Great short conversation here I had in Fatima in Portugal at the International Pandemic Management Summit.

And this conversation is with Dr. Claire Craig, pathologist who has done huge amounts of research into all aspects of the pandemic.

And what we discuss here is essentially now all published information but

maybe not so widely available so enjoy this short conversation we go through

some really key vectors we're back at another COVID science pandemic

conference and this time in Fatima Portugal which is quite beautiful and I've met

up again with Dr. Claire Craig. Great to see you and you gave a talk yesterday I think I'm on

this morning and you went through at a high level all of the myths and the kind of data around

what COVID really was so maybe we're just have a quick check-in on the key fact.

Okay, so yeah, my talk covered three core myths that led to lockdown. So there was the

myth that transmission was only through close contact, the myth that asymptomatic spread was a genuine driver of waves and the myth that everybody was susceptible.

So I just kind of went through the evidence on each of those, which I think a lot of people aren't that familiar with, actually.

So the first one, the close contact issue, was really all around a mistake that was in the public health guidelines around the size of droplets that fall to the ground within that sort of two-meter radius because there's a transcription error about how big those droplets are and so that led to this mythical belief that most of viral particles were just tumbling to the ground when

actually they're suspended in the air yeah the absolutely the aerosol spread phenomenon micro micro

aerosol droplets and i think essentially we realized even in 2020 that they were kind of ubiquitous

clouds of countless particles moving around anyone who's

infected, thus rendering the lockdown and distancing kind of absurd.

Quite. And so I think that's the real key point is that once you've got into your

head quite how many particles an infectious person is emitting and once you, you know, and how many infectious people

there were, you begin to realise quite how much exposure there was, you know, that everybody

was exposed to it. And then when you also take into account that if it's spreading through

the air, then you don't have to be near the person who's spreading it. They could be sick in bed

...