I am reading the CDC quarantine brief (link below) and I’m remembering an article written by a doctor last year or even earlier. His point was when it comes to contact with people you don’t know (remember this is in the context with passing Covid infection ) to imagine you are a non-smoker and they are smoking cigarettes.

You can tolerate cigarette smoke if you are a non-smoker for a very short period of time, after that, you move away. His point was everyone should treat strangers as if they are smokers. Passing by people in a grocery store smoking is not a risk, but it’s an annoyance. Someone smoking on the other side of the room is also an annoyance. You inhale a very small amount of smoke before whatever reason you are there is over and you move on.

However, if you  were in a poorly ventilated area, cigarette smoke becomes more than a minor annoyance. If that were the case (and you couldn’t  ask someone to stop smoking ) you would leave the area and minimize your exposure to smoke. That’s how you should treat Covid infection possibility. If you are in a small area with people you don’t know and the ventilation is very poor to the point that if someone were smoking it would go beyond minor annoyance, then you leave the area. That’s how you protect yourself.

Now, is this perfect? No of course not. If that were true, cancer from secondhand smoke would never happen, but obviously it does. And different people have weaker or stronger immunity responses. I’ve yet to read anything but clearly defines the infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 required to infect a person to the point symptoms begin to show. That’s impossible to say for probably any disease caused by a virus much less COVID-19. So the cigarette smoke analogy is not perfect but it’s an awfully good guideline to start with and it reminds me of what they’re saying in the CDC guidelines below.


https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/scientific-b...