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Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

economist.com

111–120 of 200 posts

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

#111
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…

It's important to understand that what CDC & FDA etc say is not "science". These are federal regulatory agencies whose mission is to enforce regulations. This is part of a political process, and their leaders ultimately serve at the pleasure of the president. When the prominent scientists who work there speak on issues, they are speaking as employees of that organization, not giving their best scientific estimation.…

The WHO was destroyed by Margaret Chan. Tedros is just a useful puppet. Margaret is now part of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of the CCP.

She had 10 years were she hollowed out the WHO from the inside putting in place her insiders.

The whole WHO needs to be burned down and rebuild for it to have any legitimacy in the future. As it stands you should assume anything from the WHO is tainted.

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

#112
Covid's over bro.

We now have herd immunity in North America. Even a top doc at Johns Hopkins says so https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-f...

Cases are crashing in in Latin America and South Asia. The only place where it may still rise in big numbers are the prison islands in Oceania.

There are better ways to spend our resources than on redoing the world's HVAC, like maybe, y'know, climate change.

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

#113
post #61

My town's school system is all in on healthy buildings -- they got parent MD/PhDs to read the literature and invite outside experts to advise, then they set minimum air change per hour and minimum filtration criteria (something like, classrooms may reopen iff they have 5 air changes per hour with outdoor or MERV 13+ filtered air). They did a bunch of HVAC work to support this goal and have reopened okay. The town's o…

Agree You don't need the WHO or some higher authority to tell you opening windows or circulating more air during a pandemic is a good idea.

Or you know, winter. As has been the case for at least the past few hundred thousand years.

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

#114
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information. We live in a world where the UN is basically a formality. I don't see how this organization has been helpful in solving world problems and preventing wars at all.

The ITU (a UN agency) helps solve the world problem of what country code to use to call countries, and coordinates new codes for new countries. If that's not a world problem, and it's not solved by the UN, I don't know what would satisfy you. There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Instead, we mostly have armed conflicts and military engagements, preventing many wars.

The ITU is more than twice as old as the UN.

It was around long before the UN, and in spite of being "adopted" by it, will be around long afterwards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicat...

Describing the ITU as "just a UN agency" is like describing the IETF as "just a recipient of donations from Google".

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

#115
post #85
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately they didn’t have an attention monopoly either, in part because they didn’t have an information monopoly. :)

Not for lack of trying however. Bear in mind the big tech companies all adopted an explicit policy of, "information that disagrees with the WHO is forbidden" and proceeded to ban lots of qualified commentators for trying to present non WHO approved information. They did this with the full approval and encouragement of the WHO itself. I'm slightly disturbed by the casualness of this thread actually. The WHO is not mer…

As far as I have seen the problem with this kind of institutions, and there are many also at the national level of countries is that the community appears to have forgotten that science demands that not everyone agrees on everything. Instead blind adherence has been enforced with dissidents dismissed as loons.

That all sounds like a great idea but inevitably it turns out the purportedly enlightened organizations, like everyone, are not always right.

Perhaps it’s an insight into how life must have been when religious dogma ruled the world.

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

#116
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.

that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not

That is not true, in the Netherlands a critic had one of his videos pulled by YouTube for claiming COVID-19 spreads through aerosols when this was not the consensus. Yet.

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

#117
I find it odd that it's still news that improved ventilation helps prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission. I've been reading articles and studies that point this out since at least April 2020. This is not news. Yet it seems that a significant portion of people are still not informed about it.

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

#118
post #117

I find it odd that it's still news that improved ventilation helps prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission. I've been reading articles and studies that point this out since at least April 2020. This is not news. Yet it seems that a significant portion of people are still not informed about it.

Yeah, it's incredible how useless governments still are (this is criticizing them from the point of view of they need to do more, not from the doubter's point of view "that it's just a flu"), they're still just blabbing on about 6 feet distancing and handwashing despite all the new (and old!) facts.

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

#119

Covid's over bro. We now have herd immunity in North America. Even a top doc at Johns Hopkins says so https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-f... Cases are crashing in in Latin America and South Asia. The only place where it may still rise in big numbers are the prison islands in Oceania. There are better ways to spend our resources than on redoing the world's HVAC, like maybe, y'know, climate cha…

> Covid's over bro.

You may be right, but it didn't end on it's own.

> There are better ways to spend our resources than on redoing the world's HVAC

Before we had vaccines, ventilation improvements likely prevented a significant amount of transmission. If ventilation can reduce the transmission of other illnesses, and prevent the next COVID, it's pretty hard to argue that it's a bad use of resources.

> climate change

Yes, that's important. But it's not a zero sum game where investing in public health somehow takes away from investing in environmentally friendly technology.

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

#120
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?

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