--- title: Welcome to the Hotel Influenza date: 2024-10-01T05:30:00-04:00 author: University of Maryland canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/welcome-to-the-hotel-influenza" section: Articles --- # Welcome to the Hotel Influenza *October 1, 2024* — by [Chris Carroll](/author/chris-carroll) > A Groundbreaking UMD Researcher Investigating How Respiratory Infections Spread Asks Volunteers to Check in—and Get Sick for Science **THE STATELY 23-STORY HOTEL OPENED AT** the height of the Jazz Age, but less than a year later, Wall Street’s 1929 crash snuffed out revelry in the opulent ballroom and secret speakeasy. That’s when the property, then one of Baltimore’s tallest buildings, supposedly began accumulating ghosts: failed businessmen, wiped-out tycoons, even a bankrupt couple reputed to have jumped to their deaths on a downtown street with their young daughter. Today, as tour groups try to detect the spectral child bouncing her ball down the halls of the hotel, University of Maryland researchers and colleagues are using the location to track an unseen presence that’s more substantial—and threatening. Each year, according to the World Health Organization, seasonal influenza respiratory infections kill up to 650,000 people; while science has pinned down much of the biology of flu and other dangerous viruses, it hasn’t yet provided a precise account of how they’re passed from person to person to cause illness—or clear answers about preventing their spread. Did you get flu from a dirty doorknob or a sneeze in the face? Or as recent research from UMD and other sources suggests, do airborne viruses “haunt” indoor air around infected people, waiting to be breathed deep into the lungs? As part of an audacious bid to put such questions to rest, paid volunteers have checked into a sealed-off floor of the hotel (which the managers asked not to be identified) over the past two winters, with more on the way this winter. During stays of up to two weeks, they’re participating in a randomized, controlled trial with a surprising objective: to spread, or catch, the flu for science. Supported by $20 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and Balvi Filantropic Fund, the study could fundamentally alter how health authorities and the public fight respiratory infections. It brings together a multidisciplinary team from UMD’s School of Public Health and A. James Clark School of Engineering, and the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, led by UMD MPower Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Donald K. Milton. He has spent much of his 40-year career analyzing airborne pathogens and advocating, at times controversially, for society to take greater precautions. It took the COVID pandemic—when he played a pivotal role in overturning national and global health authorities’ opposition to masking to stop airborne viruses—for his ideas to gain greater traction. But that was a little too late to avoid disastrous shutdowns of schools and other societal institutions. “I tried to find a way to avoid this calamity, but here we are,” he told *[Terp](https://terp.umd.edu/portraits-from-a-pandemic)* in mid-2020. “Maybe this tragedy will get us past our fear of the idea of airborne transmission and prepare to control it, which could help us to avoid all this next time.” Midway through his flu study, Milton finds himself in the odd spot of rooting for a virus—within the walls of the hotel—that he’s fought for decades. --- ## INVISIBLE THREAT Indoor air is about 90% of all the air most of us breathe, Milton said, so he frequently keeps track of what’s in his. In his office in the School of Public Health Building, Milton reaches over and plops a device on his desk reminiscent of a small digital clock. At the beginning of our interview, the big number on its LCD screen reads a little over 400, but some 45 minutes later, the number has risen dramatically. Our breath as we spoke boosted carbon dioxide in the room to nearly 700 parts per million. *man in bed that looks like tissue box* --- ## CLEARING THE AIR Many prominent physicians (not to mention the disinfecting wipe industry—“kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria!”) still hew to the idea that the primary routes of infection are through the spray of a sneeze or cough directly into the face, or onto a surface to be transferred by touch to the mouth, eyes or nose. The developing idea that “aerosols,” fine particles that can remain suspended in the air for considerable periods, can hold enough exhaled virus to cause infection was increasingly bringing Milton into conflict with the medical establishment. One of Milton’s papers, which examined the possibilities of airborne smallpox soon after the 2001 attacks with the deadly anthrax bacteria when there was concern about bioweapons in Iraq, was met with livid responses from reviewers, including charges he was a “quack and a charlatan,” he said. *Don Milton poses with Gesundheit II machine — Professor Donald Milton poses with the Gesundheit II machine.* --- ## HIGH-RISK, HIGH-REWARD Milton’s latest major study began in 2021 with $15 million in funding from the National Institutes for Health, although fieldwork at the hotel didn’t kick off until late 2022. For the first time, it joins a full range of scientific elements and expertise to document in detail a flu transmission, said Professor Jelena Srebric, the Margaret G. and Frederick H. Kohloss Chair in Mechanical Engineering, an expert in indoor air quality and computational fluid dynamics, and one of Milton’s co-principal investigators. “Of course, you can’t actually see individual viruses causing someone to be infected, but the design of this study will give more understanding of every step along the way than we have ever had before,” Srebric said. “We’ll know what made you sick and what didn’t make you sick.” *three people wearing bright yellow vests play dancing video game — Researchers and students from Milton’s lab test technology used to track participants in the flu study’s common room by playing a dancing video game.* --- ## ‘LIKE SUMMER CAMP’ *skyscraper that looks like syringe* **Sidebar note:** Interested in sharing your flu or borrowing someone else’s as a paid volunteer to help researchers learn how to conquer the illness? Visit [cvdtrials.org/baltimoreflu](https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/cvd/trials/emit2/) to get started. --- This story is featured on the cover of the Fall 2024 issue of *Terp* magazine. Find all the stories online at [terp.umd.edu](https://terp.umd.edu/). **Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research) **Tags:** [Health and Fitness](https://today.umd.edu/topic/health-and-fitness), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research) **Units:** [School of Public Health](https://today.umd.edu/topic/school-public-health)