"This overview of the history illustrates the pervasiveness of “belief perseverance,” the psychological tendency to maintain a belief despite clear and strong new evidence that should challenge it. In an era of amazing scientific advances, where mRNA vaccines were designed in a few days following virus sequencing also obtained in a few days, the very slow acceptance of critical new knowledge reminds us that the human aspects of science remain as pervasive as they were in past eras.
However, the intense research and debate associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has finally begun to generate a paradigm shift in the understanding of disease transmission. Not only are respiratory diseases not transmitted exclusively by droplets, but also it is likely that many or most respiratory diseases have an important airborne component of transmission. It is also clearer that for a disease to cause a fast-spreading pandemic, airborne transmission is likely to be an essential component. This does not mark a return to past miasmatic ideas, but a more informed understanding of airborne transmission as more complex and less scary than in the past, and certainly as a tractable problem."
This article reinforces a critical factor in understanding data. We often tend to overlook facts that don’t match our beliefs, and this confirmation bias can have unintended consequences. The work we’ve been doing with risk assessment and mitigation in buildings exposes these truths with visualizations backed up by data. To learn more, visit https://bit.ly/3pjh8n9.