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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

#171

Post by kingcharles »

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 got COVID when I was in jail. There is almost no air circulation in some jails, and a lot, like the ones I was in, are hermetically-sealed boxes. 40 people stood in a box the size of your living room. Breathe that COVID in, baby.

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

#172

Post by vbezhenar »

chmod600 wrote: post #168
nr2x wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does weaing a mask so often have downsides? I'm not "anti-mask". I'm just wondering whether we will see studies in 10-20 years about a bunch of children with lung problems from restricted airflow or weird fibers or chemicals, or other pathogens that grew on the masks, or something we haven't thought of yet. Or who knows? Maybe kids will all have super strong lungs. Or maybe lucky ones will have stronger lungs and oth…

Of course it does. Pathogen flora flourishes in those masks and you're constantly breathing it.

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

#173

Post by sharken »

mlyle wrote: post #169
chmod600 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does weaing a mask so often have downsides? I'm not "anti-mask". I'm just wondering whether we will see studies in 10-20 years about a bunch of children with lung problems from restricted airflow or weird fibers or chemicals, or other pathogens that grew on the masks, or something we haven't thought of yet. Or who knows? Maybe kids will all have super strong lungs. Or maybe lucky ones will have stronger lungs and oth…

Who knows. But we do have large parts of the world where wearing masks during cold season is normalized, without any massive evidence of adverse effect.

Well, we also have the opposite, ie. no mask mandate for large parts of the world for many, many years.

We should not have any restrictions at all for Corona as soon as it's possible.

And if you compare Corona with some of the large flu seasons we've seen, then based on the hospitalizations we should abandon all restrictions now.

I sincerely hope that we wake up and realize this, as this is now a huge social experiment into how restricting humans work.

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

#175

Post by Karawebnetwork »

chmod600 wrote: post #168
nr2x wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does weaing a mask so often have downsides? I'm not "anti-mask". I'm just wondering whether we will see studies in 10-20 years about a bunch of children with lung problems from restricted airflow or weird fibers or chemicals, or other pathogens that grew on the masks, or something we haven't thought of yet. Or who knows? Maybe kids will all have super strong lungs. Or maybe lucky ones will have stronger lungs and oth…

We had a scare like this here in Québec during April: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/recalled-masks-were-worn-by-thou...

As far as I know, it was more of a fear than anything else. But it raises an important question: who controls the quality of the masks we wear? What's to stop a store from ordering substandard products and ordering all its employees to wear them?

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

#176

Post by sharken »

jkhdigital wrote: post #117
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…

So let me ask you: with such well-ventilated facilities, what is the marginal benefit of masking? And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates?

There is no real benefit to masks for many countries with high degree of vaccination.

The hospitalizations tell the story, ie. we are doing better than under the big flu seasons from the past.

It's more that the majority thinks that masks work, so it won't change anytime soon.

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

#177

Post by neilwilson »

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…

"There is no reason not to put MVHR in normal houses"

There's no reason in new normal houses, but it is very often impossible to do it sensibly in the existing housing stock.

But then there is no reason houses shouldn't be built in factories, shipped to site and assembled. After all we already do that for hotels and the like. Yet that hasn't happened yet either.

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

#178

Post by jacquesm »

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…

> It costs about the same to fit as a central heating system.

Far less actually, if you use natural convection to carry the air from the inlet to the pickup points. A central heating system is a lot more expensive than your average heat exchanger+fan and a couple of pickup points and a central outlet.

New buildings in NL have these installed as standard now, mostly to combat the fungi and other humidity related problems associated with insulating a house completely.

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

#179

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

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.

If your definition of "colder climate" is around 0°C, ugh-huh. It's −15°C where I live, and it's not even winter. In December-January I expect the usual −30-40°C, with down to −50°C for short periods of time. Open your windows for more than two minutes once every few hours and die.

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

#180

Post by sillysaurusx »

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…

It sounds like they were referring to cooling air, not heating it. Is there an energy-efficient strategy for that? If not, then it doesn't seem like they were mistaken, just imprecise.
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