Do Your Part - To Defeat COVID-19!

This is from the New York Times Coronavirus Briefing e-newsletter that I subscribe to. I  find that this newsletter, as well as the one from CNN, is invaluable for educating yourself during this treacherous time. It's too bad the oblivious rioters and partygoers don't read it -- it can save their lives. To sign up for the NY Times newsletter, visit this page

"The danger indoors:

Elected officials in the United States are beginning to acknowledge that the rush to reopen was a mistake, as many of the hardest-hit areas in recent weeks have been places that lifted lockdown restrictions fastest. And one factor seems to be playing an outsize role in the uptick: indoor transmission from businesses like bars and restaurants.

More than 239 scientists from 32 countries are now warning that airborne transmission of the virus indoors should be taken more seriously and are calling on the World Health Organization to revise its recommendations, which they say underestimate the dangers of transmission by tiny, viral particles that linger in the air indoors.

Our colleague Donald G. McNeil Jr., who covers science for The Times, told The Daily podcast that when people talk or laugh, they create an “invisible mist” or a “droplet cloud” of tiny particles that floats around near their head. That fog can hold enough virus to transmit the disease; walking into it is akin to someone “spitting on your face.”

Indoors, without a breeze, the cloud can drift across a room, like in a bar or at a cocktail party, at more or less head level, he said, to be inhaled by revelers until 20, 30 or 40 people are infected.

Evidence is also mounting, Donald said, that Covid-19 is more of a blood vessel disease than a respiratory disease. While the virus enters the body through the lungs, it seems to do its damage by attaching to the insides of blood vessels, infecting organs, like the kidneys and the brain, with lots of fine blood vessels."

(Above WW2-inspired poster as seen at this website.)