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So piggybacking on @SaskiaPopescu's excellent thread here, which EERILY mirrors an email I sent Thursday - and she and I did NOT talk about the topic recently - I wanna show you all a GREAT paper trying to revise the definition of aerosol transmission. https://twitter.com/SaskiaPopescu/status/1294786639651201025?s=20
I have no idea why Thursday was the first time I've come across this paper, since the airborne vs aerosol transmission debate has been a headache-and-silver-hair generating issue in my life since 2014, as neatly summed up by this blog post: https://virologydownunder.com/flight-of-the-aerosol/
BUT Jones and Brosseau published this REALLY ELEGANT paper in 2015, trying to develop the concept of aerosol transmission to "resolve limitations in conventional definitions of airborne and droplet transmission.” Which hello yes, WE NEED.
https://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2015/05000/Aerosol_Transmission_of_Infectious_Disease.4.aspx
https://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2015/05000/Aerosol_Transmission_of_Infectious_Disease.4.aspx
They propose: "Aerosol transmission is…plausible when infectious aerosols are generated by or from an infectious person, the pathogen remains viable in the environment for some period…the target tissues in which the pathogen initiates infection are accessible to the aerosol.”
And as @SaskiaPopescu said, "terms carry different meanings across multiple fields." And I think we all recognise, at this point, how badly we've screwed up multiple aspects of COVID19 scicomm, despite best efforts by many (& not so best by some). This is a GREAT example.
In writing my email Thurs, I found, inside a few minutes, 4 recent (last 3 years) peer-reviewed papers from 3 different disciplines that each defined airborne & aerosol differently. (Yes, 2 papers from the same discipline AND JOURNAL had 2 different definitions.
It's a problem)
It's a problem)
Harmonizing terms within broad fields (hello philosophy friends) can be hard, and it might not be possible to do it across multiple fields. But if we're going to science in public like this, we need to try. If we can't, we need to be better at explaining our definitions. #scicomm
Oh, another thing I really love about J&B's paper? They note there's a big difference between biologically possible & actually happening–that many diseases may be opportunistically transmitted via aerosol in lab settings, but the lab shouldn't equate to "real world" scenarios.
As someone who has spent years working as a fact-checker,, we absolutely fail when it comes to discussing the limits of research. We report on murine model results like they're synonymous with humans. We discuss preprints like they're peer-reviewed. #scicomm
We continually broadly extrapolate from research results, we "dumb down" studies, & we lose the nuance not only of science reporting but the scientific process itself when we go for the clickbait headlines & simplistic to the point of inaccurate reporting. We need to do better.
We especially need to do better if we're going to science in public. We can't assume the public knows what we know. We can't assume our PEERS have the same working language and definitions. And we really need to defer to scicomm experts (the actual ones, not self-annointed).
