Miasma, or How COVID-19 seems to spread

Before people understood how germs make people sick, they believed that illnesses could be attributed to "bad air." If the air smelled bad--especially if it had the smell of organic matter rotting--people believed it was full of particles that would make anyone who breathed it sick.

If you've read Steven Johnson's excellent book The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (I mean, really! With a title like that, who wouldn't read that book?!), you might remember miasma theory.

The book describes a terrible cholera outbreak in London and a doctor named John Snow who started to question the widely-held idea of miasma.

By talking with people whose families had been affected by the outbreak, he discovered that the local pump where the families in the affected area got their water was the common element in all the cases of cholera. When the pump handle was removed, the cholera epidemic abated.

It was the water source that was contaminated, not the air.

I've been thinking about miasma as this pandemic has seeped into our country, like bad air coming from the sewage treatment plant.

We all understand germ theory, but I'm starting to wonder if our fear of the disease has some of us hearkening back to a miasma theory view.

I still saw an article in the New York Times--the Times, for heaven sake!--based on an interview with a doctor who recommended that people wash all their clothes and their hair after coming back from grocery shopping!

Really, NYT?

I thought that seemed extreme! I mean, can the virus infect us through our skin? or our hair?

Elsewhere in the NYTimes, I found another article, this one fully-researched, called "How the coronavirus can and cannot spread." 

According to this article, scientists believe that sneezing and coughing are the main ways the virus gets out of an infected person into the world. And if you're standing close to someone who's sick as they talk (that is, closer than 3-6 feet) you could be at some risk, because the virus might hitch a ride on the teeny tiny droplets of water in a sick person's breath--and get breathed into your lungs. 

Yikes! That sounds like miasma! I can see how someone might be totally freaked out by this concept. I kind of am.

But the researched article and the CDC website also remind us that the virus doesn't penetrate into our bodies through our skin. It has to get into our eyes, mouths, or noses to infect us. Because of this, even if we touch a surface where a virus might be lurking, the virus can't infect us... as long as we don't touch our mouth, nose, or eyes.

The CDC reaffirms that:

It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.

My eye just started itching as I read that passage . . . 

I think I need to go wash my hands.

OK. There might be some germ-vapor "miasma" out there, in the breath of infected people. So we do need to keep up our Social Distancing.

And we need to wash our hands after being out in public where there just might be viruses in tiny droplets on hard surfaces.

I'm going to tell the Other Dr. Nesmith that it's probably OK for him to bring in our newspaper from the front porch (yes, we still get the old-fashioned kind of newspaper) as long as he doesn't put it up his nose or stick it in his eye. 

And as long as he washes his hands afterwards.