Rasmussen’s discussion about COVID spread was sparked by two articles. One report from The Globe and Mail on Feb. 1 documented the rapid spread of the virus at long-term care facilities and cases where infected people claimed they were only in a store for a few minutes. Another Wall Street Journal article cited data from the National Football League (NFL) that showed that transmission of the virus could occur in under 15 minutes and beyond six feet of distance.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb As an expert, Rasmussen felt this information was already apparent, but clarified it for her followers. She explained that the transmission of COVID is completely situational, and under the right circumstances, you could get infected much faster than many have been led to believe.“Since the beginning of the pandemic, people have clung to the notion that close contact is defined by less than six feet of distance and 15 minutes of exposure time as though it is a hard and fast rule. But with virus transmission, boundaries of space and time are not set in stone,” Rasmussen wrote. “Viruses do not need 15 minutes to ‘warm-up,’ and they aren’t magically rendered non-infectious over the threshold of six feet.” And for more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. Many of the new strains of COVID that have developed, including those that were first detected in the U.K., South Africa, and Brazil, spread easier—but Rasmussen said this doesn’t necessarily mean they spread faster. “With regard to B.1.1.7 [the U.K. strain] being transmitted ‘faster,’ that’s really hard to say. We only know that it’s more transmissible, but not the mechanism,” she wrote. “In other words, we don’t know HOW it is more transmissible.” Although experts are not yet sure why the strain is more infectious, Rasmussen listed a few potential causes. One reason for the increased transmissibility could be that the virus sheds more and for longer—which means people could be exposed to more virus in a shorter period of time. Another possibility is that the virus has more infectivity, so a “lower infectious dose [is] required to establish an infection.” Lastly, the virus could be more stable, which would allow it to linger longer in an environment. According to Rasmussen, “Increased transmissibility could be the result [of] any or all of these, but all could explain how people are being infected ‘faster.’” However, she notes that it could also simply be situational. And for more on the coronavirus mutations, If You Have These 4 Symptoms, You Might Have the New COVID Strain. The conception that you were in the clear if your contact was less than 15 minutes and at a distance of over six feet didn’t come from nowhere—it was what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defined as “close contact.” Rasmussen said these parameters were developed to help streamline contact tracing. “You need to have a definition of what close contact is in order to do contact tracing,” wrote Rasmussen. She explained that counting “any kind of contact, no matter how incidental, would multiply contacts to the point that tracing becomes impossible,” which is why it was necessary to quantify contact in these terms. “So, it’s not perfect, but close contact is defined to allow contact tracers to follow up on exposures that are most likely to lead to infection,” Rasmussen added. “Defining close contact for this purpose is NOT, however, a hard-line over which transmission cannot occur.” And for more on the spread of coronavirus, This Is Where You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID, New Study Says. This isn’t a singular phenomenon for COVID. “This is true for all viruses, not just SARS-CoV-2, and not just B.1.1.7 or other variants,” Rasmussen wrote. She warned against regarding the six-feet and under 15-minute rules as canon when it comes to any contagion. “We should not regard definitions of contact for tracing to be the definition of exposure risk as we live our lives,” she concluded. And for more ways you could be exposing yourself to COVID, If You Wear Your Mask Like This, You’re Not Getting “Maximal Protection.”
