Carl Zimmer

Like, you know, people have said that in print.

So it does raise the question of, a deep question, I think, about, you know, how does science, you know, judge what the right standard of proof is to interpret things like how diseases spread and also how to set public health policy.

But you're certainly right that...

that, you know, and March 10th, there was this outbreak.

And it's by the end of March, it had started to make news.

And because the public health workers were figuring out all the people who were sick and so on.

And people like Lindsay Ma were like, this kind of looks like airborne to me.

They wanted to do a closer study of it.

But still, at that same time, you know, places like the World Health Organization were really, you know, insisting, you know, COVID is not airborne.

It was a slow process, yes.

Yes, because, well, I mean, and the reason that they got together and sort of formed this band is because early on,

You know, even at the end of January, beginning of February 2020, people like Joe Allen, people like Lindsay Marr, people like Lydia Moraska in Australia, they were trying to raise the alarm.

And so they would say like, oh, I will write up my concerns and I will get it published somewhere.

And journals would reject them and reject them and reject them.

They'd say, well, we know this isn't true.

Or they'd say, oh, they're already looking into it.

Don't worry about it.

This is not a reason for concern.

All of them independently kept getting rejected.

And then at the same time, the World Health Organization was going out of their way to insist that COVID is not airborne.