A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

The WHO - COVID is not airborne.

Everyone for 4 years - Declare it airborne!

The WHO - Here's a 66 page document painstakingly detailing how COVID is airborne titled "Indoor airborne risk
assessment in the context of SARS-CoV-2" followed by a 33 page document bringing the droplet people and aerosol people under one umbrella explaining how droplets can go through the air and be deposited AND aerosols can fly long distances through the air. To make both happy we'll put transmission in two subcategories:

Airborne transmission/inhalation and direct deposition.

Everyone - No, not like that!

I have chosen to die on this hill, and so I will continue. I was going to ignore this new opinion piece in The Lancet, but, I can't help myself in the end.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00244-7/fulltext

The first time I read it I gave up on the first paragraph.

Read this carefully:

"The report proposes that use of the unqualified terms airborne and airborne transmission in the context of infectious disease transmission should be avoided."

Followed by:

"It introduces new terms matched to specific definitions, including “through-the-air transmission”, “infectious respiratory particles”, “airborne transmission/inhalation”, “direct deposition”, “semi-ballistic”, and “puff cloud”. "

What this, literally, says is that we should replace "airborne transmission" with "airborne transmission/inhalation." This is what everyone is fighting over.

After it came across my timeline for the 20th time I decided I'd give the rest a read.

Paragraph two. Two examples of airborne being used in papers in the last 127 years to show that there was no confusion regarding the term "airborne"?

Compare that to the extensive writing of Prof. Jimenez on the history of the droplet dogma and decide if you think everyone understands this.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354772435_Echoes_Through_Time_The_Historical_Origins_of_the_Droplet_Dogma_and_its_Role_in_the_Misidentification_of_Airborne_Respiratory_Infection_Transmission

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2021.0049

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ina.13070

Paragraph 3. Finally something we agree on. The WHO botched the last 4 years horribly.

The next paragraph is where this falls off the rails for me.

"This new WHO report appears to assume that because some infectious disease experts believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is airborne only “situationally” (ie, under unusual conditions),1"

I, for one, read this and went directly to the report itself because I was appalled. Guess what? The quoted word, "situationally", never once appears in the document, which is cited. Nor does "under unusual conditions." So now it's just quoting things that don't exist and citing them.

To be clear, it's citing a document titled "Global technical consultation report
on proposed terminology
for pathogens that transmit
through the air" not the document actually about COVID(https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/376346/9789240090576-eng.pdf), while complaining about COVID.

I don't see a need to continue.

Mark my word. The CDC delayed their response to this document, whether or not they would go along and declare COVID airborne, because people are making it "controversial" and giving them cover to.

When papers discuss "viral clearance" in regards to COVID, they generally test this by PCR. In other words, your nasopharynx has cleared the virus.

When papers about COVID discuss "viral persistence" they're usually talking about the virus taking up safe harbor somewhere deep in your body. These people are generally not testing positive by PCR.

The fact that I'm seeing a few prominent science people mixing these interchangeably recently tells me just how far we have to go on this subject.

Apropos of the subject, longer term antivirals have been the subject of more than one clinical trial for long COVID and thus far the results are mixed, as would be expected. Here's one for an example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10543503/

Thankfully it was a "minor" heart attack. He's really into hiking and camping and can't figure out why his health's been so bad for 6 months. I just don't think it's my place to launch into the "COVID talk" but I feel bad for the guy. He's hoping to do our roof work in a couple weeks. I'll see if an opportunity presents itself to casually drop COVID into a conversation.