"COVID-19 transmission would go down if we spoke less, or less loudly, in public spaces. Why aren’t more people saying so?"

Writes Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. Apparently, it's easier to pressure Americans to wear a mask than it is to tell us to stop talking.

“Every route of viral transmission would go down if we talked less, or talked less loudly, in public spaces,” Jose L. Jimenez, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies disease transmission, told me. “This is just a very clear fact. It’s not controversial.”...

When you breathe or whisper, your respiratory system doesn’t emit large droplets. Jimenez told me that, compared with yelling, quiet talking reduces aerosols by a factor of five; being completely silent reduces them by a factor of about 50. That means talking quietly, rather than yelling, reduces the risk of viral transmission by a degree comparable to properly wearing a mask.

“The truth is that if everybody stopped talking for a month or two, the pandemic would probably die off,” Jimenez said.... “In terms of the science, I am convinced that something like [a] library rule [in all public, enclosed spaces] would reduce all modes of viral transmission,” Jimenez told me.... 

Thompson observes that "some Americans—mostly conservative men" rebel against masks, and these people might get outraged by a "library rule" — and this might lead them to talk even more and more loudly — perhaps "filming videos of themselves purposefully yelling into a barista’s face." I don't know who makes these coffeehouse confrontation videos. Is it the rebel or a bystander who thinks the rebel is an asshole? Who knows? Obviously, the trouble with telling people to pipe down is that we think it's a free country and we've got to speak our mind and you're just giving us one more thing we want to talk about or yell and scream about. But you don't need rules that say "no talking" — like a stereotypical school marm. That's the sort of thing that incites rebellion and suspicion that the government is trying to repress us. Just use education and social pressure.

But it can be hard to exercise social pressure on others to lower their voice. I'm thinking there could be a hand gesture — 2 outstretched hands, palms down, moved gently up and down — to signal to others that we can talk much more quietly. But some people will find that aggravating. You couldn't use it in a protest. And then another problem is that many people are hard of hearing. They'll have to use the hand-cupped-around-the-ear gesture to send the message that their disability overrides the general covid-mitigation quieting.