How the medical community screwed up re aerosol infection science — highly recommended read … informative on covid but also how social dynamics can vastly distort what becomes scientific consensus (https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/)
“You can see that the idea of what is respirable, what stays airborne, and what is infectious are all being flattened into this 5-micron phenomenon…Over time, through blind repetition, the error sank deeper into the medical canon.”
Frustratingly, this article and others like it are already two years old … and all that’s happened is WHO and CDC have quietly updated website copy to reflect these factors, but no substantial announcements or strongly updated guidelines.
Hence the vague in-between we currently experience, where most people have no clue.
@Andrewhinton the extent to which knowledge in scientific communities is the byproduct of consensus, and how malleable consensus is, is not a conversation all of us are prepared to fuck with