It was evident early on that COVD-19 is an airborne pathogen. “Superspreader Events,” such as those in the famous Guangzhou restaurant, the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and, most recently, the wedding in Millinocket, Maine, on Aug. 7, provided the evidence. In each of these cases, the common denominator was a high density of people in a relatively small area with inadequate ventilation and an infected person.
When the virus first broke, most health officials were advocating the idea the virus was spread from coughing or sneezing and that physical distance of approximately 6 feet and common-sense advice about hand-washing would be sufficient to protect people. The science behind this advice dates back to the 1930s under the direction of a scientist named William F. Wells. He theorized that virus transmission was created by droplets expelled from an infected person with a cutoff in size of approximately 5-10 uM. Using basic Newtonian mechanics, the distance of 6-8 feet was determined to be the distance a particle can travel before falling to the ground.