The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill

[LiberalArkie]

EARLY ONE MORNING, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break.

Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech and one of the few in the world who also studies infectious diseases. To her, the new coronavirus looked as if it could hang in the air, infecting anyone who breathed in enough of it. For people indoors, that posed a considerable risk. But the WHO didn’t seem to have caught on. Just days before, the organization had tweeted “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.” That’s why Marr was skipping her usual morning workout to join 35 other aerosol scientists. They were trying to warn the WHO it was making a big mistake.

Over Zoom, they laid out the case. They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events in restaurants, call centers, cruise ships, and a choir rehearsal, instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved. If they were going to call Covid-19 airborne, they wanted more direct evidence—proof, which could take months to gather, that the virus was abundant in the air. Meanwhile, thousands of people were falling ill every day.

On the video call, tensions rose. At one point, Lidia Morawska, a revered atmospheric physicist who had arranged the meeting, tried to explain how far infectious particles of different sizes could potentially travel. One of the WHO experts abruptly cut her off, telling her she was wrong, Marr recalls. His rudeness shocked her. “You just don’t argue with Lidia about physics,” she says.

Snip

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/

[lark]

1. Gee, guys not listening to qualified women - how sad this exists in science too.

In this case the whole world suffered and died because of the asshole guy who refused to listen to real facts because they didn't fit his little small and outdated view of things. For shame WHO, for damn fucking shame!

[Hugin]

2. Sadly, not listening to women is particularly pernicious in science.

It arises from women generally working from 'consensus' and the male tendency to want to be a sole credited source.

Note: I am talking generalities drawn from a spectrum of behaviors.

[lark]

5. An acquaintance of mine has a daughter who is a scientist & struggles with this.

She is in aeronautics (I think) and said she's only 1 of 2 out of 30 some research scientists there that are women and it's a constant struggle to not be relegated to bringing coffee, for both of them. Melissa is tough, smart and will thrive, but it's just wrong that it's such a struggle even for the best and the brightest women scientists.

[Hugin]

7. The overperforming required for the consensus builders in the current hierarchy...

leads them to rapidly burn out and leave. Even though the solutions developed through these processes are superior to the lone wolf offerings in my experience.

[littlemissmartypants]

42. PBS has a special on this very topic...

NOVA
https://www.pbs.org/show/nova/

Picture a Scientist
Season 48 Episode 3 | 1h 33m 6s

https://www.pbs.org/video/picture-a-scientist-rlnmdy/


Women make up less than a quarter of STEM professionals in the United States, and numbers are even lower for women of color. But a growing group of researchers is exposing longstanding discrimination and making science more inclusive.

Aired: 04/14/21

Expires: 06/13/21

Rating: TV-14

###

YouTube interview with the film makers

❤ pants

[burrowowl]

47. Kick!

[Hugin]

48. Good find and timely, smarty.

I'll bring the show to the attention of some of my openminded colleagues.

They will no doubt find the show enlightening.

Thanks.

[littlemissmartypants]

49. ❤ nt

[malaise]

6. In all spheres of academia

[Warpy]

20. Yeah, and when some woman's research penetrates their cement skulls

they take full credit for it. See: Crick & Watson.

Of course, another part of the problem here was "atmospheric science." Overspecialization confers its own set of blinders, so virologists likely had no clue "air" was pertinent.

[Rebl2]

21. Not surprising

[paleotn]

26. My first thought, and you're right, it does exist in science. It exists everywhere.

[underpants]

3. Great read.

Recommended

[FakeNoose]

4. Recommended and bookmarked

Long read but worth the time. Thanks for posting this!

[Pobeka]

8. Excellent read. Clear example of how powerful dogma can be, even for science communities.

[TheRickles]

15. Maybe even "especially for science communities".

[Pobeka]

19. I personally wouldn't go that far.

Religion, politics, economics are some obvious areas where I'd say dogma rules far more fiercely than in science communities.

But then I think about this article, and consider large organizations like the WHO, where the management at the top may have left their science roles behind many years ago, and the prevelant thinking at the time they were scientists still sways important decisions.

[TheRickles]

29. Ironically, your avatar helps to make my point.

I spent my career bringing therapies based on yin/yang Traditional Chinese Medicine into the medical mainstream, but certain scientific dogmas have been obstacles every step of the way. For one, that healing energies like qi and prana aren't real - but that's a very big rabbit hole to go down, and this isn't the place. But it's a fun one!

[Pobeka]

30. Okay, another fun side track.

I studied, and still practice taiji chuan. One of the things that sparked the "ahah!" portion of my brain, was that ~1000 years ago the chinese knew some kind of energy/information was transferred from an object to an observer, otherwise it would be impossible for the observer to detect the object.

Pretty stunning and important conclusion, they just didn't know what the energy was.

Today we know about photons and quantum physics and all manner of assorted particles zipping around. Eventually as we dig deeper we'll probably cast aside such medieval concept as a photon!

[TheRickles]

31. Yep, fascinating stuff.

"New science" is now looking at it from the other end - what kind of energy/information is transferred from an observer to an object? Check out the PEAR Lab at Princeton - it's pretty mind-blowing, even more so than external qi gong!

[Layzeebeaver]

25. critical thinkers not applying critical thinking

[dalton99a]

9. Real scientists vs. WHO political appointees

[live love laugh]

50. +1 ... hacks

[HUAJIAO]

10. I was seeing information about these studies last spring-2020-.

[yardwork]

11. K and R. This is a big discovery.

[lonely bird]

12. It is like that on many levels in education

Mrs. Bird teaches H.S. Physics. She once had the father of a student say “I never thought my kid would be taught physics by a woman.”

[unc70]

32. I was taught HS physics by a women in 1964

[ProfessorGAC]

33. I've Subbed HS Physics A Dozen Times

6 times for each gender. That's true for essentially all the sciences I've subbed in HS.
At least around here, women teaching science in HS is common & considered normal.
A good thing. (At the middle school near my house, all 3 science teachers are women!)
BTW: I find that at both HS & JrHi the ratio of women to men teaching math is >1, easily. Might be closer to 3:2.
That's not true of Social Studies where there's at least as many men as women. Not sure why that is.

[Ms. Toad]

36. Because women are (still) expected to teach, rather than do, in the math and sciences realm

As a woman, it is often easier to get a job teaching math and science than it is to get a job doing math and science.

I taught high school math and computer science (and physics for one year0. There were more women than men. Computer science - equal. Physics - I was replaced by a man who was already on staff who had never taught physics before and had enough hours of college credits, but not a degree - as I do (my suspicion is that was because of the sexism of the head of the science department).

But shift to real world, where my experience is as a patent attorney (higher paid, more prestigious, and requires a science degree) - more than 9/10 in every CLE I have attended is male.

[ProfessorGAC]

37. I Suppose So

In my field, there were more men than women, but nothing close to 9:1. Maybe 2 in 3 or 5 in 8 were men.
Among the engineers, it was similar & definitely not 9:1, except in project engineering. I only knew one woman ever that did that. And, she was very good at it & particularly pleasant to work with.
Not sure why that discipline was so different than the others, but it was. All I know for sure, is that I would never have wanted to do that.

[Ms. Toad]

38. Likely the combination of attorney + science degree required.

There aren't a lot of those to start with, and it is very heavily dominated by men. I can't even begin to count the number of meetings I attended when I was the patent attorney, but whatever male accompanied me was assumed to be running the show.

Most CLE programs start with all IP together (trademark, copyright, patents). Only patents requrie a science degree (or equivalent hours). That half of the day is perhaps 60/40. The second half of the day we usually split. The patent section in the afternoon is the 9:1.

But - the disparity does occasionally have its advantages. I've occasionally had the fun of being on the wrong end of a patent infringement case involving computer code. I have to ferret out how our code works to make sure it isn't infringing on the patent being asserted against ours. So I always give them a chance to come clean - but before I do, I make sure I understand how the code works. The looks on their faces are priceless when they tell me it works a certain way, and I announce, "That's not how I read the code . . . "

[ProfessorGAC]

39. That Does Sound Fun!

I had a similar experience.
I was an expert witness for the defense in a federal IP suit.
Our lead litigator changed the witness lineup, last minute. (Bright side is they flew me in that night on a private jet.)
Anyway I get there and he gives me transcript of the plaintiffs expert witness, with one instruction: "I need you to make him seem like an idiot."
Next morning I told him i could have handled a harder job. Their expert witness WAS an idiot.
5 hours direct. 4 hours cross, 2 that day, 2 the next.
Other side dropped the case 5 minutes after I was dismissed! They were toast. Jury was nodding in agreement with my answers during cross. And, they knew it.

[Ms. Toad]

41. Fortunately, we were still in the trial prep stage -

This was one of the few times the allowed anyone outside of the company to see the code, so it was the first solid indication we had of whether we were in trouble or not. But they just didn't expect that I (attorney, female, possibly both) would be able to read the code.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. tRump is in his 70's, not 60's.

Oh, wait ... I see ...

[niyad]

14. KNR and bookmarking. Not surprised at the sexism and misogyny.

[ananda]

16. I always knew Covid was airborne.

I read an article about it early on.

[LymphocyteLover]

53. Yes, same. I don't find this to be some major revelation.

[MurrayDelph]

17. I thought it was going to be an article about

Deborah Birx. But she just turned 65.

[AllyCat]

18. At the start of the pandemic, the RNs holding cricoid pressure

two feet from a patient’s face, were not allowed to wear an N95 mask. The anesthesiologist at the same distance had to wear an N95 because it was an aerosolizing procedure.

[cadoman]

22. I've always been a little suspect that WHO and CDC weren't being straight with us...

When I thought about it for myself, a lot of the stuff they said just didn't make much sense.

It appears that misogyny corrupted the scientific process there.

[Hekate]

23. KnRnB

[dlk]

24. More evidence, people don't change until they have to

Unfortunately, this time took a needlessly high body count.

[Wingus Dingus]

27. They should have assumed worst-case scenario--airborne--until

they had more data. Instead they insisted on 6 feet distancing and plexiglass, "don't touch your face", hand washing--all of which maybe helped a little, but don't do a whole lot of good indoors, especially in a smaller or poorly ventilated space.

[GopherGal]

46. The other absolute nonsense was/is the temperature screening

"Oh, we'll let everybody back into the country as long as they don't have a fever", as if there was no chance that someone could be infected but asymptomatic (or pre-symptomatic).

[LymphocyteLover]

52. many people did assume that

in fact one reason early on, cited for not wearing masks is that aerosol virus can't be stopped by a simple mask unless it's an N95

[peppertree]

28. 5 microns. Proves the old maxim that when you assume,

you make an ass out of u and me.

[Kali]

34. good article

and good work by these scientists

[Susan Calvin]

35. We saw what happened with choirs early on.

That should have been enough, in a rational world.

[stillspkg]

40. Wait.....

Didn't Trump put the screws to WHO?

[littlemissmartypants]

43. Kicked and recommended. Thanks, LiberalArkie. ❤ nt

[ellie]

44. Thank you for

posting this article. It was fascinating!

[JoeOtterbein]

45. Just finished this long and important article.

Thank you for posting it here. It clears my understanding of why the CDC et al, did not treat COVID like an airborne virus from the very beginning.

Thanks again for posting this important clarification of a complex and, in this case, deadly miscalculation.

[live love laugh]

51. Why would doctors be ignored? Oh wait $$$$ at stake. nt