Current Events > MIT researchers say you're no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet in

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new study challenging social distancing policies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/23/mit-researchers-say-youre-no-safer-from-covid-indoors-at-6-feet-or-60-feet-in-new-study.html ?fbclid=IwAR0qiSW1NGDBd3SzYsJHDnyRkQKDFcedvzIGrN5K04AF13RIQFThQWS-Zus

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The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors is as great at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet even when wearing a mask, according to a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who challenge social distancing guidelines adopted across the world...

This emphasis on distancing has been really misplaced from the very beginning. The CDC or WHO have never really provided justification for it, theyve just said this is what you must do and the only justification Im aware of, is based on studies of coughs and sneezes, where they look at the largest particles that might sediment onto the floor and even then its very approximate, you can certainly have longer or shorter range, large droplets, Bazant said.

The distancing isnt helping you that much and its also giving you a false sense of security because youre as safe at 6 feet as you are at 60 feet if youre indoors. Everyone in that space is at roughly the same risk, actually, he noted.
Pathogen-laced droplets travel through the air indoors when people talk, breathe or eat. It is now known that airborne transmission plays a huge role in the spread of Covid-19, compared with the earlier months of the pandemic where hand-washing was considered the leading recommendation to avoid transmission.

Those droplets from ones warm exhalation mix with body heat and air currents in the area to rise and travel throughout the entire room, no matter how socially distanced a person is. People seem to be more exposed to that background air than they are by droplets from a distance, according to the study.
For example, if someone infected with Covid-19 is wearing a mask and singing loudly in an enclosed room, a person who is sitting at the other side of the room is not more protected than someone who is sitting just six feet away from the infected person. This is why time spent in the enclosed area is more important than how far you are from the infected person.

Masks work in general to prevent transmission by blocking larger droplets, therefore larger droplets arent making up the majority of Covid infections because most people are wearing masks. The majority of people who are transmitting Covid arent coughing and sneezing, theyre asymptomatic.
Masks also work to prevent indoor transmission by blocking direct plumes of air, best visualized by imagining someone exhaling smoke. Constant exposure to direct plumes of infectious air would result in a higher risk of transmission, though exposure to direct plumes of exhaled air doesnt usually last long.

Even with masks on, as with smoking, those who are in the vicinity are heavily affected by the secondhand smoke that makes its way around the enclosed area and lingers. The same logic applies to infectious airborne droplets, according to the study. When indoors and masked, factors besides distance can be more important to consider to avoid transmission.

As for social distancing outdoors, Bazant says it makes almost no sense and that doing so with masks on is kind of crazy.
If you look at the air flow outside, the infected air would be swept away and very unlikely to cause transmission. There are very few recorded instances of outdoor transmission. he said. Crowded spaces outdoor could be an issue, but if people are keeping a reasonable distance of like 3 feet outside, I feel pretty comfortable with that even without masks frankly.

Bazant says this could possibly explain why there havent been spikes in transmission in states like Texas or Florida that have reopened businesses without capacity limits.

Tried to get the relevant bits. There's some more info in there that I couldn't fit. Seems like time is a much more important factors than distance when inside.

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6 feet was invented so they could re-open offices and schools and pretend it was safe.

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Even with masks? Damn

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David1988 posted...

Even with masks? Damn

if the person is singing loudly, as covid spreaders are known to do.

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Not surprising. There's nowhere for the air to go.

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Turtlemayor333 posted...

6 feet was invented so they could re-open offices and schools and pretend it was safe.

This, we care more about money than lives

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Thread on why this is (probably) a bunch of Bull.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1385775745520214016

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Oh it's just based on a model? And ""...the model they used ASSUMES that the room is instantaneously and continuously well-mixed, like if you blow a smoke ring, it immediately spreads evenly throughout the room in zero seconds..."

Well... alright then.

Edit: Really they isn't to say it's wrong because of that. I'm no expert in indoor air quality. It also seems to be news misrepresenting the actual study, as is the standard I suppose.

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What about indoor with windows, and doors open. To the outside?

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Stalolin posted...

Thread on why this is (probably) a bunch of Bull.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1385775745520214016

Oh this is good. I will definitely read into this, thanks. I was a bit reluctant to take the initial MIT study at face value, but I got a bit too complacent with it being MIT. I will definitely look into this thread.

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Stalolin posted...

Thread on why this is (probably) a bunch of Bull.

when news reports on scientific research, you can pretty much guarantee anything in the headline is intentionally misleading or completely false. News that want to fuel the fear mongers because they know OP will spread it to fear monger get them the sweet clicks.

nothing in here is news, if you're indoor for a prolonged time, especially in a closed environment with no open windows and no HEPA filter, it's high risk. That's been known since the start. Which is why as places opened up most of them installed new HEPA filters and increases surface cleaning. It's why airplanes haven't been super spreaders, especially if the middle seats are empty, because they recycle air so frequently.

6' doesn't make you immune, it makes you safer. People need to eat and do things that can't be done at home. So we need a way to accomplish that with limiting the risk to an acceptable level.

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NightMarishPie posted...

Oh this is good. I will definitely read into this, thanks. I was a bit reluctant to take the initial MIT study at face value, but I got a bit too complacent with it being MIT. I will definitely look into this thread.

same, though i ain't reading it anytime soon

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So I skimmed the study and it seemed to say we need to limit how long and how many people are in an indoor to lower transmission. There seem to be several cases where how far you are from others doesn't matter if you are in an enclosed space for something like more than 2 hours with other infected people. So it's important to keep occupancy low and get people to leave quickly. Sitting around for 3 hours 20ft from everybody else will do nothing for you.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2018995118

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There is now overwhelming evidence that indoor airborne transmission associated with relatively small, micron-scale aerosol droplets plays a dominant role in the spread of COVID-19 (4, 5, 7, 1719, 22), especially for so-called superspreading events (2528), which invariably occur indoors (29). For example, at the 2.5-h-long Skagit Valley Chorale choir practice that took place in Washington State on March 10, some 53 of 61 attendees were infected, presumably not all of them within 6 ft of the initially infected individual (25). Similarly, when 23 of 68 passengers were infected on a 2-h bus journey in Ningbo, China, their seated locations were uncorrelated with distance to the index case (28). Airborne transmission was also implicated in the COVID-19 outbreak between residents of a Korean high-rise building whose apartments were linked via air ducts (30). Studies have also confirmed the presence of infectious SARS-CoV-2 virions in respiratory aerosols (31) suspended in air samples collected at distances as large as 16 ft from infected patients in a hospital room (3). Further evidence for the dominance of indoor airborne transmission has come from an analysis of 7,324 early cases outside the Hubei Province, in 320 cities across mainland China (32). The authors found that all clusters of three or more cases occurred indoors, 80% arising inside apartment homes and 34% potentially involving public transportation; only a single transmission was recorded outdoors. Finally, the fact that face mask directives have been more effective than either lockdowns or social distancing in controlling the spread of COVID-19 (22, 33) is consistent with indoor airborne transmission as the primary driver of the global pandemic.

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Most importantly, our study yields a safety guideline for mitigating airborne transmission via limitation of indoor occupancy and exposure time, a guideline that allows for a simple quantitative assessment of risk in various settings. Finally, we consider the additional risk associated with respiratory jets, which may be considerable when face masks are not being worn.

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