The scientific-screw-up-that-helped-covid-kill [View all]

Wow, I just finished reading how the mistake of cutting off airborne transmission at 5 microns misinformed COVID response leading to the flawed 3-6 feet social distancing rules based on that error. Equal part gender bias and academic rigidity as the idea was proposed in early 2020 by a female environmental researcher. After the WHO scoffed at the idea she decided to track down the 5 micron dogma. During her quest she had to find an out of print book from the 1950s to find the source researcher and then follow all his research and the ones after him in both directions in time to where the mistake became dogma. A lot of this detective work was by a grad student whose own research was on hiatus. Final hero was a researcher at a Hong Kong university, who had implemented air disinfection into the school's ventilation and showed the very reduced spread in that environment.

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

Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech and an expert in how viruses behave in the air is who the story was about. I only found other stories about her before I decided this story hadn't been posted yet.

I guess it might need to get cross-posted, but I'm still a newbie at posting.