NEW: The conversation about whether the coronavirus can be transmitted by air stalled at one crucial point: Do aerosols at a distance contain infectious virus? And it turns out, yes, yes, they do. 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/1...

As @linseymarr tweeted last week, this is the “smoking gun” evidence that the coronavirus is indeed airborne. Of course we still don’t know how much virus you need to infect someone and how much aerosols contribute overall, but this makes it clear it can happen. 2/

Important point here: this was in a hospital room outfitted with all manner of safety measures, and that may be why the amount of virus collected was low. But still, they found virus at nearly 7 and 16 feet. So indoors with low ventilation, 6 feet distance may not be enough. 3/

I geeked out a bit on this one because the technique used to collect aerosols/virus was so cool. They used a water vapor condensation method that other scientists described to me as “very clever,” “neat,” “gentle” and “very special.” So… I wasn’t the only one geeking out. /4

Most other techniques have the aerosols sitting around during collection and the virus inside degrades, or gets shattered by the force of the air. These researchers used water vapor to expand the aerosols, then bathed the virus in liquid that preserves its integrity. /5

Lots more cool detail in the story. 6/6

Thanks to John Lednicky, @linseymarr, @RobynSchofield3 @ShellyMBoulder @angie_rasmussen and Seema Lakdwala https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/1...