“A CIViC DUTY” to Stop Aerosol Transmission of COVID-19

In order to keep educating myself about COVID-19, I read a lot of articles in the coronavirus e-newsletters I receive. 

This one, seen at TIME magazine, is one of the best explanations of the aerosol transmission of the disease.

Author Jose-Luis Jimenez is a Professor of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is a highly cited researcher and a Fellow of the American Association for Aerosol Research and the American Geophysical Union.

Here are two excerpts:

He says that "When it comes to COVID-19, the evidence overwhelmingly supports aerosol transmission, and there are no strong arguments against it. For example, contact tracing has found that much COVID-19 transmission occurs in close proximity, but that many people who share the same home with an infected person do not get the disease. To understand why, it is useful to use cigarette or vaping smoke (which is also an aerosol) as an analog. Imagine sharing a home with a smoker: if you stood close to the smoker while talking, you would inhale a great deal of smoke. Replace the smoke with virus-containing aerosols, which behave very similarly, and the impact is similar: the closer you are to someone releasing virus-carrying aerosols, the more likely you are to breathe in larger amounts of virus. We know from detailed, rigorous studies that when individuals talk in close proximity, aerosols dominate transmission and droplets are nearly negligible."

"We should continue doing what has already been recommended: wash hands, keep six feet apart, and so on. But that is not enough. A new, consistent and logical set of recommendations must emerge to reduce aerosol transmission. I propose the following: Avoid Crowding, Indoors, low Ventilation, Close proximity, long Duration, Unmasked, Talking/singing/Yelling (“A CIViC DUTY”). These are the important factors in mathematical models of aerosol transmission, and can also be simply understood as factors that impact how much “smoke” we would inhale."

The unforgettable comparison of exhaled cigarette smoke with COVID aerosols might inspire more people to finally take this disease seriously and wear masks.