 Hello and let's talk about whether COVID-19 is airborne. There has been a lot of concern about this issue that's the airborne spread of the disease over the past few days. When we say airborne, we are talking about the possibility of the disease spreading through smaller particles called aerosols, which can linger in the air for much longer after they are discharged from the nose or mouth of an infected person. The current belief is that the disease largely spreads through bigger particles which sink to the ground faster and are not likely to linger in the air for very long. This was published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases Journal with the title It is Time to Address the Airborne Transmission of COVID-19. The WHO has until now focused more on the role of the big particles and a lot of the safety measures we have been told to take, for instance keeping a 2 foot distance, washing our hands with soap after touching surfaces, are based on that model. Now the WHO has acknowledged that there is evidence emerging of the spread through smaller particles as well. This is also important considering how say air conditioning could play a role in the spread of the smaller particles. If the airborne spread of COVID-19 is established as a major factor, we could be seeing the need for an additional set of precautions as well. Newspix Prabir Pulkai has also spoke to Dr Satyajit Rat and discussed what these new developments mean. Satyajit, recently one issue that has come up is that a lot of the COVID-19 infections are airborne, not just to what are called big particles which are easier to stop and so on, but to what is called aerosol, small droplets which stay there, can float for a much longer time, do not drop to the ground very rapidly and also operates through the what's called the air conditioning and ventilation system, which can therefore affect large buildings where a lot of this actually are sort of shared through the air conditioning system. So the virus can spread to the air conditioning system if a number of people are in a closed hall, even if the hall is large, which is large gatherings, this seems to have an effect. So do you think the aerosol issue is really something which we should take much more seriously now? Okay, so this is obviously exploded into the media and public discourse over these past three days or so, ever since a couple of Australian authors I think led a 200 plus researcher letter to clinical infectious disease, suggesting that we, suggesting more accurately rather than we, that the WHO should be much more focused on the aerosol issue than the WHO has been so far. The WHO has been more or less denying that aerosol is a major cause of concern and is really focusing on droplets and surface contamination through droplets. So to be fair to the WHO, the WHO has not actually denied that aerosol is an issue. The WHO has simply said that the evidence with regard to aerosol as far as the WHO's own technical company is concerned is somewhat equivocal at the moment and therefore they are not taking a position on it in formal recommendation terms. So, but let me get both ourselves and our listeners to step back a little. You see, the fact of the matter is that the virus spreads from one airway to another airway. The way it will spread is that the airway will put out virus in droplets of a whole variety of dimensions. When you say airways, you mean the human being. Oh, airways of the human beings, well, presumably airways of the bats as well, but that's a couple of years ago so let's not worry too much about that anymore. The reality is that you are going to have all manner of spread to be statistically possible. Whether it is through large droplets, small droplets, whether it is through droplets directly inhaled or droplets fallen on some surface and then transferred by my touching the surface and then my touching my nose, these are all just variations on the theme. So the first thing we must remember is that this is not some completely different method of transmission. These are all just variations on the theme. The second point is none of this has a break point. You know, everybody talks about Doga's Dooly, the two meter distancing. But the two meter distancing is not because transmission is remains exactly the same whether you are two inches away or Doga's away. And then when you are two inches beyond two meters away, transmission falls to zero. That's not the case. Although when we speak about this in public discourse and we say, oh, you know, keep two meter distances, we begin to make it sound inadvertently as though that is the case. And I think this is a good time to remind ourselves that as you go further and further away from each other, there is a gradual decay in the likelihood that infection will reach. That's because actually much larger volume will take place. You draw a sort of hemisphere around you. So the volume reduces for you in terms of your ingestion the further away you go. But that's that's that's one point to the other side of that is that when I sneeze, there are very large droplets which don't even travel six inches. Then there are smaller ones and smaller ones and smaller ones. There is a whole distribution also. So you're always going to have some likelihood the real question about recommendations of a cutoff kind is at what point do you recommend the cutoff? And that point needs to exclude a lot of possibility and yet be practicable. That's always going to be a shifting zone. So we need to keep the reality of this continuum in mind rather than getting head up about are you three inches on my side of the two meters or four centimeters on your side. Similarly think about the aerosol problem now in context because what we now have is do aerosols matter now if you are in the marketplace in India where you're buying vegetables from outdoor vendors and somebody sneezes there is an aerosol but the aerosol dissipates in the open air and in all likelihood never achieves enough concentration to manage very strong transmission. Does this mean that nobody will get infected? Not at all. Let me interrupt it for a second. So the issue is one is of course that the transmission itself takes place. The second is what is the concentration which you ingest so to say through your air base and so therefore the degree of dilution in open and closed spaces could be very different. Number one add to that the basic energy saving pattern in air conditioning where air is a substantial proportion of the air is recycled. Which then exposes you over and over. Now keep something else in mind it's true that large droplets don't travel very far but because the droplet is large there will be many more virus particles in the droplet. It's true that a small aerosol droplet will travel far but individual aerosol droplets will inevitably have fewer viruses. So there are there are these trade-off continuums all around in a variety of ways. So the question here is not is aerosol transmission possible? Of course it's possible. The question here is not should we worry or not worry about aerosol transmission? Of course we should consider aerosol transmission just as much as we should consider surface mediated indirect transmission. The question here is what are the practical situations and strategies to function as advice with specific reference to aerosols? That's really the issue and that context closed door crowded recirculating air air conditioning is always going to be an issue. The restaurant example of major outbreak that is commonly used is in fact a classic example where under an air conditioner outlet there were three tables and people at all three tables got infected but remember that nobody else in the large room got infected. So it's essentially a matter of people getting exposed to aerosol over and over again. Is this an impossibility? No not at all. Should we be concerned about this? Absolutely yes. Should we be aware of the specific situation in which aerosol transmission becomes a likelihood a high likelihood hazard that we should do something about? That's the point that we should. In our next segment we bring you an interview with Palestinian lawyer and activist Dayan Abbottu. She explains what's happening with Israel's annexation plan of large parts of the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley. The plan was supposed to be implemented on July 1st but it seems to have been postponed. Dayan Abbottu talks about the continuing nature of the occupation and oppression and explains the death of the two state solution. I think it's important to first keep in mind that there was nothing sacred or special about July the 1st. That was listed as the first date that they could begin annexation and the way that they were going to begin annexation was through one of two methods. One was to either put forward a law into the Knesset, the parliament, or through a cabinet bill doing the same. The reason that July 1st was the date that was specified was that this was the date that was spelled out in the agreement between Netanyahu and his once rival who then became his ally, Benny Gantz, as being the first date that such legislation could be introduced. We don't know if things are on hold. We don't know what the shape of annexation looks like. What we do know is that it hasn't been called off. There hasn't been a statement by Netanyahu backing off of it. We haven't heard Gantz back down from it either. In fact, all that we've been hearing is that they haven't yet put forward the details of it in large part because we are now here experiencing a second wave when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus, and this particular government was a government that was enacted only to address the coronavirus with one exception, and that is annexation. I don't suspect that things are going to be canceled. In fact, I just suspect that it's going to be somewhat delayed until a little bit of a later time, but certainly no later than when the U.S. elections take place. That's what I predict. So to take maybe a step backwards, something you and many other commentators have pointed out, of course, is that annexation, per se, is not something new. This is not any new thing. It's been happening for decades. We've seen, for instance, the demolition of houses, the takeover of lands. We've seen a lot of other atrocities. We've also seen steps like the building of the Apatah at Wall, for instance, which in many ways basically create the structure for that. But even so, in that sense, how do you see this marking, for instance, a new phase in the occupation that is taking place right now? Over the course of the past 53 years, we have seen two different approaches take place when it comes to the occupation. The first approach, which has been the approach that we've seen over the course of the majority of years, has been what's called the quiet approach or what others have termed creeping annexation or defecto annexation. And in that system, what's done is that we've already seen the measures of annexation on the ground, but it's been done quietly. So we've seen the construction of 130 settlements. We've seen that there are now 700,000 Israeli settlers, which just to put it in perspective, that's 25% of the population of the West Bank. We've seen that checkpoints, there's nearly 700 checkpoints and roadblocks in place in the West Bank. We've seen the construction of the wall. We've seen land confiscation. We've seen home demolitions. We've seen settler violence. These are all measures that have been undertaken now for 53 years. The difference between that and the other approach, which is the loud approach, is that in the past, while it was all done very quietly, along comes Netanyahu who says, I'm not going to do things quietly any longer. And I'm going to be bold and I'm going to be in your face about it. And watch, I want to see if the world's going to stop me. And so it's important to keep in mind that in 2018 when Israel passed a law that was called the Jewish nation state law, which is a law that privileges Israel's Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish citizens. It's a Jewish supremacy law in effect. Again, he didn't have to do that because the Israeli Supreme Court was already on side with everything that the government had been doing. And it had already instituted this measure of Jewish supremacy. The difference was is that he wanted to be loud about it. He wanted to be bold. And he wanted to see if the world would stop him and they didn't. And so too when it comes to this current phase of annexation, all that he is doing is he is saying to the world, I want to see if you're going to stop me. It formalizes the system of apartheid as we already know it. And the only thing that makes it different is that now he's saying to the world, I'm going to institute apartheid and I want to see if you're going to stop me. On the ground, it may not change a lot. There will be some changes and I don't want to undermine those. I do believe that this move will embolden the Israeli settler movement. It will allow the settlers to go and attack Palestinians with a lot more freedom. I think that it's also going to embolden the settlers to build and expand more settlements. I think that it's also going to embolden the Israeli government to demolish more Palestinian homes. And I think it's going to embolden the Israeli government to try to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible. So I don't want to say that there's no substantive difference between pre-annexation and post-annexation. But the difference in the minds of the Israeli government, the reason that this is being done now is because he can. Right. So of course, has a lot to do with Trump's so-called deal of the century itself. A lot of the Netanyahu's annexation plan is very closely connected to Trump's plan as well. But let's take this question also to that of the two-state solution. Now, we know that the two-state solution has virtually been dead for quite some time. There's been talk of it, but clearly the situation in the ground is completely changed. So what does this annexation plan do to this two-state solution? The two-state solution died the minute that the Israelis were unwilling to uproot any settlers. And sadly, that was in 1968. And so we've been living since that time with this myth that somehow Israel is going to end the settlement enterprise, that it's going to withdraw the settlers, that it's going to end its colonial rule. And we know that it won't. The difference between that position and what's happening now is that while we Palestinians have known this for quite some time and have been articulating this for many, many years, this is now the first time that the international community is realizing the death of the two-state solution, which is why they're pushing back so hard on this issue of annexation. The issue of annexation, formal annexation, does two things to the international community. It forces them to reconcile with the fact that there is not going to be a two-state settlement. And it forces them to reconcile with the fact that there is no peace process. And given that this is where the state of affairs is, it requires that they actually put into place measures to stop annexation. But we've known for 53 years that Israel will never withdraw or evacuate its settlements. Right. That's all we have in this episode. Let's talk with you back tomorrow with major news developments from the country. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.