For months now, virologists and epidemiologists have been debating a simple question about COVID-19 transmission: How small does a particle exhaled by an infected person have to be before it’s too small to spread the virus? We know that ballistic droplets, the comparatively large globules expelled when breathing, speaking or singing that fall to the ground quickly, generally don’t travel farther than six feet, and are the basis of virus-fighting guidelines like social distancing and masking.
Andrew Egger is White House correspondent for The Bulwark. He previously covered politics for The Dispatch and The Weekly Standard.
