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transmission of COVID-19 is known to occur through
respiratory droplets, contaminated surfaces, kissing, and
aerosol-generating medical procedures? |
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I would like to suggest the addition of these sentences to the "Larger Droplets" section, AT THE END of the current text. I am a scientist who has published extensively on COVID-19 transmission, including the recent paper in The Lancet ( https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext) and Science ( https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/689). The text to add would be:
Large droplets were hypothesized as the dominant mode of transmission of respiratory infections in close proximity by
Dr. Charles V. Chapin in his seminal 1910 book
"The Sources and Modes of Infection". The hypothesis was loosely based on the work of
Carl Flugge in the 1890s, although Flugge did not separate large droplets from aerosols.
[1] Chapin's work was enormously influential, and e.g.
Alexander Langmuir, the first and longtime Chief Epidemiologist of the CDC referred to Chapin in 1967 as "the greatest American epidemologist."
[2] Although it has become the dominant hypothesis for the transmission of respiratory diseases, a 2019 Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).search of the literature revealed that large droplet transmission has never been demonstrated directly for any disease.
[3]. There is a lack of evidence supporting large droplet transmission for SARS-CoV-2 as well
[4]. Despite this lack of evidence, Public Health authorities like WHO and CDC quickly declared COVID-19 to be transmitted via droplets based on tradition.
Jljimene (
talk)
16:37, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
{{
reply to|Qwerfjkl}}
on reply)
21:56, 14 May 2021 (UTC)References
I think that this could be written much simpler. However I think WP:GOCE may be able to assist us, because the article is relatively stable for now, and is very repetitive, and then we can go from there. -- Almaty ( talk) 16:10, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic § Request for comment. There is currently an RfC regarding the way we describe transmission of the virus. We should probably resolve that RfC before we continue editing this page in a different direction. {{u| Gtoffoletto}} talk 08:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
I restructured the article, as the initial structure appeared to be based on the June 2020 WHO brief, now out of date. Feel free to respond to any of the below comments
Hello Almaty. After completing my preliminary copyedit I always ask questions about the article to ensure that my edit reflects the intended meaning and is clear in doing so. Please reply to each point by indenting below each one like you would a conversation; items will be struck out once they have been answered. Please ping me with {{ U}}, {{ ping}}, or {{ re}} as I have a lot of items on my watchlist. My copyediting process can be found here. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC) |
[...] mainly in locations that are poorly ventilated (such as restaurants, choirs, gyms, nightclubs, offices, and religious venues) [...]I think the stuff in the parentheses can be left in the body of the article.
In October 2020, it recognized that although current evidence [...]This sounds outdated. Any more current evidence, as of June 2021?
The number of people generally infected by one infected person varies; with only 10 to 20% of people responsible for the diseases spread.Is everything past the semicolon an unfinished thought? Not sure how it connects with the fragment before. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
However, virus-containing droplets may be able to be produced in other ways, in particular circumstances.What other ways are these? — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The WHO recommends the use of filtering facepiece respirators such as N95 or FFP2 masks in settings where aerosol-generating procedures are performed, while the CDC [...]Wikilinks removed, emphasis added. Which CDC is this? — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The CDC recommended that pet owners limit their pet's interactions with people outside their household [...]Same as above. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
Looking forward to your responses, Almaty. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Aircorn ( talk · contribs) 19:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Will review this over the next few days. Aircorn (talk) 19:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Aircorn happy to. @ Almaty are you still around? I should have the review within a day or two. Tom (LT) ( talk) 00:13, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
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Hope that helps. Thanks again for your edits :). Tom (LT) ( talk) 01:00, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
In second paragraph: Infectivity begins as early as three days before symptoms appear, and people are most infectious just prior to and during the onset of symptoms. /---/ People can spread the disease even if they are asymptomatic. It might be more accurate to say that people having symptoms can be retrospectively considered infective three days before symptoms appeared, but since symptoms might never appear they can become infective up to n days after exposure to virus. The main point is that reader shouldn't conclude that you can derive period of infectivity from time of symptoms appearing, because symptoms might never appear. This is not contradiction in itself, but might be confusing and it might be good idea to avoid this misunderstanding, since it can also lead to wrong decisions in practise. Kamma ( talk) 14:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I was a little surprised to read about the "Transmission of COVID-19" because I was certain, that COVID-19 is a disease that we develop after the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus. -- DanSy ( talk) 19:02, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Please replace the kissing photo with one which is less intimate, there are many cultures where kissing has been a significant method of transmission, and where the kissing has not been oral-to-oral such as depicted in this somewhat distracting and confronting intimate engagement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.157.18 ( talk) 09:45, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Have any studies indicated a variation in severity of symptoms relating to number of viruses or transmission route or any other factor that could affect the viability of viruses in the host? (other than the obvious vaccination and previous infection antibodies) · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, see DOI 10.1093/cid/ciab903 for an intro, or the respective pages in the Master Question List of the DHS: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/st-master-question-list-covid-19. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.155.217.106 ( talk) 13:51, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I have commented out the following clause from the introduction: as only 10 to 20% of people are responsible for the disease's spread,<ref name="Lessler_2021">{{cite web |title=Overdispersion of COVID-19 |url=https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/overdispersion-of-covid-19.html |access-date=11 May 2021 |website=Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health |vauthors=Lessler J, Grantz K}}</ref>
. It is unclear whether this refers to the percentage of the total population who transmit the virus (i.e., substantially those infected at any one time), or to the percentage of those infected who transmit it. There is use in the body of the article of the term "overdispersed", but I don't have the expert knowledge to evaluate whether that's the answer and hence to clarify it in the introduction. We are only using that source once. Rather than examine it and the sources for the passage in the body text myself and risk misleading the reader, I commented it out and request editors with more knowledge to establish whether that passage in the introduction is appropriate in the current state of knowledge and if so, make it clear.
Yngvadottir (
talk)
22:19, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
I rewrote the paragraph that mentioned the NYC Departement of Health (NYCDH) recommendations. One problem is that it presented all these things as something recommended by "health authorities" in general, not as things recommended by NYCDH. For example, I'm not sure that health authorities in general discouraged unvaccinated people or people over 65 from kissing or having casual sex.
Also, there were groups mentioned in the source, but not mentioned in the article, so I added them (e.g. immunocompromised people).
I also added the recommendation regarding face masks during sex (by the way, this is one of the reasons why I really don't think these NYCDH's recommendations are reflective of what recommendations are/were globally).
It's probably an outdated source, and I'm not even sure NYCDH still recommends all of these things. Maybe this is very anecdotal, and should be replaced with information from a more global source (what does WHO recommend for example?).
On the other hand it might be interesting to keep it, to show how recommendations changed over time (but the problem is that it seems quite NYC-centric). I'm not entirely sure what to do. Anyway, it was not possible to keep the paragraph as it was, because it didn't reflect correctly what the source actually says, in particular by omitting groups particularly at risk from severe disease. 85.169.195.108 ( talk) 09:12, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
"The dominant mode of transmission of the COVID-19 virus is exposure to respiratory droplets (small liquid particles) carrying infectious virus (i.e., airborne or aerosol transmission)."
The quoted sentence (as of Sept 10, 2023) is intransparent to the average reader, or possibly inherently intransparent. The paragraph should start with a definition of what a "droplet" is and if this is the same as an aerosol. Then there should be evidence which mode (aerosol / small / large droplets / range of a continuum etc) is predominant in which situation (e.g. depending on variant, exposure situation) and what evidence there is. In particular, the article /info/en/?search=Airborne_transmission provides insightful information on this topic that could be incorporated to some degree. 2A01:C22:D4FB:C00:B81D:22F4:1D15:D170 ( talk) 19:20, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Transmission of COVID-19 article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL |
Archives: 1 |
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
Transmission of COVID-19 was a Natural sciences good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
August 31, 2020. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that
transmission of COVID-19 is known to occur through
respiratory droplets, contaminated surfaces, kissing, and
aerosol-generating medical procedures? |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically
review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Transmission of COVID-19.
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
The
Wikimedia Foundation's
Terms of Use require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any paid contribution; see
WP:PAID. For advice about reviewing paid contributions, see
WP:COIRESPONSE.
|
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I would like to suggest the addition of these sentences to the "Larger Droplets" section, AT THE END of the current text. I am a scientist who has published extensively on COVID-19 transmission, including the recent paper in The Lancet ( https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext) and Science ( https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/689). The text to add would be:
Large droplets were hypothesized as the dominant mode of transmission of respiratory infections in close proximity by
Dr. Charles V. Chapin in his seminal 1910 book
"The Sources and Modes of Infection". The hypothesis was loosely based on the work of
Carl Flugge in the 1890s, although Flugge did not separate large droplets from aerosols.
[1] Chapin's work was enormously influential, and e.g.
Alexander Langmuir, the first and longtime Chief Epidemiologist of the CDC referred to Chapin in 1967 as "the greatest American epidemologist."
[2] Although it has become the dominant hypothesis for the transmission of respiratory diseases, a 2019 Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).search of the literature revealed that large droplet transmission has never been demonstrated directly for any disease.
[3]. There is a lack of evidence supporting large droplet transmission for SARS-CoV-2 as well
[4]. Despite this lack of evidence, Public Health authorities like WHO and CDC quickly declared COVID-19 to be transmitted via droplets based on tradition.
Jljimene (
talk)
16:37, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
{{
reply to|Qwerfjkl}}
on reply)
21:56, 14 May 2021 (UTC)References
I think that this could be written much simpler. However I think WP:GOCE may be able to assist us, because the article is relatively stable for now, and is very repetitive, and then we can go from there. -- Almaty ( talk) 16:10, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic § Request for comment. There is currently an RfC regarding the way we describe transmission of the virus. We should probably resolve that RfC before we continue editing this page in a different direction. {{u| Gtoffoletto}} talk 08:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
I restructured the article, as the initial structure appeared to be based on the June 2020 WHO brief, now out of date. Feel free to respond to any of the below comments
Hello Almaty. After completing my preliminary copyedit I always ask questions about the article to ensure that my edit reflects the intended meaning and is clear in doing so. Please reply to each point by indenting below each one like you would a conversation; items will be struck out once they have been answered. Please ping me with {{ U}}, {{ ping}}, or {{ re}} as I have a lot of items on my watchlist. My copyediting process can be found here. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC) |
[...] mainly in locations that are poorly ventilated (such as restaurants, choirs, gyms, nightclubs, offices, and religious venues) [...]I think the stuff in the parentheses can be left in the body of the article.
In October 2020, it recognized that although current evidence [...]This sounds outdated. Any more current evidence, as of June 2021?
The number of people generally infected by one infected person varies; with only 10 to 20% of people responsible for the diseases spread.Is everything past the semicolon an unfinished thought? Not sure how it connects with the fragment before. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
However, virus-containing droplets may be able to be produced in other ways, in particular circumstances.What other ways are these? — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The WHO recommends the use of filtering facepiece respirators such as N95 or FFP2 masks in settings where aerosol-generating procedures are performed, while the CDC [...]Wikilinks removed, emphasis added. Which CDC is this? — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The CDC recommended that pet owners limit their pet's interactions with people outside their household [...]Same as above. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
Looking forward to your responses, Almaty. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Aircorn ( talk · contribs) 19:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Will review this over the next few days. Aircorn (talk) 19:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Aircorn happy to. @ Almaty are you still around? I should have the review within a day or two. Tom (LT) ( talk) 00:13, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Rate | Attribute | Review Comment |
---|---|---|
1. Well-written: | ||
1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct. | ||
1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. | ||
2. Verifiable with no original research: | ||
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline. | ||
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). | ||
2c. it contains no original research. | ||
2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. | ||
3. Broad in its coverage: | ||
3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic. | ||
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). | ||
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each. | ||
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. | ||
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: | ||
6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content. | ||
6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. | ||
7. Overall assessment. |
Hope that helps. Thanks again for your edits :). Tom (LT) ( talk) 01:00, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
In second paragraph: Infectivity begins as early as three days before symptoms appear, and people are most infectious just prior to and during the onset of symptoms. /---/ People can spread the disease even if they are asymptomatic. It might be more accurate to say that people having symptoms can be retrospectively considered infective three days before symptoms appeared, but since symptoms might never appear they can become infective up to n days after exposure to virus. The main point is that reader shouldn't conclude that you can derive period of infectivity from time of symptoms appearing, because symptoms might never appear. This is not contradiction in itself, but might be confusing and it might be good idea to avoid this misunderstanding, since it can also lead to wrong decisions in practise. Kamma ( talk) 14:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I was a little surprised to read about the "Transmission of COVID-19" because I was certain, that COVID-19 is a disease that we develop after the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus. -- DanSy ( talk) 19:02, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Please replace the kissing photo with one which is less intimate, there are many cultures where kissing has been a significant method of transmission, and where the kissing has not been oral-to-oral such as depicted in this somewhat distracting and confronting intimate engagement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.157.18 ( talk) 09:45, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Have any studies indicated a variation in severity of symptoms relating to number of viruses or transmission route or any other factor that could affect the viability of viruses in the host? (other than the obvious vaccination and previous infection antibodies) · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, see DOI 10.1093/cid/ciab903 for an intro, or the respective pages in the Master Question List of the DHS: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/st-master-question-list-covid-19. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.155.217.106 ( talk) 13:51, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I have commented out the following clause from the introduction: as only 10 to 20% of people are responsible for the disease's spread,<ref name="Lessler_2021">{{cite web |title=Overdispersion of COVID-19 |url=https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/overdispersion-of-covid-19.html |access-date=11 May 2021 |website=Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health |vauthors=Lessler J, Grantz K}}</ref>
. It is unclear whether this refers to the percentage of the total population who transmit the virus (i.e., substantially those infected at any one time), or to the percentage of those infected who transmit it. There is use in the body of the article of the term "overdispersed", but I don't have the expert knowledge to evaluate whether that's the answer and hence to clarify it in the introduction. We are only using that source once. Rather than examine it and the sources for the passage in the body text myself and risk misleading the reader, I commented it out and request editors with more knowledge to establish whether that passage in the introduction is appropriate in the current state of knowledge and if so, make it clear.
Yngvadottir (
talk)
22:19, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
I rewrote the paragraph that mentioned the NYC Departement of Health (NYCDH) recommendations. One problem is that it presented all these things as something recommended by "health authorities" in general, not as things recommended by NYCDH. For example, I'm not sure that health authorities in general discouraged unvaccinated people or people over 65 from kissing or having casual sex.
Also, there were groups mentioned in the source, but not mentioned in the article, so I added them (e.g. immunocompromised people).
I also added the recommendation regarding face masks during sex (by the way, this is one of the reasons why I really don't think these NYCDH's recommendations are reflective of what recommendations are/were globally).
It's probably an outdated source, and I'm not even sure NYCDH still recommends all of these things. Maybe this is very anecdotal, and should be replaced with information from a more global source (what does WHO recommend for example?).
On the other hand it might be interesting to keep it, to show how recommendations changed over time (but the problem is that it seems quite NYC-centric). I'm not entirely sure what to do. Anyway, it was not possible to keep the paragraph as it was, because it didn't reflect correctly what the source actually says, in particular by omitting groups particularly at risk from severe disease. 85.169.195.108 ( talk) 09:12, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
"The dominant mode of transmission of the COVID-19 virus is exposure to respiratory droplets (small liquid particles) carrying infectious virus (i.e., airborne or aerosol transmission)."
The quoted sentence (as of Sept 10, 2023) is intransparent to the average reader, or possibly inherently intransparent. The paragraph should start with a definition of what a "droplet" is and if this is the same as an aerosol. Then there should be evidence which mode (aerosol / small / large droplets / range of a continuum etc) is predominant in which situation (e.g. depending on variant, exposure situation) and what evidence there is. In particular, the article /info/en/?search=Airborne_transmission provides insightful information on this topic that could be incorporated to some degree. 2A01:C22:D4FB:C00:B81D:22F4:1D15:D170 ( talk) 19:20, 10 September 2023 (UTC)