Today’s aerosol transmission open letter made some much needed waves. A frequent question journalists have had for the team is “If PHAC acknowledged aerosol transmission in November, so why hasn’t anything changed?”
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The word aerosol doesn’t only not mean much to people outside scientific circles. It also has no history in healthcare. We have 3 levels of PPE: contact, droplet, and airborne. There’s no such thing as “aerosol precautions” in healthcare.
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The refusal to use the term airborne for a virus that’s been shown to be airborne indoors many times, and to force us all to substitute it for the new terminology “aerosol” to appease the experts means HCWs and essential workers are left in limbo.
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When we request airborne precautions, we’re told we don’t need them because the experts say that “covid isn’t airborne.” But we can’t advocate for aerosol precautions because they don’t exist.
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So that’s my point today. Words matter and this particular word being monopolized by certain experts for unclear reasons (since those preventing us from using it don’t have a definition or explanation to offer that justifies this stance) has very real downstream consequences.
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#CovidisAirborne