Mary-Louise McLaws b March 17, 1953 d August 12 , 2023 – J-Wire jwire.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jwire.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Members of the Australian Jewish community have received Queen's Birthday awards in the fields of philanthropy, medicine, communal involvement and arts. One awardee has been recognised for aiding refugees and joins another one for helping the reduction of smokers. J-Wire wishes them all Mazeltov.
Revisiting the evidence for physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection thelancet.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thelancet.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As readers know, I have long urged, following the science, that Covid is airborne, and that its main mode of transmission is via aerosols. (I was initially persuaded by an epidemiological study, now consigned to link rot, that showed a seat diagram on a Chinese bus with the index case and how many were infected. It seemed clear that neither fomites nor hacked up droplets could be the cause, since the seats were widely separated. Many more such studies followed. No such studies followed for fomites or droplets.) On April 30 after enormous efforts from aerosol scientists WHO changed its guidance to reflect that Covid is airborne. On May 7, CDC followed. So, after more than a year, we have finally agreed Covid’s mode of transmission. It is to be hoped that science-based mitigation measures especially ventilation follow.
This article has been updated.
A few sentences have shaken a century of science.
A week ago, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared that we face a pandemic, a page on its website titled “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19): How Is It Transmitted?” got a seemingly small update.
The agency’s response to that question had been that “current evidence suggests that the main way the virus spreads is by respiratory droplets” which are expelled from the mouth and quickly fall to the ground “among people who are in close contact with each other.”
The revised response still emphasizes transmission in close contact but now says it may be via aerosols smaller respiratory particles that can float as well as droplets. It also adds a reason the virus can also be transmitted “in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings,” saying this is because “aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 meter.”