COVID-19 is transmitted in aerosols - it's airborne!
Status:
- May 2021: USA’s CDC has acknowledged that airborne/aerosol is the predominant transmission mechanism.
- WHO: still mumbling about this.
- Some governments that had previously followed the WHO’s fomites/droplets dogma, have updated ventilation guidelines. None are very clear in following the USA’s CDC and their recent acknowledgement of “it’s airborne”
- Hospitals, orgs/groups: - as governments above.
This site exists as a resource to outline that there has been scientific evidence for some time to support COVID-19 infection being driven by airborne/aerosol transmission. This is not new science, it is old science and various national and international organizations made mistakes by not sating so. The next pandemic should assume the same rather than waste months with policies that did not halt infections.
To learn more, follow these experts who study aerosol and are actively pushing the COVID is airborne agenda: Prof Jose-Luis Jimenez, Prof Kimberly Prather and Prof Linsey Marr who have been educating the world on the aerosol transmission nature of COVID-19. Their Twitter accounts - @jljcolorado, @kprather88, and @linseymarr - which you should follow.
Four timelines are hosted on this microsite
1. COVID-19 is Airborne (studies/events):
Throughout the pandemic there have been studies, and events that prove the virus is airborne/aerosolized. Some countries set policy based on that fact from the start. This timeline spans the pandemic duration and calls out such ‘events’.
2. Many other diseases are airborne too:
The fact that many other diseases are airborne/aerosolized (or can be in addition to other transmission mechanisms) is important in that it frames how COVID-19 should have been handled from the start.
3. Knowing it was airborne from the start, masks were a part of some countries early strategies:
Some countries in the west and many in the east mandates masks from very early moments. Those countres are listed on this timeline. Others are omitted.
4. At the start of 2021, countries are setting new mandates for higher-spec masks
With the Delta strain of the virus, it is more important than ever to get the best mask you can. Those would be FFP2, N95, KF94, KN95 (etc) grades of masks/respirators.
Words from our scientist friends:
More Reading
10 SCIENTIFIC Reasons to Support AIRBORNE Transmission of SARS-CoV-2
Aerosols: Frequently Asked Questions
Please read the Aerosols Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) here: tinyurl.com/FAQ-aerosols. This is actively maintained by a bunch of Profs and Drs.
Sometimes social media blocks use of well know redirector technologies like TinyURL, so we have our own to the same document: its-airborne.org/FAQ (4 chars shorter).
Change.org campaign: “COVID is airborne”
@COVIDisAirborne is running a change.org campaign to get recognition for this fact: bit.ly/COVIDisAirborne:
Masks for All site
The masks4all.co site, and the Twitter tag #masks4All was pushed to prominence by eleven scientists, entrepreneurs and technicians at the end of March. Their goal: a general worldwide deloyment of cloth face coverings, and towards that defeating the false-hoods about them. Jeremy Howard is the most notable figurehead of this initiative - he’s a Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of San Francisco.
M.A.D. Guidelines
CovidStraightTalk.org (@LastMileWorks. on Twitter) publishes information posters for employers and workers, including the great M.A.D. acronym:
Contributing
If you want to make a contribution, take a look at our GitHub site. Suggest anything you like through the issue tracker, or proposed a change for us to merge in using the “pull request” system.
You don’t have to be too technical to make a contribution, but if you are, understand that our four timelines themselves are in JSON, documents are in Markdown, the site technology is Jekyll and it is hosted on GitHub.