When the mostly male doctors were still convinced that COVID-19 was being spread by germ droplets on surfaces, prompting a nationwide rash of cleaning pedestrian crossing buttons, epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws was telling anyone who was listening that the deadly pathogen was being spread in the air.

Just as Florence Nightingale led the “miasma” reform movement during the Crimean War in the mid-1800s, arguing that many viruses were airborne and redesigning hospitals to improve ventilation, UNSW professor McLaws, who passed away at the weekend, was passionate that the early response to COVID -19 was not taking aerosol ventilation seriously.