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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
Jun 10
Please explain how a study measuring physical improvement in a Cognitive and Behavioral study can have unmeasured Graded Exercise Therapy - and be considered as well-controlled. Not confounded.

So, I emailed Dr. Ebell and asked how that was nitpicking. Image
Image
I also agreed with the comments at the bottom of the study, linked below.

If you change analysis protocols post hoc? That's not nitpicking in my book. But maybe that is nitpicking?

jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…
Science is ALL about nitpicking. You ARE SUPPOSED to be very detailed, so you can be replicated, right? Alan is funny.

Anyway, amusing to spot the lobbying group for the Lightning Process on their advisory board.

Tch tch. Or is that nitpicking. ;) ? Image
Read 7 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
Jun 1
A thread on airborne Ebola - the rest is accurate.

Let me emphasize that I agree far more than disagree with her, in general.

Declaring a thing debunked without actually debunking it, with facts, is not debunking.

So, let me debunk this. Image
Dr. Kuppila has excellent credentials, and has earned her laurels.

If we accepted the debunking of airborne Ebola on the basis of credentials, we would have given into the fallacy of appeal to authority.

:) not today.

She worked in an Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone,
coming back in December 2014, and now resides in Dallas per her very interesting StatNews article:



She did not get infected. We could have survivorship bias here - fortunately.

This is a reference to possible surgical mask usage by her.

You see, the web.archive.org/web/2026052103…Image
Read 22 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
May 28
Ebola - it's not all about respiratory aerosols.

DYK that you, and me, and everybody are Pig Pen from Charlie Brown?

We shed our entire outer layer of skin every 2-4 weeks, about 500 million cells daily.

Your corneocytes (outermost cells) lift off of your body with the
gentlest of micro-air currents. Like a leaf picked up off the ground for the briefest of moments in fall.

They act like 12 micron aerosols in float time, but 25% of total skin flakes are sub 5 microns...and you know what that means. Deep deposition - or shallow as
sub 5 likes to also deposit in the nose.

It's funny...I embrace push-back in debate. Tightens up my game.

Imagine if those skin flakes now have Ebola on them?

Two studies show that Ebola literally oozes through the skin - both ways. In and out.

Not shown in vivo, but
Read 10 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
May 23
The WHO forbids contact tracers from masking or gloving up.

"Do not conduct home visits wearing personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, or
gowns."

It gets worse. Do not conduct home visits wearing personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, or gowns.
They have a handy how to reduce risk of catching ebola at home.

It even has 5 masks listed on it.

But not for the other family members.

"7. If the patient has vomit, diarrhoea or bleeding, a mask or a dry towel wrapped around the face can be used to protect the nose and mouth Image
7. If the patient has vomit, diarrhoea or bleeding, a mask or a dry towel wrapped around the face can be used to protect the nose and mouth when touching the patient or items soiled with blood or body fluids. A waterproof gown, eye protection, gloves and rubber boots should also be worn in these circumstances.
Here are the 5 face masks. Image
Read 9 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
May 22
The "epidemiology" of Ebola tells us that it's not airborne. You've heard this over and over.

What drives it? The questions on the contact tracing form.

Quick 🧵. Image
COVID - the WHO and CDC said it wasn't airborne via aerosols, right?

The CDC said it was spread person to person via close contact - within about 6 feet.



And you remember it took FOREVER to get changed.

The contact tracing form was web.archive.org/web/2020032817…Image
Image
arranged around close contact. These are the questions driving the stats of how many and how are infected.



So, the CDC will only hear back what it's asking. This was the epidemiology of COVID - until it wasn't. web.archive.org/web/2020052514…Image
Read 16 tweets
Lazarus Long Profile picture
May 20
Speaking of silly, can we agree that the WHO has Ebola experts?

Let's talk about PPE, and a bias towards "less PPE is better." Image
The WHO EBOLA IPC guidance:


Foreshadow on PPE

"...due to the desirability of an off-
the-face design, and not for protection from aerosols, respirators may be used instead of medical masks"who.int/publications/i…
If you can stay 3 feet away while screening? No medical mask needed. Image
Image
Read 12 tweets

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