Thanks for some scientific stats that back my reality check:
COVID-19 is airborne.
That means, “in the air, everywhere”.
It is ENDEMIC.
We will ALL get exposed..over and over.
MANY of us will “test positive”, mostly without symptoms, again and again.
SOME of us will be “symptomatic”, and a subset will be really sick.
And (unfortunately) a FEW of us will die.
This is NOT the Bubonic plague.
This is NOT the Spanish Influenza.
Tear off that face diaper.
Breathe deeply. Inhale some COVID. Inhale some more!
Build up your immune system.
And LIVE!
No, what airborne means is that it's able to "survive" (technically just remain infectious) for a short period of time within aerosols before the proteins denature. The theoretical half-life for SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols in laboratory conditions is 1.1-1.2 hours (Source). That means if you started with 1,000 infectious SARS-CoV-2 virions, you'll have ~500 after 1.1-1.2 hours and ~250 after 2.2-2.4 hours.
However, in the real world, this is heavily dependent on conditions. If you're outside, air currents and sunlight are constantly destabilizing the aerosols and assaulting the virions, rendering them inert at a much faster rate and spreading them apart very quickly. This is likely a large part of why virtually no one is catching COVID-19 from outside activities. In a small, poorly ventilated indoor space, an infected person spending a long time will likely put a whole lot of infectious virions into that space. Most will still be in respiratory droplets. It's possible some will be within aerosols (this is still theoretical at this time as no actual aerosolized transmission outside of laboratory conditions has been documented).