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Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

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Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#151

Post by nr2x »

mlyle wrote: post #48
nicoburns wrote: post #4

This agrees with my intuitive impression of everything I've read on Covid-19: that the primary transmission vector is through the being in unventilated or poorly ventilated enclosed spaces with an infected person for ~15 minutes or longer. I definitely feel like neither governmental policies or people's individual precautions and behaviours quite reflect that reality.

I'm a teacher at a school. - We eat outside. - We have filters upgraded to MERV-13 and the fans run the entire school day. - We have windows and doors open on all classrooms, except for A) a few that don't open outside, or B) when it's rainy/windy to the point it's not possible. We have small, secondary HEPA filters that we run in those circumstances. (Often, we're blaring AC or heat into a room with all doors and wi…

To add to that - younger children are really good with mask wearing in my experience - which is a big factor compared to the teenagers who ditch the mask as soon as no authority figure is in sight...or the adults with the maturity level of teenagers.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#152

Post by harry8 »

nradov wrote: post #136
harry8 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you're not. Really. I think you're living in a world where you believe if you've had covid you're done and you will never get it or future variants again. That's not how it is. The less often you contract a covid-19 variant the healthier /you/ are likely to be. For the immunocompromised contracting it /never/ is attainable. The less of it around, the lower the velocity of transmission the easier that goal is to at…

Nonsense. SARS-CoV-2 is just one more endemic coronavirus. No one is giving up; the vaccines and other treatments reduce the infection fatality rate close to zero. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2108120

Which variant is that again? All future variants? Must be tricky to get data on that. It's hard enough for reinfection with the Omicron variant and that actually exists in the wild. Death toll this week seems a little higher than your assertion of zero fatality rate would suggest is possible.

There's a difference between what we want to be true and reality. Our job is to minimise that difference.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#153

Post by WillPostForFood »

zuminator wrote: post #101
cryptodan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't change my habits. I'm not going to ask every business owner to provide their facilities maintenance info before I go to a place of business. If I get sick I get sick. It may or may not be the fault of the business.

In the town where I live, office and apartment buildings are assigned letter codes based upon energy efficiency, which are then publicly displayed. It's not unfeasible to imagine that something like that could be done for the health and safety profile of buildings. Even if many people chose to ignore such information, I think enough would feel hesitant to enter a building with an "F" grade that it would end up having…

What town/country?

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#154

Post by viraptor »

Eelongate wrote: post #96
willyt wrote: post #72

> Pumping in adequate amounts of fresh outside air, however engineered, will challenge running costs as well as carbon status. This is wrong. Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation (MVHR) is a well established technology which can recycle 96% of the heat from the waste air in a house. It costs about the same to fit as a central heating system. Passive houses have very high Air Changes per Hour (ACH) compared to convent…

In much of the world for much of the year, it doesn't get below freezing for at least part of the day. The solution to the heating problem is simple then: simply don't. Open windows when it's above 50F / 10C (to give a healthy safety margin to the water pipes) and tell people to wear sweaters. Do this where it's possible and you'll offset the energy expenditure of heating in places were it actually earnestly gets col…

> Open windows when it's above 50F / 10C (to give a healthy safety margin to the water pipes) and tell people to wear sweaters.

Yeah, please don't. There's a comfortable level somewhere above that, but at 10C I wouldn't be able to function in context of work / school. With worse circulation you just end up with your hands / feet feeling like they're constantly freezing. Some teachers thought that's a good idea, but I can tell you writing in gloves just gets annoying.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#155

Post by tapan_jk »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #12

To this day, there is no mandate whatsoever in any public transport to keep windows open. NiH? CDC? Missing in action thanks a lot. Uber could simply ask customers to always ask for windows down. This to me is the biggest unsung crime of the pandemic by govt officials and private industry alike.

I used to prefer Uber/Ola over the humble auto rickshaw [1] mainly because of two reasons: cars are safer; and an air-conditioned car helps avoid pollution from traffic (which is quite high in Bangalore). Now I prefer auto rickshaws (at least for short distances) because they are well ventilated due to its door-less design. The back seat of an auto rickshaw is constantly braving the elements (sunlight, dust and wind) and is likely to be more germ free in this context. To make it even better, now these autos have a transparent plastic screen between the driver and riders, thereby isolating them from each other while being open to the environment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#156

Post by CivBase »

YZF wrote: post #61
mlyle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a teacher at a school. - We eat outside. - We have filters upgraded to MERV-13 and the fans run the entire school day. - We have windows and doors open on all classrooms, except for A) a few that don't open outside, or B) when it's rainy/windy to the point it's not possible. We have small, secondary HEPA filters that we run in those circumstances. (Often, we're blaring AC or heat into a room with all doors and wi…

That's awesome but why isn't it universal?

In some places it's far too hot or cold most of the school year? Or inclement weather is common. Or students have severe alergies. Or there isn't enough space for school buildings to be designed that way. Or the local air/noise pollution is too great.

It seems to me like the ability to design a school like this would be the exception, not the rule.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#157

Post by bluGill »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #108
Eelongate wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much of the world for much of the year, it doesn't get below freezing for at least part of the day. The solution to the heating problem is simple then: simply don't. Open windows when it's above 50F / 10C (to give a healthy safety margin to the water pipes) and tell people to wear sweaters. Do this where it's possible and you'll offset the energy expenditure of heating in places were it actually earnestly gets col…

I'm surprised the opening the window part is still not been mentioned much. It's been several months since Hong Kong made all establishments to maintain air flow of 25 times per hour (something like that). It's definitely more difficult to tell colder climate countries to open windows, but really just wear a sweater or a jacket.

> just wear a sweater or a jacket.

Where I live my pipes will freeze and burst sometime in late December, but I won't find out until late February when the pipes start to thaw again.

I have a few HEPA air filters in my house. They work with whatever HVAC you have and make a difference.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#158

Post by Sargos »

pstoll wrote: post #127
mlyle wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a LEED rating thing. If you can rely upon windows entirely for ventilation and thermal control, that's great. Otherwise, windows that open leak more air when you don't want them to. They also let in more humid air, which in turn has a higher specific heat capacity and requires more energy to dry the air later. Their usage tends to be uneven, so you often have open windows while AC is also running elsewhere or in…

We have a local school being built. This was the argument for no operable windows. Except … a pandemic! We are optimizing for the wrong thing IMO at the expense of simple practical, human driven comfort. Same reason we don’t have windows on the local trains anymore. Practically for people in classrooms at random times, being able to open a window should be an option. Only central control of when the ventilation / hea…

If it's still being built then it likely won't start being used until sometime next year and at that point we're back to optimizing for energy usage. It's best to pick a long term metric over a short term win when dealing with a building that will last for decades.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#159

Post by glial »

mlyle wrote: post #48
nicoburns wrote: post #4

This agrees with my intuitive impression of everything I've read on Covid-19: that the primary transmission vector is through the being in unventilated or poorly ventilated enclosed spaces with an infected person for ~15 minutes or longer. I definitely feel like neither governmental policies or people's individual precautions and behaviours quite reflect that reality.

I'm a teacher at a school. - We eat outside. - We have filters upgraded to MERV-13 and the fans run the entire school day. - We have windows and doors open on all classrooms, except for A) a few that don't open outside, or B) when it's rainy/windy to the point it's not possible. We have small, secondary HEPA filters that we run in those circumstances. (Often, we're blaring AC or heat into a room with all doors and wi…

This matches the policy at my children's school - and thankfully the outcome has been the same as well, with no community spread. These seem like reasonable and effective precautions to me.

Re: Why don’t we just open the windows? Covid-19 prevention lost in translation

#160

Post by geoduck14 »

mike_hock wrote: post #56
anonporridge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A potentially fantastic outcome from all this is that many more public and private spaces will be designed and retrofitted with very good ventilation. Beyond curbing the spread of natural airborne diseases, it also may decrease the attack vector in our societies for airborne bio-terrorism/warfare. And even beyond all that, we're becoming increasingly aware of how important clean air is for our overall health even wit…

> it also may decrease the attack vector in our societies for airborne bio-terrorism/warfare Sounds extremely far-fetched. Any terrorist attack will be designed with the countermeasures in mind. Deploying enough biological agent to swamp the ventilation system would likely not be an issue.

I'm pretty certain I worked in an open-floor plan office that had windows designed to "impede" small airplanes being flown into it.

I speculate this fact -after- a someone actually did fly their airplane into our building. The pilot received exceptionally bad customer service from us and was attempting to kill one of our leaders.

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