I’ve been asked several times about this NY Post article on the CDC’s “admission” that a sneeze could Spread Ebola. The Post (which, I should note, is the least credible newspaper in New York City, for those not familiar with the paper) suggests that the CDC has changed their tune regarding the spread of Ebola.

Except, they haven’t, and this is a ridiculous, trumped-up non-story, passed along not only by the Post but by others of the typical suspects like conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Mike Adams, aka “The Health Ranger” of Natural News.

Here’s what the NY Post claims:

“Droplet spread happens when germs Traveling Inside Droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a Sick Person Enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person,” the poster states.

Nass slammed the contradiction.

“The CDC said it doesn’t spread at all by air, then Friday they came out with this poster,” she said. “They admit that these particles or droplets may land on objects such as doorknobs and that Ebola can be transmitted that way.”

Of course, no poster is linked in their article, so I feel like I’m playing a game of telephone, trying to figure out just what has been added.

The NY Post article is basically messing up the definition of “airborne,” as I and others have discussed ad nauseum. The kind of contact the NY Post describes above isn’t “airborne,” as measles or chickenpox are, where one can come into a space that had been occupied by an infected person, breathe in the suspended virus, and get ill. With Ebola, you have to have *direct contact* with a person’s secretions. So their entire story (not surprisingly, due to their tabloid-y nature) is based on either a purposeful or accidental incorrect definition of just what it means to be “airborne.”

Adams takes it one step further, suggesting that CDC not only misinformed, but revised history; that a poster was  “scrubbed” from CDC’s site because it supported “airborne” transmission.

From what I can tell, Adams claims this poster (which he saved) was removed from the CDC site, and replaced by this file. Adams claims that the latter is “entirely empty,” so he may have tried the link before it went live? I have no idea. In any case, the two documents are almost identical in content. Both note that droplet spread can happen, when “germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a Sick Person enter the eyes, nose, or mouth of another person” in the first poster, and “droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person splash the eyes, nose, or mouth of another person” in the second poster.

Wow, that’s a sinister difference there.

You can see that both documents still show a picture of doorknobs as possible fomites for transmission (possible in theory, but they’d have to be heavily contaminated by a person late in the disease). It appears that CDC just did a minor redesign of the poster, with the first having an emphasis just on Ebola and the second version trying to be more of an explainer on “air vs. droplet spread,” with Ebola as the example. The content is almost exactly the same: the first portion defines “airborne” spread; the second “droplet” spread; the third focuses on how one protects oneself from getting sick; and the final one clarifies that Ebola is not spread by air, but it could be by droplets. There are minor wording changes as I noted above, but that’s it.

This is nothing new. There’s never been a conspiracy to suggest that droplet transmission can’t happen–but the CDC and others have tried to emphasize that droplet transmission is still direct contact. That’s what people like Adams don’t want to accept. They assume because those droplets travel via air, it’s “airborne,” taking a layman term instead of one accepted and used by the scientific community. Now, given, I understand this can be a source of confusion as scientific terms frequently are. Virologist Ian Mackay has even solicited ideas for other terms to describe such transmission, and make it more clear to the general public what the difference is. But either way, the usage has been clear from the beginning and I guarantee Adams understands the difference. He just doesn’t care.

And now I just spent a half hour of my life to uncover that vast governmental conspiracy-that-wasn’t. Not that it will stop Adams or the NY Post from misinforming and driving fear of the virus and distrust of the government, because *that’s what they do.* Adams is making a pretty penny, I’m sure, off of his absurd Pandemic Prevention kits (only $99 or $199! Bargain!). Perhaps I should get into a different and more lucrative business, because if you believe shtick from Adams or the Post over the CDC or, hey, a trained epidemiologist like myself, I just may have a shiny bridge to sell you.