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Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

economist.com

41–50 of 200 posts

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#41

I suggested this as an alternative to mask enforcement months ago and was ridiculed on hacker news. I'm happy to see the idea come up again as it has a lot of solid science behind it.

I certainly don't think you should be ridiculed for the notion, although I think my counter thought would be why should it be one or the other, and how confident are we in the engineering side of the solution at a wide scale. To my knowledge masks are a low cost / lost risk way to reduce the spread, and countries that had faster uptake and higher rates of compliance in mask usage did see lower overall case counts. Th…

> And how can we be sure that businesses don't just try and cheat

As someone who knows an HVAC inspector, they WILL cheat.

He has appalling stories.

The most appalling was him having to hold up opening a memory care facility because the HVAC was all shared when it was all supposed to be isolated. This was completely on the HVAC contractor as the plans were quite explicit about what needed to be done--which means that contractor did this before and got away with it.

People who come into these kinds of facilities are not well, and get sick with things all the time. Many of them are immune compromised. But, nope, everybody wanted the facility open and banking money--this included the local politicians, the local community, the "oversight" committee, etc.--nobody gave a damn about the fact that the HVAC would KILL PEOPLE.

So, don't hold your breath.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#42

Easy to scoff at an obvious headline, but SARS-CoV-2 may very well be endemic now. Going forward pandemic preparedness will no longer be reserved for the Fortune 5s or 50s. New construction for a while at least will hopefully consider biosecurity and pandemic preparedness as concrete a threat as natural disasters.

Hopefully the labs doing gain of function research in the US will increase their bio security levels as well. https://www.thestreet.com/latest-news/the-next-pandemic-coul...

I wonder how many countries and ideological groups have the ability to do GoF research. The US and China obviously do. I'm assuming all of the G7 plus Russia do. Maybe India too? The problem is that the pandemic has shown just how impactful this type of research can be and what it can create. Most countries don't want to create bioweapons that are going to have blowback on them but ideological groups within those countries may very well be willing to accept losing some members in exchange for bringing the current world order to a halt. Security, both physical and social, will indeed need a healthy increase.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#43
post #13
post #6

> The who therefore played down the risks of aerosols, issuing guidance via its Twitter and Facebook pages at the end of March 2020 that the general public need not worry. “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” it said, adding that any claims to the contrary were “misinformation”. Not quite the money quote, but on reading this I wanted to point out one little thing. This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy…

Yes, health authorities can be wrong, but if you want to prevent, stop, or aliemoriate a pandemic, you need cooperation. You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. Yes, the authority figures can be wrong. Fauci can be wrong. People can die when health authorities make mistakes, whether through indecision or decision. I myself keep wearing masks after the CDC says I don't need…

The CDC's own learnings from SARS-COV1 concluded 'probable airborne spread' and the low efficacy of hand washing as an intervention, but somehow SARS-COV2 was totally different.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/6/13-0192_article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5212a1.htm

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#44
I believe Home Automation needs to start with proper climate control (not with iKettles) because just bringing fresh air from outside probably isn't enough, it depends on many things.

There's so much wasted heat, varying humidity, overabundance of co2 and particulate matter due to pollution in some places - keeping it all at optimal levels throughout the year is no small task.

Everyone knows about air conditioning, but barely anyone knows about recuperators/heat exchangers or has an air quality monitor in their house or at work. If you don't have proper ventilation then most of those air conditioners just recirculate stale air, change its temperature and mess with humidity.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#45

I suggested this as an alternative to mask enforcement months ago and was ridiculed on hacker news. I'm happy to see the idea come up again as it has a lot of solid science behind it.

Same here-- not on HN, but in real life. It seemed so obvious from the start that this was airborne and we can stop it with ventilation and masks. I actually helped start a mask distribution non-profit. But it became an uphill battle to educate people against the political warfare that happened.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#46

I suggested this as an alternative to mask enforcement months ago and was ridiculed on hacker news. I'm happy to see the idea come up again as it has a lot of solid science behind it.

It's still ridiculous because it's incredibly expensive compared to just wearing masks.

No it's not. Open a window and stick a fan in it.

Total cost: $20.

Consider that during the pandemic, the good N95 masks were not even available for any price, so people were wearing flimsy cotton things that only block 20% of particulates. Opening a window with a fan works far better if you do it right and uses materials we still had in supply.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#47
post #4

I've been reading stuff like this for some time now, I actually had our ventilation redone, albeit for non-Covid reasons because we had too much dust due to leaky vents causing asthma issues and it makes things a lot better even without worrying about Covid. I never could find any easy/good way to add UV to the mix without having to redo everything again, though. I wonder if anyone knows any easy/simple add-ons like…

The best place to get started on that is with Corbett Lunsford's books/videos/podcasts. His book, "Home Performance Diagnostics", is the ultimate resource [1].

He also has a YouTube channel [2] that has a ton of useful information on proper ventilation, humidification, and environmental safety, along with podcasts [3]. You can also check out his main site, Building Performance Workshop [4].

Alternatively, there are books on the subject of "building performance" that you may want to check out.

[1] Home Performance Diagnostics Book: https://www.amazon.com/Home-Performance-Diagnostics-Advanced...

[2] Home Performance YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HomePerformance/videos

[3] the Building Performance Podcast: https://buildingperformancepodcast.com/

[4] Building Performance Workshop: https://buildingperformanceworkshop.com/

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#49
post #9

There is a lot of low hanging fruit in this area being ignored. Here in Ireland, the pandemic is still raging and they are reopening stores – okay, that's a tradeoff on which reasonable people can disagree. But then there's no air circulating in the stores. Ventilation could be significantly improved by such a trivial measure as keeping the front door propped open, but they don't bother. Why not?

Because stores love having a perfect temperature to attract customers ?

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#50
post #10
post #4

I've been reading stuff like this for some time now, I actually had our ventilation redone, albeit for non-Covid reasons because we had too much dust due to leaky vents causing asthma issues and it makes things a lot better even without worrying about Covid. I never could find any easy/good way to add UV to the mix without having to redo everything again, though. I wonder if anyone knows any easy/simple add-ons like…

If you have forced air, you can get a UV bulb that all air passes by for $200-300 - just requires drilling some holes and an AC plug. Also helps with killing mold and bacteria as an added benefit (and some of the original intention for the devices, e.g., OdorStop).

Are there any independent test results to show how effective those UV bulbs are at killing pathogens?
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