meme template

this is actually from a neat little study of mask efficacy using live SARS2 ( https://msphere.asm.org/content/msph/5/5/e00637-20.full.pdf). one point i'm still stuck on is that i don't buy that "no culturable virus" necessarily means that any viral RNA detected is just dead/"fragments"...

in this setup they detect >10^4 RNA copies but no "PFU." are these 10^4 copies really all defective and irrelevant? c'mon, this is fresh virus! isn't this just showing that the plaque approach isn't super sensitive?

it's totally reasonable to say that, below a high RNA level, real-world transmission becomes very unlikely. but it strikes me as weird and misleading to say "we found 10,000 copies of what looks like the virus, but we assume there are no 'infectious particles' b/c no plaques"