A brief but sharp twist of the knife was felt across the world of our gagged choral musicians on Friday evening, when the Times Science Correspondent Tom Whipple tweeted ‘It’s not good news’ about the future of choral singing. Sage documents had ‘dropped’, he wrote, containing the ominous statement, ‘There is some evidence to suggest that singing can produce more aerosols than normal talking or breathing; it may be more akin to a cough.’ And ‘Singing for any appreciable amount of time therefore may present a risk for the creation of infectious aerosols and allow for infection transmission.’
Were these the long-awaited Porton Down findings? They weren’t. In fact, as Declan Costello, the ear, nose and throat surgeon who’s conducting singing experiments alongside the Porton Down ones, reassured me when I got in touch with him in a panicky way, those comments are ‘unattributed, unverified and not supported by any scientific data.
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