This Video is a Typical Example of Covid Misinformation that No One Ever Calls Out.
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I think this video contains dangerously wrong statements about how covid spreads and about why we are being told to wash our hands. I don’t think it is true that you that you need to be “right up close” (about a hand’s breadth away according to the video, at about 5m 25s) to catch covid from a covid infected person coughing (and without a mask to boot). I don’t think the danger is from touching your mouth or eating contaminated food so much as from touching your nose and eyes. The video should be edited before any more “children”, “older” or not.
What if someone coughs while standing on a twelve foot ladder or on a landing one floor up, while someone else is standing below? The droplets will fall and could well get inhaled, so it is *obviously* untrue that you are safe if you are six feet away, even in the unlikely event that the droplets cannot travel six feet horizontally. What if one person is much taller that the other, or standing while the other is lying down or sitting. Then the droplets only need to travel at an angle of forty-five degrees, and even if six horizontal feet is a safe distance (unlikely) six feet inclined at forty-five degrees won’t necessarily be. We have been usually told just to wash our hands frequently, which I think is an insult to the intelligence. You need to avoid transferring the germs from your hands to someone’s respiratory tract, and so you should wash your hands before touching your nose or eyes if you have touched something that could have germs on. Isn’t this common sense? If you are living alone, or only with people who could not have covid, you do not need to wash your hands any more than usual, but we are never told that. Is this level of detail really above people’s heads?
Steve Mould is incredibly smart, and I am in awe of his ability to explain science, including biology, and I have a lot of respect for him, and also for my fellow Mould fans. And this is why I am for the first time publicly commenting on this misinformation. I am amazed to see Mould also make this sort of mistake, and also to see no one calling him out in the comments about it. I guess I should have commented publicly long ago, as this does affect the rate that covid spreads. Better late than never I suppose.
Let me repeat that Mould is not especially worse than others, tabloid journalists and/or government spokesmen, and so on, it’s just that I hold him to a *higher* standard than those notorious bozos.
