More than 288,000 Americans have been killed by a virus that public health officials now say can be spread through airborne transmission. To visually illustrate the risk of airborne transmission in real time, The Washington Post used an infrared camera made by the company FLIR Systems that is capable of detecting exhaled breath. Numerous experts — epidemiologists, virologists and engineers — supported the notion of using exhalation as a conservative proxy to show potential transmission risk in various settings. “The images are very, very telling,” said Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering in Johns Hopkins University’s medical and engineering schools and an expert on virus transmission. According to experts, the footage underrepresents the potential risk of exposure from airborne particles.

Source: Washington Post December 11, 2020 12:02 UTC