December 2nd, 2020, 18:00
Speaker: Jose Jeminez, University of Colorado, Boulder
Moderator: Adriaan Bax, National Institutes of Health
Abstract: I will review the importance of aerosols for disease transmission, a topic in which I have been working with many of the world leaders since March 2020. I will summarize the reasons why many other scientists and I think that COVID-19 transmission is driven by aerosols, with a smaller fraction of surface transmission, and with a minor contribution of ballistic “WHO” droplets (only important when coughing and sneezing). I will explain the roots of the WHO’s extreme resistance to aerosol transmission, which are rooted in a century of denial of the role of aerosols in disease transmission. I will present some ideas about how to protect ourselves better from COVID-19 in the coming months and from other respiratory diseases in the future.