Angry Citizens Pressure the World Health Organization to Fully Recognize COVID’s Airborne Spread

Angry Citizens Pressure the World Health Organization to Fully Recognize COVID’s Airborne Spread

Aerosol scientists say that the evidence points to airborne transmission of COVID-19 "beyond any reasonable doubt."

Wikimedia Commons/CDC Public Health Image Library ID 11162

A new citizen movement is gathering steam to try to convince the influential World Health Organization to change its messaging about how the coronavirus is transmitted.

The new petition "COVID is Airborne" (www.covidisairborne.org) started in early November and has approximately 3,000 signatures. During this particularly dangerous acceleration of the pandemic, the petition's backers allege that the WHO is failing the public with mixed messaging and thus inadvertently fueling the wildfire of transmission.

"Early on in the pandemic, [WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] said that coronavirus is airborne, but then in March, WHO tweeted that COVID-19 is not airborne, saying that it is primarily transmitted via droplets that are too heavy to hang in the air," says petition co-creator Jessica Bassett Allen.

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Damon Brown
Damon Brown co-founded the popular platonic connection app Cuddlr. Now he helps side hustlers, solopreneurs, and other non-traditional entrepreneurs bloom. He is author of the TED book "Our Virtual Shadow" and, most recently, the best-selling "The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur" series. Join his creative community at www.JoinDamon.me.
Bivalent Boosters for Young Children Are Elusive. The Search Is On for Ways to Improve Access.

Theo, an 18-month-old in rural Nebraska, walks with his father in their backyard. For many toddlers, the barriers to accessing COVID-19 vaccines are many, such as few locations giving vaccines to very young children.

It’s Theo’s* first time in the snow. Wide-eyed, he totters outside holding his father’s hand. Sarah Holmes feels great joy in watching her 18-month-old son experience the world, “His genuine wonder and excitement gives me so much hope.”

In the summer of 2021, two months after Theo was born, Holmes, a behavioral health provider in Nebraska lost her grandparents to COVID-19. Both were vaccinated and thought they could unmask without any risk. “My grandfather was a veteran, and really trusted the government and faith leaders saying that COVID-19 wasn’t a threat anymore,” she says.” The state of emergency in Louisiana had ended and that was the message from the people they respected. “That is what killed them.”

The current official public health messaging is that regardless of what variant is circulating, the best way to be protected is to get vaccinated. These warnings no longer mention masking, or any of the other Swiss-cheese layers of mitigation that were prevalent in the early days of this ongoing pandemic.

The problem with the prevailing, vaccine centered strategy is that if you are a parent with children under five, barriers to access are real. In many cases, meaningful tools and changes that would address these obstacles are lacking, such as offering vaccines at more locations, mandating masks at these sites, and providing paid leave time to get the shots.

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Kori Feener
Kori Feener is an award winning documentary filmmaker and a journalist based in Vermont. She writes about the environment, health and filmmaking. Her work has been featured in DigBoston, and Isthmus. She tweets at @korifeener.
What Causes Aging with Dr. David Sinclair

Last month, a paper published in Cell by Harvard biologist David Sinclair explored root cause of aging, as well as examining whether this process can be controlled. We talked with Dr. Sinclair about this new research.

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What causes aging? In a paper published last month, Dr. David Sinclair, Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, reports that he and his co-authors have found the answer. Harnessing this knowledge, Dr. Sinclair was able to reverse this process, making mice younger, according to the study published in the journal Cell.

I talked with Dr. Sinclair about his new study for the latest episode of Making Sense of Science. Turning back the clock on mouse age through what’s called epigenetic reprogramming – and understanding why animals get older in the first place – are key steps toward finding therapies for healthier aging in humans. We also talked about questions that have been raised about the research.

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Matt Fuchs
Matt Fuchs is the host of the Making Sense of Science podcast and served previously as the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He writes as a contributor to the Washington Post, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Nautilus Magazine, Fortune Magazine and TIME Magazine. Follow him @fuchswriter.