[This post is from a series written during the first weeks of the COVID crisis.]
More than not touching your face, or washing your hands, we’re looking out for miasma.
Technically, a miasma has a foul smell, but in High School English, I learned the meaning as an “unhealthy atmosphere.”*
Once, a misplaced concept predating germ theory (because proponents thought the miasma itself was causing disease, as opposed to the undiscovered germs within it)** now, a miasma containing millions of droplets of virus has us again on the defensive.***
And we can create it in our own homes and places we congregate.
Apparently, loud talking for one minute suspends 1,000 droplets of virus in the air for eight minutes or more.***
And you don’t want to walk into this cloud and breathe it.
This miasma.
I am hoping this doesn’t mean people who talk loudly while wearing their masks. It seems you have to talk loudly just to be heard.
Yet, this makes it all the more important for everyone to wear a mask in the first place.
Otherwise, a person could cause a miasma.
And I would have to breathe it.
And so would you.
** “Miasma,” Lexico powered by Oxford, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/miasma
* “Miasma Theory,” Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
*** “A minute of loud talking can generate more than 1,000 coronavirus-laden droplets that linger in the air for 8 minutes, new research shows,” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/loud-speech-coronavirus-droplets-study-2020-5