I'm not sure what I think about this, it's certainly a detailed attempt to develop risk reduction strategies but even with the detail, I'm unsure it captures the very real complexity of transmission. The fact is that the guidelines have been developed not just on the science but on the need for pragmatism in the face of limited understanding and reactivity to social control, the guidelines also have a history, which affect acceptance.
My first concern was in the attempt to quantify the initial inoculum or the minimum infective dose, this in itself is no easy task a good definition is. “The
minimal infective dose is defined as the
lowest number of viral particles that cause an infection in 50% of individuals (or 'the average person'). While we know this virus is particularly infectious, this is the first time I've seen anyone estimate this at 10 infectious particles, this seems very unlikely, most seem to fall into the range of 100 to 1000. This one goes for about 100,
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...tory-viruses/8607769D2983FE35F15CCC328AB8289D#
This one 1000
https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clinlabnavigator.com%2Fsars-cov-2-infectious-dose.html
There are then issues around the infected person shedding the virus and like it or not distance from the source does seem important as does the behaviour of the source and the recipient. Really we have to consider virtually all the numbers as rough approximations, and we still need more data to make these more reliable.
I think if the idea is that our understanding of COVID-19 transmission will dramatically improve our response to future pandemics may be a triumph of hope over experience, we already have a great deal of information about the way in which diseases spread, but each one is different and represents a new challenge. Remember how long it took to decide the principle ways in which COVID-19 was spread, we need specific observations of any new disease. Sometimes our expectations can be very misleading and in fact before the pandemic it was recognized as a risk and two countries in particular were identified as having prepared very well, they were the USA and the UK. The new pandemic even challenged our expectations of flu.
I suppose my concern in this study was the idea that we can make useful predictions and develop fixed enduring strategies from unreliable data about unstable situations.
I remember a comment about research in biology that said; "Under the most controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases." I think this has some validity, there are to many variables some of which we may not even know.
This is a good review of several of the issues;
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7686757/