better than the CDC NIOSH and OSHA?

This comes as no surprise.
Imagine if an asbestos worker, or a tech working in BioSafety Lab was complaining about this.

But somehow, doctors making over $200,000 get carte blanche and and a piece in the @NEJM Voices.

And he does have a loud voice.
This is Dr. Sax, Clinical Director, Division of Infectious Diseases (ID), at THE Harvard hospital. In 2014, he wrote about how ID docs only make $174,000.

He probably makes northwards of $269,000.

This is very, very relevant.

You see, he is put out by the inconvenience Image
Read 23 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Feb 27
From the ZeroCovid sub on Reddit.

How DO we do it?

Hyper vigilance, constant exposure calculations, discussing and taking precautions?

How do I do it?

Quick thread. I would like to hear covid conscious folks opinions on this: I have long covid (mecfs + pots + mcas). I’ve been sick to varying degrees since 2022. My life has been severely affected by this. At this point, I can’t work. I am mostly housebound, recovering slowly but I still have to spend some days in bed. Recovery from this is awful, especially because it’s not widely understood. With all that said. I still feel like, for me, a life full of hyper vigilance, constant exposure calculations, discussing and taking precautions…I can’t do it. I don’t want to live that way. How can I approach t...
I don't do it.

I don't do exposure calculations.

I don't have hyper vigilance.

I am Vax, Mask, and Relax.

For me, it's just a series of habits now. Drive to the wherever, hit parking lot, put on N95. Get out of car. Stays on until I get back into the car.
A new vaccine comes out? I get it.

I go stay in a hotel?

2nd floor Motel 6 with no shared HVAC (has the PTAC) . Open door/windows for one hour until complete air exchange.

Go through a drive through? N95 on before window is rolled down. Drive away? I roll down both to
Read 6 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Feb 26
After reading a study, and reaching for my phone, if the first thing I do is check to see if I have @'d someone in the past?

That's not a good sign.

I have never @'d them, and this is not directed @ them.

But this IS a debunk thread.

And it starts with who.

/1
Study here. Before you read it?

This thread is about providing context. Read the thread, @SalvMattera's comments, AND THEN, read the study.

0/10 from me.

thelancet.com/journals/lanep…
Who paid for it? The Dutch government - who has been spectacularly almost Tegnell-like in their downplaying of LongCovid and masks.

Lead authors are from RIVM, their CDC.

RIVM was antimask even when they FINALLY recommended masks in OCTOBER 2020.

nltimes.nl/2020/10/03/dut…Image
Image
Read 13 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Dec 21, 2025
Oh, we are cooked. Just cooked.

"Brain Mitochondrial dysfunction, known for ~20 years is finally recognized as a central upstream driver of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), not just a downstream effect."

And SARS2's targeting of mitochondria is well-known.

Even in the brain.
/1 We identified dysregulation of mitochondrial and synaptic pathways in deep-layer excitatory neurons and upregulation of neuroinflammation in glia, consistent across both mRNA and protein. Remarkably, these alterations overlapped substantially with changes in age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Our work, combining multiple experimental and analytical methods, demonstrates the brain-wide impact of severe acute/subacute COVID-19, involving both cortical and subcortical regions, shedding light on potential therapeutic targets within pat...
@LauraMiers, in case you don't have it.

nature.com/articles/s4358…
@LauraMiers This is yet another reason why I N95.

Read 6 tweets

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