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A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

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Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#101
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and reading it bottom up, one paragraph at a time. First the last paragraph, then the one before that, etc... This cuts through directly to the conclusion, then the detailed explanations form particular to general (which works better for me) and I can skip the "excite…

man... this is exactly the opposite of how news articles are supposed to be written. Good news articles should tell you everything in the headline. Then tell you everything again in the first body sentence. Then tell you everything again in the first paragraph. and the first page. And so on. It's supposed to be a fractal that unfolds additional detail as you press forward, while ensuring that even a casual reader com…

[deleted]

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#102
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man... this is exactly the opposite of how news articles are supposed to be written. Good news articles should tell you everything in the headline. Then tell you everything again in the first body sentence. Then tell you everything again in the first paragraph. and the first page. And so on. It's supposed to be a fractal that unfolds additional detail as you press forward, while ensuring that even a casual reader com…

Yeah, it's called "inverted pyramid", and it's supposed to be the gold standard of journalistic writing. IIRC it's being taught as part of vocational education. And yet, news media are the last place you're likely to find articles written in this style. Somehow, they manage to deliver the exact opposite of what they should be. A fractal of confusion, recursively unfolding noise. (It's as if they were making a lot of…

Wired is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; insisting it use an inverted pyramid is as strange as arguing that if only movies and books just led with the resolution, it would save you a lot of time.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and reading it bottom up, one paragraph at a time. First the last paragraph, then the one before that, etc... This cuts through directly to the conclusion, then the detailed explanations form particular to general (which works better for me) and I can skip the "excite…

I second this. I applied it to this[1] super long winded article in New Yorker to get the gist of the article. This article is littered with these passages and it's super frustrating. In the end from my view point it's a shallow piece with very little new insights. FWIW the article didn't age well as India is being ravaged by the 2nd wave. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-p...

The New Yorker is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; reading it backwards to try to get to the point as fast as possible sounds as silly as doing the same to a movie or a book.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#104
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just raise the air exchange per person and or per volume by a significant factor and mandate a very fine particulate filter. An alternative in the meantime is to use a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator), which are more efficient, last much longer (device and filter), and are much more comfortable than N95 masks. I use an Optrel Swiss Air and cover the valves of the mask with a hoodie style balaclava. It would…

It's sad to see people fall victim to mysophobia (germaphobia) and related obsessive mental disorders. They can be more harmful to overall health than actual viruses. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/cleanliness-rul...

You are using concern trolling tactics to accuse someone else of mental disorder for taking an interest in safety precautions during an uncontrolled global pandemic. This is not only rude, it is also dangerous. Please stop.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#105
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just raise the air exchange per person and or per volume by a significant factor and mandate a very fine particulate filter. An alternative in the meantime is to use a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator), which are more efficient, last much longer (device and filter), and are much more comfortable than N95 masks. I use an Optrel Swiss Air and cover the valves of the mask with a hoodie style balaclava. It would…

. Singapore is at 31% one shot(from your link), US is at 47 and rising. Of course you would still be able to get spikes in cases at only 31%, that’s expected. The mRNA vaccines are stupendously effective at stopping all variants thus far. Not sure what evidence aside from fear point to covid being able to mutate past them. We good, and it’s ok to accept that and have hope, not everything has to be fear-for-the-worst

Is 45-47% efficacy at preventing infection against B.1.351 & P.1 “stupendously effective at stopping all variants?” http://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-su...

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#106
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO and CDC have had their head in the sand for 60 years when it comes to airborne pathogens. They have only acknowledged aerosol transmission of covid in the last couple weeks. It was physicists who had to figure out why they were domatically denying reality. https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

> EARLY ONE MORNING, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know It’s really hard for me to read a WIRED article for information. I mean I realize that’s not what it’s there for but it takes forever to get into the content of the article.

I refuse to click on Wired links anymore. The signal to noise ratio is way to low to ever be worth it.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#107

From the article: "It is not known exactly what fraction of infections could be prevented if all building and transport ventilation systems on the planet were ideal (in terms of controlling airborne infections), or the cost of design and retrofitting to make them ideal." I think this is the key question. Surely better ventilation would have prevented some infections in the covid pandemic. But how many? And to decide…

A considerable number of deaths could be prevented. There are models that show that masks helped to curb spread of flu so well that excess deaths due to Covid in some places became negative.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EARLY ONE MORNING, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know It’s really hard for me to read a WIRED article for information. I mean I realize that’s not what it’s there for but it takes forever to get into the content of the article.

> "it takes forever to get into the content of the article." I've found this is the style of American long-format journalism in general. Just look at something like The New Yorker: not to dispute the quality of their writing, but the word counts certainly skew high. Articles in comparable British publications tend to be a lot more succinct.

> Articles in comparable British publications tend to be a lot more succinct.

Here's a counterexample literary trainwreck from the BBC. Have a go at wading through this horror show. It appears to have been written deliberately to withhold the topic of the article from the reader, for as long as possible. The wholly uninformative title is just the beginning. Those with the necessary patience will eventually realise that the title is also plainly untrue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#109

From the article: "It is not known exactly what fraction of infections could be prevented if all building and transport ventilation systems on the planet were ideal (in terms of controlling airborne infections), or the cost of design and retrofitting to make them ideal." I think this is the key question. Surely better ventilation would have prevented some infections in the covid pandemic. But how many? And to decide…

yes, and while it might have helped at the margin, it's frankly naive to think that we'd have largely avoided this pandemic had we just had better indoor air circulation. it's an analytical solution (so irresistable to engineers, mathematicians, and physicists!) to a complicated and stochastic set of behavioral patterns, that people want to be close to each other indoors for highly complex and very substantive social reasons (not to mention the intricate contraints the virus faces to transmit). transmission happens closely face-to-face indoors, and in light of that, folks aren't going to want to sit together for very long in an airstream strong enough and comprehensive enough to deflect and capture potential virus particles everywhere just to chat and enjoy each other's company for a bit.

while most mask usage in practice has been completely useless (like double-masking or wearing them outside), the one place where masks make real sense is between two faces close to each other emitting exhaust indoors. if we had just relentlessly kept to this one crucial scenario in our mask messaging (and simply distancing everywhere else inside), we'd have had much better and more targeted mitigation, with dramatically fewer downsides to our social and economic lives. and to boot, that avoids trying to make extraordinarily costly upgrades to every hvac system in the world for marginal benefit.

Re: A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

#110

From the article: "It is not known exactly what fraction of infections could be prevented if all building and transport ventilation systems on the planet were ideal (in terms of controlling airborne infections), or the cost of design and retrofitting to make them ideal." I think this is the key question. Surely better ventilation would have prevented some infections in the covid pandemic. But how many? And to decide…

I would put money on COVID not happening at all if all buildings had 10 air refreshes per hour, and that air either coming from the outdoors or going through a HEPA filter. I would guess an analysis of workplace COVID rates would see a strong correlation between workplaces with and without filtration in their AC systems.

Well the spanish flu happened and they did not have HVACs back then and all the windows leaked.
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