| The WHO only declared COVID-19 to be airborne in December 2021. There were many articles at the time describing this failure. It’s interesting how quickly it has faded from memory. I’m on my phone, so this is just an example from a quick search. Again, there are many like this: “Public health organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO) initially declared the virus to be transmitted in large droplets that fell to the ground close to the infected person, as well as by touching contaminated surfaces. The WHO emphatically declared on March 28, 2020, that SARS-CoV-2 was not airborne (except in the case of very specific “aerosol-generating medical procedures”) and that it was “misinformation” to say otherwise. […] “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States followed a parallel path […] “The very slow and haphazard acceptance of the evidence of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by major public health organizations contributed to a suboptimal control of the pandemic, whereas the benefits of protection measures against aerosol transmission are becoming well established.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ina.13070 |
> Until 2020, healthcare authorities in the Western world were were certain that viruses could never remain airborne for extended periods of time.
There was certainly mainstream belief that covid was limited to droplet transmission (though I remember much discussion of that as well) but the idea that Western medicine didn't think any viruses were airborne is nonsense.
Another comment brought up measles, which is a great example, and known for many decades.