Hi, my name's Kim Tingley.

I write studies show, which is a health column for the New York Times magazine.

Over the course of the past year, I ran across a lot of case studies about the coronavirus.

One that really stayed with me was published in May.

It was about one of the first super spreading events of the pandemic, and it happened at

a choir practice.

Usually, these studies are really dry, but they're always full of details, human details,

and those jumped out to me, like someone brought oranges to the rehearsal as a snack to share.

A few members showed up early to set up the folding chairs.

It got me wondering about who these people were.

But it was like for them to experience a tragedy that also made them really important to science,

and that brought them national attention, some of it negative.

People were like, choir practice?

Really?

Here's what happens in your body when you sing.

Your whole respiratory tract is lined with mucus.

So when you exhale deeply, as singers are taught to do, tiny tubes in your lungs called

bronchioles collapse.

When you inhale, those walls pull apart, creating a bubble of mucus that pops.

That pop generates a mist of tiny particles called aerosols that you then exhale on your

next out breath.

And those don't fall within a few feet of you the way larger droplets can.

...