I Caught Covid Again: Airborne vs Droplets at the UK Covid Inquiry

Covid Inquiry: modes of transmission denial prolonged the pandemic

First published 14 September 2024

VIDEO: I Caught Covid ... Again! Airborne vs Droplets at the UK Covid Inquiry

Four years shielding and two Covid bouts

I threw up in the night. That makes it five or six times in the past week, over a month since I tested positive for Covid-19 on 4 August.

The exhaustion stopped knocking me out after the first ten days but the persistent nausea and gut disturbance is getting worse. Is this the virus overwhelming my immune system, I ask myself in the light of no spring booster as the government wound down its already pathetic response.

The brain-fog is bad. Balance and coordination all over the place like a drunk. Mostly teetotal, I don’t bump into things this much even after downing my Christmas Baileys. Makes sense when you read, “Cognitive impairments in long COVID are debilitating, at the same magnitude as intoxication at the UK drink driving limit or 10 years of cognitive ageing, and may increase over time … “. (Nature magazine)

Lovely. So I have that to look forward to.

Why is this pandemic still with us after four years?

Airborne vs Droplets paradigm

I hadn’t realised mode of transmission was even in contention. Whether SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through aerosols or droplets is a rabbit hole I only fell into the other day. It started with a video clip of what I’d assumed was a rare light moment from the WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus differentiating the word for the aerosol from the US military Airborne (11 February 2020).

But, no, it is an actual, immediate retraction. Only three days after China’s Shanghai press conference informed the world that SARS-CoV-2 is in the air we breathe and requires protection to be stepped-up, Tedros is prompted by Mike Ryan to change his classification from airborne to droplet mode.

And why is this important?

It puts the onus on the individual instead of government and its institutions. It continues use of cheaper, inadequate surgical masks instead of FFP3/2 or N95 masks. It ignores adding ventilation, filters and power-assisted respiratory hoods to the armoury. And it doesn’t protect health-workers, patients or the public.

Hazmat suit clue

Yet, it was obvious in January 2020 that the virus was in the air and required an effective response. We watched China’s healthcare workers struggling in hazmat suits to contain the pandemic. So what was that telling us?

China’s Professor Zhong Nanshan’s confirmation of human-to-human transmission on 20 January was swiftly followed by the Wuhan lockdown on the 23rd. They then warned the world about the airborne nature of the virus in their Shanghai press conference on 8 February.

However, little of this got through to us as our mainstream media were busy throwing dust in our eyes with a vicious China-bashing binge turning our cooperation and understanding into a regular two-minute hate. In scapegoating China, they turned “China bought us time” into “China lied, people died” and buried the management strategy that eradicated the coronavirus by day 43 of a 76-day lockdown. The one that could have saved us.

Down the politicised Covid rabbit hole

So, why, Tedros, why? as many are asking.

The timing of events before and during this pandemic have been startling. So many coincidental dates, such as 18th October 2019 when the annual Military Games opened in Wuhan, the same day as the Event 201 tabletop pandemic exercise launched in New York.

The US 57-page “blame China” manual was published by Mike Pompeo’s Republican allies on 17 April 2020, the same day that Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Marisa Payne did exactly that. Oz Prime Minister Scott Morrison had disappeared a few months earlier during the devastating bush fires for a Christmas break on a US military resort in Hawaii. I wonder what he chatted about with his hosts over Mai Tais. (Hint: he now works for Trump’s former NSA adviser Robert O’Brien in the defence industry as well as with the aforementioned Pompeo in a US venture capital firm.)

And, get this: Tedros made his retraction on 11 February, three days after China’s public announcement that the virus is indeed airborne but only one day after President Trump called for a massive 9 percent $693.3 million reduction in funding for the C.D.C. Which would be hard to do if he’d had the added expense of firefighting a Highly Consequential Infectious Disease (HCID).

Dragging his heels while the stock market ballooned precariously and exploded, it took Trump until 24 February to release a request for $2.5 billion in coronavirus funding. The bill eventually rose to $9 billion.

You’d almost suspect there was some sort of coordination in play.

We know that Trump had pressured the WHO to pin responsibility for the virus on China like everyone else was doing, and deflect from his own mishandling of the pandemic. Trump was threatening to defund the organisation. It should be remembered that Tedros’s home country Ethiopia saw it’s peace broken later in the year. So perhaps the big stick was wielded when the carrot didn’t work.

The Covid Inquiry: Dr Barry Jones

Little did I know at the time of the sharp delineation between droplets and aerosols either side of a 5 micron fulcrum. Neither was I aware of the battle that would cost lives and reputations. But I certainly am now.

Thursday’s UK Covid Inquiry Module 3 shone a cleansing spotlight into one of the dark corners of the science establishment and brought it into public view. I spent last night reading the transcript of Dr Barry Jones’s evidence to the Covid Inquiry. It is truly a shocker on the scale of the government’s care homes “decisions” fatal strategic flaws” that killed so many elderly people and their care workers early in the pandemic. (See also Professor Clive Beggs’ testimony from Wednesday.)

The strategy pushed by the government’s hastily mobilised IPC might well have killed many more and helped shift the pandemic’s trajectory into a malign multiverse I’d rather not belong to.

VIDEO: Dr Barry Jones gives evidence at the UK Covid Inquiry, 12 September 2024

The Precautionary Principle

Did you know that something called the Precautionary Principle is enshrined legally in UN, WHO and SAGE documents as well as Health and Safety legislation? Dr Jones explained at the Inquiry what this means.

As, by their own admission, the IPC cell didn’t understand everything, they were under a legal obligation to choose the safest approach they could take that would protect the greatest number of healthcare workers, their patients and the public as a whole. If there could be a risk, you should take steps to mitigate that risk. “If you think asbestos is in the building, you don’t think about it. You put on a mask.”

It wasn’t needed pre 13 March because SARS-C0V-2 was already classified as airborne by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) since its arrival in the UK. MERS and SARS-1 were already ascertained as airborne Highly Consequential Infectious Diseases (HCID). In the case of a respiratory pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 one has to assume it is transmitted by the airborne route like TB and measles and previous coronavirus epidemics.

Jones emphasised that the aerosol route was understood but even if not, would be categorised as “scientific uncertainty” so the precautionary principle should be invoked as a fail safe.

The hastily appointed Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) cell that was supposed to write the guidance mysteriously changed that and downgraded the HCID status of SARS-CoV-2 mid-March on no evidence, an action beyond their remit. “It’s not for the IPC chair to reinterpret but that’s what she (Lisa Ritchie) did.”

As a result, the wrong PPE — surgical masks — were advised. These only prevent droplets that act “ballistically,” moving under the force of gravity alone, not aerosols that float suspended as fine particles in the air. Aerosols over the 5 micron distinction can enter and escape around the sides of surgical masks.

This rendered all IPC guidance null and void.

IPC cell a law unto themselves

Creating guidance for a new threat, as was the IPC cell’s job, it’s important to impose that precautionary principle fail-safe early on. “Guidelines should have stayed in place until scientific evidence proved credibly there was no aerosol transmission.”

Dr Jones gave an example that proved pivotal in our collective fate. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Jonathan Van-Tam emailed that Covid was airborne until proven otherwise. There was no evidence for the droplet route.

But Health and Safety legal procedures were abandoned for Prevention and Control. The IPC specialists who dictated guidance made statements not based on evidence: “You could even call them dishonest statements”. They did not take the precautionary principle in the face of scientific uncertainty.

They didn’t even include natural aerosol generators in the official Aerosol Generating Procedures (AGPs) such as coughing, sneezing and even breathing.

They ignored advice on 14 April from SAGE’s Environmental Modelling Group that the pandemic was likely transmitted by aerosols. Public Health England, essentially one of the IPC cell’s bosses, asked several times over 2020 and 2021 for widened use of respiratory protection but were ignored.

Dr Jones noted that the Guidance authors demanded very high level definitive evidence to prove the airborne route was dominant whilst having no evidence whatsoever to justify the droplet one then or since. “It’s not scientific, it’s a reflection of the culture.”

Aerosols should have been protected against from the outset

Not only the IPC cell but also the WHO initially categorised SARS-C0V-2 as airborne, and then contradicted itself on Twitter and across social media, saying that that “Covid is not airborne. It’s droplets and surgical masks are fine”. Their claim they were following the science is untrue. Neither did they offer any scientific evidence.

The Precautionary Principle was removed from IPC Guidance in mid-March 2020 without evidence, at the same time as HCID declassification.

There are only two categories of HCID: airborne and contact.

IPC Guidance came in on 16 March 2020: “Routes of Transmission – Covid-19 — Similar to 2003 SARS-C0V outbreak”. Despite SARS-1 being designated as an airborne HCID from the start, the guidelines say SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by respiratory droplets. Again, there’s no evidence for this.

Designated airborne HCID requires standard PPE to include FFP3 masks, not just surgical. So downgrading HCID from airborne to droplet transmitted “except for aerosol-generated procedures” resulted in the only protection afforded being against droplets for all non-AGP situations — the majority of healthcare in hospitals.

No IPC minutes were ever published

Despite advice urging caution, that the disease was airborne with aerosols going up to 100 microns, well above the 5 micron threshold, there were no changes to guidance. SAGE reverted to 5 microns in their June report.

The IPC was still disregarding the Precautionary Principle in December 2020 in a discussion about new variants: “… wary of recommending FFP3 masks,” and “Should look for new evidence first.” “Difficult …. until the evidence is generated.”

Even more ghastly, after all the raging media hostility against China for supposedly denying human-to-human transmission when Professor Zhong Nanshan had announced this very thing on 20 January 2020 after medical staff were infected, prompting the unprecedented lockdown on 23 January, the December IPC notes say: “minimal evidence of patient to staff transmission …” None at home in the UK? What happened to the mountain of evidence from Italy’s experience?

How did they get away with this? Well, no IPC minutes were ever published.

28 IPC cell members agreed in 2021 that the chair had the final decision. And overrule she did. Requests for precautionary principles to be invoked were denied. A quarter of a million Brits are dead with a lot more maimed by the virus.

IPC chair Lisa Ritchie gives her testimony at the Covid Inquiry tomorrow afternoon, Monday 16 September 2024. You really don’t want to miss this one. Transcript here.

The pandemic is not over. Wear a mask.