health

Scientists report that airborne coronavirus is probably infectious

4 Comments
By Ivan Couronne

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Stay home. Lock yourself in. There's no hope. This is getting to be too much.

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Still only probably infectious by breathing it! With its continued unstoppable spread despite lockdowns and social distancing and hygiene and whatever is thrown at it, it seems to me a non scientist. it is more than "probably" infectious that way

But what do I know! We could trust the experts at WHO ( last to acknowledge it might be a possibility on July 7 according to the article) . Watch this to see how their expertise with the virus helped the world earlier in the pandemic as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxhZ2Z-Y4ls

2 ( +5 / -3 )

From the beginning it has always been though as possible, just not a likely route. The shift is about how the possibility this mechanism is an important one, not about it being possible at all.

The results are presented as more important than what they really are, with enough effort and time every other respiratory pathogen can be isolated from aerosols and also can be infectious to cells, that does not mean that it is likely or frequent for this to happen, which is what science is trying to investigate at the moment.

An important clarification is that cells are much more easier to infect than humans, because they are totally exposed and have no innate immunity factors (things as simple as mucus for example), so results in cell cultures cannot be extrapolated directly to human infection. Another important thing is that the samples were collected by minute, but infection on cells are only reported by the whole collection, this is important because this does not let us know if the aerosols are constantly infectious or not, as the data is presented it is completely possible that the viruses are infectious only on the first few minutes, and the rest of the time they are in too low concentration, desiccated or inactivated to be dangerous.

It is not bad research, but it is reporting only things we already suspected heavily from the epidemiological data, and does very little to answer what scientist are trying to find out right now.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

After watching the m/v Diamond Princess situation on tv I was convinced that airborne infection was occurring. But nice to be told now anyway.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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