MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet

#11

Post by seriousquestion » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

Zeynep Tufekci clears this up;

Before this gets out of hand. "Distance doesn't matter" IS NOT what "it's airborne" or primarily aerosol-transmitted means or implies, and the headline is not reflecting correctly a modeling paper they are using says.

What's true is that in a "well-mixed" room (VERY IMPORTANT ASSUMPTION IN THE MODEL IN THAT PAPER BEING REPORTED ON), if you spend long enough time, distance isn't completely protective which IS NOT AT ALL THE same as "distance doesn't matter" or that 6 and 60 feet are the same.

Perhaps the most important misunderstanding has been assuming aerosols=long distance only. No, they do not teleport from a person to over two feet away a la "beam it over there, Scotty." Aerosols ALSO concentrate around the person and dilute with distance.

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1385707216280375298

Re: MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet

#12

Post by xxxxxxx12 » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

> As for social distancing outdoors, Bazant says it makes almost no sense and that doing so with masks on is “kind of crazy.”

> “If you look at the air flow outside, the infected air would be swept away and very unlikely to cause transmission. There are very few recorded instances of outdoor transmission.” he said. “Crowded spaces outdoor could be an issue, but if people are keeping a reasonable distance of like 3 feet outside, I feel pretty comfortable with that even without masks frankly.”

^ The important thing that no one seems to be mentioning in the comments here. I'm surrounded with "informed" hyper-concerned liberals in a city and the amount of people wearing masks outdoors quite far away from anyone is making me question their sanity.

Re: MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet

#13

Post by sam_4675 » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

Agreed. It's criticizing the 6 foot rule not the 60, headline should be this buried quote:

"Six-feet social distancing rules that inadvertently result in closed businesses and schools are “just not reasonable,” according to Bazant.'"

Re: MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet

#14

Post by ptx » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #9

ptx wrote: post #5

...assuming that everyone is wearing masks, the article eventually clarifies.

No, it says: > even when wearing a mask Which implies it holds with or without a mask.

The first sentence of the article does imply that, as you say, but the writer got the implication wrong.

Later in the article they quote the researchers:

> “We argue there really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks” since everyone in the room is breathing the same air, Bazant said in an interview. “It really has almost no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room so you’re more exposed to the average background than you are to a person at a distance.”

> Without masks, however, Bazant said 6 feet would provide some additional protection against Covid-19 versus 3 feet. That’s particularly true if a person is breathing directly in your direction, creating what scientists call a “respiratory plume,” like a puff of smoke from a smoker. Their research was based on models that assume the air in the room is “well mixed” and that “the pathogen is distributed uniformly throughout,” they said in a follow-up statement to CNBC on Monday.