I may not be right in my thinking here, but let my try to explain my reasoning.
When we have communicable diseases, it is not required for them to be spread by coughing or sneezing. The mere exhale of breath carries germs.
What they are talking about here are droplets from coughing or sneezing.
Now perhaps I am being a bit rigid in my definitions here, but I do not see droplet contamination to be what I would conventionally think of as airborne.
And yes, droplets are of course airborne, but I think you’ll be able to see what I mean.
The flu doesn’t require droplet contamination. It only requires breathing the same air. There is a difference.
When they were haggling over whether someone could pass this to another person if they weren’t symptomatic, it was my take that once the infection is in your blood, you could pass it along through bodily fluids right then. That means even before being symptomatic.
It has also always been my thought that saliva, which is what the droplets are, could carry this. So in that, I have bought off on airborne transmission as it relates to flying droplets, but I haven’t bought into the idea you could simple breath in the disease from someone else.
If that’s too convoluted, I apologize.