학술논문
COVID-19 and airborne transmission : science rejected, lives lost : can society do better?
Document Type
Author
Morawska, Lidia; Bahnfleth, William; Bluyssen, Philomena M; Boerstra, Atze; Buonanno, Giorgio; Dancer, Stephanie J; Floto, Andres; Franchimon, Francesco; Haworth, Charles; Hogeling, Jaap; Isaxon, Christina; Jimenez, Jose L; Kurnitski, Jarek; Li, Yuguo; Loomans, Marcel; Marks, Guy; Marr, Linsey C; Mazzarella, Livio; Melikov, Arsen Krikor; Miller, Shelly; Milton, Donald K; Nazaroff, William; Nielsen, Peter V; Noakes, Catherine; Peccia, Jordan; Querol, Xavier; Sekhar, Chandra; Seppänen, Olli; Tanabe, Shin-Ichi; Tellier, Raymond; Tham, Kwok Wai; Wargocki, Pawel; Wierzbicka, Aneta
Source
Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America NanoLund: Centre for Nanoscience. 76(10):1854-1859
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
1537-6591
Abstract
This is an account that should be heard of an important struggle: the struggle of a large group of experts who came together at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to warn the world about the risk of airborne transmission and the consequences of ignoring it. We alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) about the potential significance of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the urgent need to control it, but our concerns were dismissed. Here we describe how this happened and the consequences. We hope that by reporting this story, we can raise awareness of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need to be open to new evidence, and to prevent it from happening again. Acknowledgement of an issue and the emergence of new evidence related to it, is the first necessary step towards finding effective mitigation solutions.