The talk about schools/teachers reminded me of this. One of the biggest failings of the government response to the pandemic has been a failure to address ventilation. It’s likely highly effective at reducing transmission, and cost-effective as well - especially in comparison to other options.
More fans, more HEPA filters, more open windows, etc. Obviously there’s an issue with open windows and energy usage, so there’s that. But overall this is a road we should have gone down almost immediately and broadly speaking, we still haven’t.
One small blower ($99) and some flexible tubing/ducting, my garage door cracked near the blower, and a mostly enclosed golf simulator (where the ducting went) in my garage read outdoor levels of CO2 on a meter.
Ventilation improvements also have the benefit of being useful against all respiratory diseases and other air quality related health issues and they are durable in a way other mitigations like population masking and distancing have proven not to be. Huge missed opportunity when the money spigot was open
Amen. I preached and preached about this. A number of restaurants in Europe I went to in the last year had fan/filter combos with CO2 sensors. It’s not like the technology isn’t readily commercially available.
the derps have made even acknowledging that viruses are bad into a toxic issue. if you propose this at your school board you’ll get a bunch of insane whackjobs yelling at you about learning loss and living in fear and they’ll follow you home and protest on your sidewalk and tell your neighbors you’re grooming kids for trafficking.
Heat recovery and energy recovery ventilators exist . They can be up to 80% efficient and they’re not all that expensive. Most new houses require mechanical ventilation now anyway and it’s kind of a no brainer to stick one of those systems in there to do it.
They’re going to prioritize bullet proof windows and installing security shelters that kids can lock themselves in when the active shooters are there. 'Merica.
In many cases we’re talking about something potentially as simple as each classroom getting a $100 blower placed in an open window, which would work for years.
But yeah you’re probably right that it would be a bridge too far for most school districts.
A 100% redo is going to take years, and the lets mitigate until we fix all the ventilation path was probably never feasible, but we rained gobs of money down on everyone over the last two years and states are using COVID relief bill money for all sorts of non-COVID things. There was absolutely a pathway to make this a priority, particularly for the less well off schools (many of the well off schools already did improve ventilation over the last two years).
I saw a blurb today that a huge percentage of money set aside for schools to reopen has not been spent. I don’t know if it is because it is too narrowly focused or has crazy requisites or schools are just failing to get the money.
Ive made three phone calls the last two days an nobody can understand what im saying. My ears are also very plugged so I can barely tell what im saying.