The author suggests that the lack of attention on building ventilation is due to uncertainty about how important close contact (i.e., close enough that a person’s respiratory droplets could directly land on you) is for transmission, vs. more indirect airborne transmission.
(E.g., from CDC website: “Early reports suggest person-to-person transmission most commonly happens during close exposure to a person infected with COVID-19, primarily via respiratory droplets produced when the infected person coughs or sneezes. Droplets can land in the mouths, noses, or eyes of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs of those within close proximity. The contribution of small respirable particles, sometimes called aerosols or droplet nuclei, to close proximity transmission is currently uncertain. However, airborne transmission from person-to-person over long distances is unlikely.”)
Here’s a good op-ed on this topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/opinion/coronavirus-buildings.html
The author suggests that the lack of attention on building ventilation is due to uncertainty about how important close contact (i.e., close enough that a person’s respiratory droplets could directly land on you) is for transmission, vs. more indirect airborne transmission.
(E.g., from CDC website: “Early reports suggest person-to-person transmission most commonly happens during close exposure to a person infected with COVID-19, primarily via respiratory droplets produced when the infected person coughs or sneezes. Droplets can land in the mouths, noses, or eyes of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs of those within close proximity. The contribution of small respirable particles, sometimes called aerosols or droplet nuclei, to close proximity transmission is currently uncertain. However, airborne transmission from person-to-person over long distances is unlikely.”)
It seems to me like this is a potential dangerous error given that paper about the bus where people got infected despite having some distance.
Note that that paper was retracted for unclear reasons. So unsure how much we should weigh it.