Can Farts Transmit COVID-19 Coronavirus? Here Is What Is Being Said

This could stink if this were the case. Perhaps you got wind of the question that Norman Swan asked on a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) podcast: can farts transmit the COVID-19 coronavirus? Yes, farts, those natural gas emissions that come from everyone else’s behinds but yours. Are there scientific reasons to even consider this as a possibility or is such speculation all simply hot air?

Any possible link between farting and the transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus could be relevant because that’s what people do, fart. Estimates as to the number of times healthy people fart per day range from five to 25 times. Of course, these are just rough thresholds so if you are desperately trying to hold in that 26th fart today, just let it go.

You may be wondering: but isn’t the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) a respiratory virus and not a intestinal or a “buttatory” virus? That is true, but. Testing has found that the SARS-CoV2 can be present in fecal material, which is a scientific way of saying poop.

But there’s more. Diarrhea can be a symptom of COVID-19, as Robert Glatter has indicated previously for Forbes. Anyone who has farted while having diarrhea knows that things can get a bit bubbly.

More buts. Even when you don’t have diarrhea, farts, also known as flatulence or backdoor breezes, can come in lots of different varieties, ranging from tiny toots to rather wet ones. And that wetness ain’t just soda water. A study published in a 1997 issue of the Journal of Physiology measured the volume of study participant’s farts and found the largest volume fart to be 375 milliliters. That’s over 12.6 fluid ounces, which is more than a tall latte at Starbucks. With so much potentially coming out, could a fart be basically a butt-cough or a butt-sneeze? Can it actually spray poop particles and the virus into the air?

If you are wondering if anyone has ever farted into a petri dish and then measured what subsequently grew in the dish, the answer would be yes. A BMJ article described how a doctor had a subject first fart towards a Petri dish first while wearing pants (the subject and not the Petri dish) and then do the same without pants. As is the case in many, many situations, wearing pants seemed to make a difference. Nothing grew in the dish when the subject farted while wearing pants. But clumps of bacteria eventually appeared in the Petri dish after the subject had farted butt naked, meaning that the butt was exposed without pants. This suggested that a fart could indeed propel microbes into the air.

Of course, this was just one study that reeked of limitations. You can’t tell too much from studying a single subject. In this case, single means one, although “farted without pants into a Petri dish” may not be the best thing to list on your dating profile. There’s always the chance that the Petri Dish was contaminated by direct touch. After all, farting at something while not wearing pants without actually touching that thing can be challenging depending on the angles, the distance from the object, and your positioning. After all, your bottom is not a missile launcher.

Moreover, even if a fart were to spray one type of microbe, it may not spray all microbes equally. A fart may not be a democracy. It doesn’t make sure that each microbe is equally represented. Who knows? Your fart could be more of a dictatorship fart or an oligarchy fart, where only certain microbes are present. There’s also the possibility that you deliver electoral college farts, that represent different microbes in different proportions. As you can see governments and farts can be complicated.

Additionally, just because a microbe is present in a fart, it doesn’t mean that there is enough of the microbe to cause an infection in human. In case you didn’t know, farting into a Petri Dish is different from farting into someone’s face and then waiting to see if that person develops an infection. The latter experiment would be very, very difficult to recruit for, no matter how many gift cards you promised.

Moreover, the experiment did not test how far the microbes could travel in the air with a fart and how long the microbes may continue to float. These could vary quite significantly with fart velocity and trajectory. As you may have heard, some farts can come out like Usain Bolt in the 100 meter dash. Others are more like Ant-Man climbing out of a hole. Regarding the floating issue, you’ve probably walked into an empty room and determined quickly, that “someone farted in here.” While a smell suggests that something is still hanging in the air, it may not necessarily be microbes. All of this shows that there is still lots to learn about farts.

Regardless, even if farts were to propel the virus, don’t hold your breath for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) will get behind any substantial warning about farts. That’s because as Swan indicated, “Luckily, we wear a mask, which covers our farts all the time.” Note this doesn’t mean that people are putting N95 respirators on their booties. That would be improper use of such masks and likely not pass the fit test. Rather, Swan was referring to pants, dresses, underwear, and other things used to cover the butt like barrels.

This prompted Swan to make the following recommendation: “I think what we should do in terms of social distancing and being safe is that policy on the part of the entire Australian population should be that you don’t fart close to other people, and that you don’t fart with your bottom bare.” To this, Stephen Colbert responded, “I’m hoping that’s pretty much always the advice,” in an episode of The Late Show seen here:

Colbert did go on to suggest farting into your elbow, perhaps in jest. (He didn’t indicate whether he was being sarcastic before saying so.) In general, farting into your elbow would not be advisable because the body contortions required could make things worse by opening things up, so to speak. Plus, trying to whip your elbow down these quick enough to catch the fart could lead to some serious head injury. After all, your elbow is usually not as accessible to your butt as it is to your mouth, unless you are doing some kind of yoga pose. The “what is up dog,” perhaps? Although farting can push out air rapidly like coughing and sneezing, it is still not exactly the same. For example, you don’t tend to say “gesundheit” or offer a tissue to someone after a fart.