I know there are a crushing amount of articles/videos/podcasts to absorb every day, but if you’re going to read ONE thing this week about COVID-19, please let it be this article. 🙏 It’s truly that useful.
This article is one of the most easily understood analysis of how the coronavirus spreads that I’ve read and it’s really shaped my understanding of how the virus is transmitted. I’m not a medical professional but I’ve been doing my best to understand how people are getting infected and what things constitute high-risk behaviour (it’s not always what people think it is). The above article was written by a Comparative Immunologist and Professor of Biology specializing in Immunology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, so not some random person with an opinion and a blog (like me). 😜
Similarly, there’s an increasing number of scientists that are pushing the WHO to declare COVID-19 an airborne virus. The risks of surface contamination appears to be much lower than many first thought.
The most compelling things I’ve read point to airflow as being the single biggest preventative factor in keeping people safe, and anything that can be done to:
- Increase the amount of shared air among people (larger rooms, more air, fewer people)
- Decrease the viral load in the air (via masks)
- Increase the movement of the air (windows open, doors open, fans blowing to move the air out of the room, etc.)
- Be outdoors (where the virus disperses with any movement of air and can’t build up over time)
…points towards fewer infections. So I’m less worried about people congregating outside without masks (the protests don’t appear to have caused a spike in infections) than people being in a small room with no airflow and wearing masks.
Do what you can to spread the most factual, useful information you can about understanding the risks of COVID-19. Even if the fatality rate is actually 10x lower in the USA than we thought – as this CDC data seems to indicate – over 132,000 Americans have died from this and there’s every reason to make smart decisions and lower the risks of infection.