PCLM-D-24-00249

Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pullano,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ka Chun Chong

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please revise the submission, especially about the details of data.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: This paper on wildfire smoke effects on behavioral changes and infectivity risk addresses an important public health question, in particular in light of continuing climate change impacts and emerging infectious diseases, and is an important early step in investigations in this area. I found the article generally well done and clearly presented.

I believe the article would benefit from additional description of the study population and some of the data used. The counties used are only from Oregon and Washington, but in the methods the population is described as the “western united states”. Please clarify if only WA and OR were used for both affected and baseline counties, or if counties from other states were included as well. Perhaps relatedly, it seems unlikely that the average population size of the unaffected counties is almost 1 million (Table S1), given that only one county in Washington state has a larger population than this. Examining the 10 most populous counties from these states, and excluding the 5 from each designated as affected, the average population is around 326,000. Including more counties from these states should only lower this number.

The supplemental materials on “county selection” do not actually provide additional details on selection, but only population averages. At least, the distribution of seasonal behavior patterns should be also presented.

The authors state that indoor activity data were incorporated in county selection, but do not give specifics of how this was done. Additionally, one can assume the indoor seasonality index mentioned in the following paragraph was used for this, however the metric is not explicitly stated.

The table in the main text is labeled (and referred to in text) as “Table S1” along with the table (showing county populations) in the supplemental material.

Check tenses and subject-verb agreement throughout:

e.g., “by simulation the disease synamics in any affected county…” should be “simulating”

“We focused on Washington County, one of the area most impacted by wildfire smoke,” should be “areas”

Possibly overly nuanced, but: the AQI is based on measurements but is itself not a measurement of air quality but an indicator of air quality.

Statement “…in a world that is already 1.3oC warmer” is incomplete. Warmer than what?

Reviewer #2: In this study, the authors explored the knock-on effect of indoor activity change driven by wildfires on the transmission of respiratory diseases. They first quantified the increase of indoor activities during and after wildfires in 2020 along the west coast of the US and then used an epidemic model to quantify the impact of mobility change on disease transmission under various scenarios. They further simulated the effect of mask wearing on reducing disease spread. While quantifying the cascading effect of wildfires is an important topic, there are several concerns in the study.

1. The impact of indoor activity on disease transmission was assumed to be linear. This is a strong assumption that needs proper validation. The indoor activity index was defined using the number of visits to indoor places. In an SIR model, the force of infection depends on three factors: the number of contacts for each person, the probability that a contact is infectious, and the probability of transmission given a contact with an infectious person. When the number of visitors in indoor settings increased, does the number of contacts increase linearly? Could the probability of transmission upon an exposure to infection increase due to closer inter-personal physical distance in indoor places? There may not be definitive answers to these questions, but the authors should explore these options to better capture these uncertainties. The current modeling setting seems overly simplified.

2. Sufficient technical details on the mobility data and indoor activity are lacking. For instance, how indoor places were defined? Did the author distinguish different types of places?

3. “The compartmental model simulated the daily spread of respiratory pathogens from seven days before the AQI alert to 14 days after.” The wildfires occurred in fall 2020, which is way earlier than the typical peak timing of seasonal respiratory diseases. I am wondering why simulations can produce outbreak peaks within a 3-week period, particularly for low R0 scenarios. What are the susceptible population and total population at the beginning of the simulation?

4. Putting modeling aside, are there any real-world data to show that respiratory disease activities increased after the wildfires in these locations? The study period is 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Could interventions and COVID-19 spread affect this analysis?

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what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PCLM-D-24-00249R1

Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pullano,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 16 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ka Chun Chong

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The authors have addressed all the comments well. Please address the last comment from the reviewer.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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publication criteria?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: I appreciate the authors' efforts to clarify some details and address my concerns. Before the publication of this study, I would strongly suggest the authors to add a discussion on the impact of initial susceptible population on the modeled increased infections. Setting the entire population as susceptible is a very special case (e.g. for a completely novel pathogen). For most endemic pathogens, a lower population susceptibility would damp the effect of mobility change on transmission. The modeled increase of infections will likely be overestimated for most currently circulating pathogens.

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what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens

PCLM-D-24-00249R2

Dear Mrs. Pullano,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Ka Chun Chong

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The authors have addressed all the comments well.

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):