121–130 of 149 posts
Overall air quality is an issue. We "consume" more air than anything else. Every day. All day. Day after day. Pathogens are a concern. But conditions and elements that have negative impact on the lungs - and help prime such tissue for invaders and disease - should be addressed as well.
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> "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.
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…
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Well the spanish flu happened and they did not have HVACs back then and all the windows leaked.
Spanish Flu is a really bad name for this disease. From what we know it started in Kansas. It should be called 1918 Flu Pandemic.
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> 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.
You’ll see a pretty high correlation between fans of “long form”, readers of The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and political inclination around being perceived as erudite.
It’s one of those cargo cult mixed with a measure becoming a target.
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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.
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Miasma was a perfectly good theory and if anything, is obviously true innately. Bad smelling air from urine, shit, festering corpses and the like, was often laden with viruses, bacteria, and noxious chemical fumes. Sure, plenty of diseases are not airborne but air that smells like shit isn't exactly a boon to be inhaling. There is a non zero chance of getting sick from noxious air.
Nonsense. The pathogens in urine, shit, and corpses are almost never airborne. And the fumes are only toxic in extremely high concentrations. The chance of getting sick is effectively zero.
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I can see your point, but isn't the WHO tweeting “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.” an example of the opposite? They made a hard assertion without any clear proof to back it up.
Hmm? interesting. Here's the offending tweet: FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne. The #coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. To protect yourself: -keep 1m distance from others -disinfect surfaces frequently -wash/rub your hands -avoid touching your Eyes Nose Mouth - https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 The WHO gave a lot of bad advice…
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Miasma was a perfectly good theory and if anything, is obviously true innately. Bad smelling air from urine, shit, festering corpses and the like, was often laden with viruses, bacteria, and noxious chemical fumes. Sure, plenty of diseases are not airborne but air that smells like shit isn't exactly a boon to be inhaling. There is a non zero chance of getting sick from noxious air.
Yes, it's "obviously true" because of the confounding factors: bad air tends to go hand in hand with dirty water, contaminated food, and infection-carrying insects. Neither cholera, malaria, typhoid nor plague are airborne, and yet their causes were ascribed to miasmata.
It came again into my mind when I heard about tesla's biohazard filter system.
It's just ridiculous how we accept the status quo.
It can't be okay to be sick every year for 5-12 days and covid showed me no I don't have to be sick every year and don't get me wrong, clearly I'm not getting better in fighting this shit of if I have it every fucki g year.
What are long-term effects of being sick every year?
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…
My personal completely unscientific musings on the topic ended with buying and cutting up a couple of vacuum cleaner hepa filters, thus obtaining a shocking quantity of filter cloth, which then can simply be taped over the standard AC mesh filter. AFAIK, "hepa" ACs don't even cover the full surface - they just have a patch of hepa, which just ensures the air inside gets circulated through it eventually - being recirculated, there's not that much of a hurry. I'd recommend low-end filters, you don't want to remove virus particles but much larger clusters of virus+saliva.
So personally I'm guessing a rather high impact for very low cost / low effort changes.