The A-word being Aerosol or Airborne.
Ah, at this point I’m so tired of this topic, I’ll just let you read the grudging and limited extent of the change in CDC guidance. You can find it on the CDC website, at this link.
I particularly like this bit of weasel-wording, emphasis mine:
There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away.
Just go read up on the Mount Vernon, Washington choir super-spreader event. Something like 52 people “seem to have” been infected while standing more than six feet away. Ya think?
And so, while the Japanese start their main public guidance by talking about the importance of ventilation, because aerosol spread and and the resulting large clusters matter critically for spread of COVID-19 (see just prior post), the best we can do is maybe, possibly, mention that sometimes, in rare circumstances, COVID-19 seems to have infected people from more than 6′ away. Maybe, kinda, sorta. But not change the underlying guidance, at all, based on that.
If you bother to look up the current guidance, as an extras-for-experts, compare what they say now, to what they originally said, when they first mentioned the A-word. (Red underlines are mine):
Note the equal footing between aerosols and droplets? Best I can tell, that’s actually a true reflection of the epidemiology. Not the grudging mention of aerosols, as an afterthought, that characterizes the current version.
Well, stupid is as stupid does. I’ve heard it said that countries eventually get the government they deserve. Unfortunately, maybe that’s true of the good old U.S. of A.
