Floating COVID Droplets Are Dangerous

Brace yourselves, because there’s a new threat in the fight against the deadly coronavirus:  floating COVID droplets.

Current Events
For months, we’ve all been told to wear a mask, socially distance, and to frequently wash our hands after touching surfaces.  However, multiple news agencies are now reporting that health officials have been reluctant to tell the general public about the dangers of floating COVID droplets.

We all emit tiny, microscopic droplets of liquid from our mouths whenever we talk, shout, eat, sing, spit, etc.  These droplets have the ability to hang suspended in the air for hours before dropping to the ground or coating nearby surfaces.  This means that if someone who is positive with the coronavirus talks inside a grocery store while not wearing a mask, they can effectively infect anyone who walks through their cloud of floating COVID droplets for hours after they were there.

Or, in other words, the coronavirus is no longer simply a surface driven health threat but is now also airborne.

Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, lead a group of 239 scientists in writing an open letter urging WHO and the CDC to recognize the potential dangers connected with the airborne transmission of coronavirus.

“The current guidance from numerous international and national bodies focuses on handwashing, maintaining social distancing, and droplet precautions,” Milton and his colleagues wrote in the letter.  “Most public health organizations, including the World Health Organization, do not recognize airborne transmission except for aerosol-generating procedures performed in healthcare settings. Hand washing and social distancing are appropriate, but in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people,” they added.

This new wrinkle in the fight against the coronavirus runs counter to Donald Trump’s prediction that COVID-19 would miraculously disappear during the summer months when the environment was hotter.  Not only was he horribly wrong, but the virus has actually returned with a vengeance in certain areas of the country.
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COVID-BOREDOM

Americans have seemingly become bored with the coronavirus and its associated safety precautions and have started acting out in ways that will only extend the threat longer than need be.

In Alabama, students have turned the virus into a game and are throwing COVID-19 parties.  They load money into a pot then purposely invite a guest who is positive for the virus.  The first party guest to get sick with the coronavirus wins the cash pot.

In New York City, Corey Hannon was bored with sitting at home during the July 4th holiday weekend. So, in spite of testing positive for the coronavirus, he threw away his mask and ventured out to a Fire Island gay beach party where hundreds had gathered.

“Everyone knows I had COVID,” the man now dubbed ‘Covid Corey’ said on social media. “I sat in my f*cking bedroom and quarantined myself for 8 f*cking days . . . and now I’m out celebrating. So go f*ck yourself. I hope all of you get f*cking COVID.”

With such a cavalier attitude toward the ongoing threat of the coronavirus and Donald Trump leading the march against wearing masks or taking the health risk seriously, health officials warn we are in for the LOOONNNGGG haul regarding COVID-19.

“The US response has been extraordinarily disappointing and wrongheaded,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a world leader in pandemic preparedness. “Whenever there’s been an opportunity to do the right thing, we seem to have done the wrong thing. The US has to recognize that it is competing for first or second position of the worst affected country in the world.”

Unless we begin to take seriously the importance of precautions, he added, “We’ll be living with masks for years.”

OK WASSUP! covers Current Events:
Floating COVID droplets and other threats.