FATAL FLAW

摘要

Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn't know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the Geneva-based organization. It was just past 1 pm in Switzerland on April 3,2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break. Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech and one of the few in the world who also studies infectious diseases. To her, the new coro-navirus looked as if it could hang in the air, infecting anyone who breathed in enough of it. For people indoors, that posed a considerable risk. But the WHO didn't seem to have caught on. Just days before, the organization had tweeted "FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne." That's why Marr was skipping her usual morning workout to join 35 other aerosol scientists. They were trying to warn the WHO it was making a big mistake.