Watch how coronavirus spreads indoors in a room, a bar, and a classroom

科学家现在知道，冠状病毒可以通过被感染的人呼吸的颗粒在空中传播。这些微小的颗粒可以在空气中悬浮几个小时，构成了在室内空间中感染人们的高风险。但是，与里面的人在一起度过的时间到底有多么风险 - 考虑到天气开始转弯时，许多人正在权衡？

A new visualization created by graphics journalist Mariano Zafra and publishedby the Spanish newspaperElPaísexamines three common indoor situations, and shows how the virus can spread through the air if someone in the room has COVID-19. It’s based a model calledthe Estimator—created by University of Colorado Boulder chemistry professor Jose-Luis Jimenez—which approximates how coronavirus-containing aerosols move around indoor spaces. The visualization provides a stunning look at how infection risk drops when certain mitigating tactics are used.

For instance, thevisualization illustratesa social gathering of six people, all of whom are keeping their distance in an unventilated room in someone’s home. If one person is infected and the group spends four hours together while speaking loudly, Jimenez’s model predicts that five will get the coronavirus. According to the model, mask-wearing doesn’t make a huge difference in this scenario—four out of five people will still be at risk of infection because they’ve been exposed for so long. But if everyone wears masks, the gathering is only two hours instead of four,和房间通风 - 无论是机械的还是通过打开窗户和一扇门来确保气流 - 每个人的风险都会大大降低。这些信息可以告知个人，企业和学校如何避免在室内聚会期间确保人们的安全。

Theaccompanying article, which was written by Javier Salas and translated into English by Heather Galloway, goes on to explore two other situations: an indoor bar and a classroom. In all cases, wearing masks mitigates some of the spread, and excellent ventilation makes a huge difference to how many people are infected.

Theunderlying modelthe visualization is based on, which was released in June 2020 and currently resides in a sharable Google Sheet, is derived from Jimenez’s primary focus and expertise: how pollution particles move through the air. It also provides data on aerosol spread in other situations, like while riding a bus, attending a protest, and going to the supermarket. However, the numbers in the visualization shouldn’t be taken as certainties. Though the model is based on peer-reviewed science, it’s still unclear exactly how much virus an infected person sheds, and how much ill-fitting cloth masks reduce the risk of catching the disease. The model also assumes that everyone maintains a two-meter distance from each other at all times.

“So we trust the order of magnitude of the results and especially the relative strengths of different actions such as increasing ventilation or wearing masks, but not the precise infection probabilities,” Jimenezsaid in a June press release。“不同的行动的成本非常不同，因此希望该工具可以帮助分配有限的资源，以最有效地降低感染的风险。”

Check out the entire visualization这里。