Why aren’t we talking more about airborne transmission?

No they haven't. If the effect of masks was so strong it would be easy to find that when we do trials. We've done the trials and we struggle to see the effect. Once we drop down the quality requirements we start to see an effect, but even that is mild.

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820...

> Although direct evidence is limited, the optimum use of face masks, in particular N95 or similar respirators in health-care settings and 12–16-layer cotton or surgical masks in the community, could depend on contextual factors; action is needed at all levels to address the paucity of better evidence. Eye protection might provide additional benefits. Globally collaborative and well conducted studies, including randomised trials, of different personal protective strategies are needed regardless of the challenges, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence could be considered to inform interim guidance

There's no way to spin phrases like "direct evidence is limited" and "paucity of evidence" to mean "we've got good quality evidence that shows an effect".

By strict definition, aerosol is not airborne. The behaviors converge, but there is a technical difference. It's particularly important when it comes to designing effective filtering material and sanitization processes.

From my understanding, part of this is because most hospitals don't have aerosol specific precautions. Pre-COVID, anything requiring more than droplet precautions was simply handled with full-airborne precautions (negative pressure room, PAPR, etc).

Ideally, we'd have the airborne-precaution PPE for all COVID care but that's extremely expensive and leadership (hospital and gov't) have become aware that healthcare workers will still show up to work even without proper protection.

https://www.fhi.no/globalassets/dokumenterfiler/rapporter/20...

> Non-medical facemasks include a variety of products. There is no reliable evidence of the effectiveness of non-medical facemasks in community settings. There is likely to be substantial variation in effectiveness between products. However, there is only limited evidence from laboratory studies of potential differences in effectiveness when different products are used in the community.

> Given the low prevalence of COVID-19 currently, even if facemasks are assumed to be effective, the difference in infection rates between using facemasks and not using facemasks would be small.Assuming that 20% of people infectious with SARS-CoV-2 do not have symptoms,and assuming a risk reduction of 40% for wearing facemask, 200000 people would need to wear facemasks to prevent one new infection per week in the current epide-miological situation.

Here's all the science: we don't know if masks work or not. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...

They have a plausible mechanism of action, but they also have plausible mechanisms of harm. The above link includes one trial where they appeared to be harmful:

> It is debatable whether any of these results could be applied to the transmission of SARs-CoV-2. Only one randomised trial (n=569) included cloth masks. This trial found ILI rates were 13 times higher in Vietnamese hospital workers allocated to cloth masks compared to medical/surgical masks, RR 13.25, (95%CI 1.74 to 100.97) and over three times higher when compared to no masks,* RR 3.49 (95%CI 1.00 to 12.17). 4

This is potentially because the masks start to lose effectiveness as soon as you put them on. DIY cloth masks soon become waterlogged with condensation, and then when you breath you push out aerosolised drops.

https://www.ijic.info/article/view/10788

> This study was conducted to check the efficacy of face masks in limiting bacterial dispersal when worn continuously in Operation Theater. A comparison was done to find out difference between fabric and two ply disposable masks. The first sample was collected prior to wearing the mask, using cough plate method holding a blood agar plate approximately 10 -12 centimeters away from the mouth. the personnel were asked to produce “ahh” phonation. Participants were then asked to don the face mask, continue routine work and report to the study center located inside the theater for further sample collections at designated intervals of 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes after wearing the fabric mask made of cotton. the study was replicated on immediate next day using two ply disposable mask keeping all the other conditions and personnel exactly the same. Bacterial counts before wearing the mask were 5.36±4.38 and 5.7±2.99 on day 1 and day 2 of study. Bacterial counts were 0.96±1.06 (PMy point is that we don't have the evidence to say whether masks work or not. You posting links to arstechnica and un-peer-reviewed pre-prints supports my point, doesn't it? If we had a Cochrane Collaboration meta analysis saying masks worked everyone would be posting that.

I am about 20 feet from my partner. He keeps his door closed I keep mine open. I bought two purifiers/filters one for each. they say HEPA but I have no idea if that's true. I keep mine running all the time even overnight. I'm young and healthy so likely risk is low but still being hot might be a worthy trade off.

One commenter below says HEPA isn't even effective