Coronavirus: Singing 'no more risky than talking'.......

[High Peak]

..........at a similar volume.

This article was on BBC news today.

It does seem to suggest that plainchant is safer than a rousing sing.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53853961

[alan29]

Only if its sotto voce.

[Nick Baty]

You can raise the roof with Credo III!

[Southern Comfort]

I note that they say that loud singing produces 30 times more aerosol than normal speaking. Multiply that by a choir of, say, 12, and you have a potentialy lethal situation.

Many amateur choir singers are incapable of singing quietly, and most choirs include people who like singing strongly in order to show off their voices.

I personally think these experiments are somewhat crazy. Can you imagine singing into a funnel with a tube on the end of it? You would sing in a totally different way from the way you would sing normally. We subconsciously throttle back when singing into funnels and masks precisely in order to not to poison ourselves with our own CO2.

I think until they actually do tests in a church building of average size, measuring the amount of aerosol at different distances with normal ventilation, we aren't really going to know how these things work. Already we know that aerosol produced just by breathing in a supermarket can travel into several of the adjacent aisles, and it is said that aerosol can float in the air for distances of up to 45 feet and remain in the air for half an hour or more. We also know that just as much aerosol is produced by humming as by singing, and that aerosol escapes easiy from the top of a mask.

I would like to see far more experiments that replicate real-life situations. Singing into funnels just doesn't cut it. It only tells you in theory how much you're producing, but nothing about how far it travels and how long it lasts, whether the viral load produced by a solo cantor is just as lethal as a choir of 20, and whether wearing a mask makes any difference at all.