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There's increasing medical consensus that indoor spread of covid takes place through floating aerosol particles. If your environs are warm and dry year round (like my place in San Fernando Valley) this militates a cautious shift to outdoor activities.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-masks-went-from-dont-wear-to-must-have/
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https://www.wired.com/story/how-masks-went-from-dont-wear-to-must-have/
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But not everyone can be outdoors all the time. Some activities are necessarily indoors, while others will be shifted indoors by rain and cold (and wind, etc). There's preliminary evidence that good air filtration makes a big difference when you're inside.
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Good HEPA systems for every room can cost $500+. That's a lot! Some experts, inspired by a study of improvised filters in Singapore as a means of filtering Indonesian wildfire smoke, are looking into $10 paper HEPA filters strapped to $27 box-fans.
https://www.wired.com/story/could-a-janky-jury-rigged-air-purifier-help-fight-covid-19/
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https://www.wired.com/story/could-a-janky-jury-rigged-air-purifier-help-fight-covid-19/
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These filters were found to capture 75% of 1-10μm particles! @Wired's @jetjocko talked to air-quality expert @CorsIAQ from Maseeh College Engineering/Comp Sci, who started riffing on ways this design could be improved upon.
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Of course, that's no magic bullet. You could improve the ventilation in your indoor spaces by opening a window, which is hard to do when it's really cold out.
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As it turns out, there's one place that's really well-prepared for that exigency: New York City.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curious-history-of-steam-heat-and-pandemics
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curious-history-of-steam-heat-and-pandemics
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New York's infamously "over-indexed," sweltering steam heaters date back to the 1918 flu pandemic, when buildings were fitted with high-powered heating specifically so they could stay warm in winter, even with all their windows open to the elements (!).
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That's the origin of the perennial New Yorker's lament that their apartments are turned into saunas every winter because their steam radiators have two settings: "off" and "broil."
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What's more, steam radiators are basically indestructible and a LOT of New York's housing stock still uses these systems (though the boilers don't run on coal anymore).
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This isn't much help to people who don't have this kind of heating, but we've already seen what happens in NYC when airborne diseases aren't confronted with sufficient vigor.
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None of this is a replacement for a vaccine or therapeutic, but as harm-reduction strategies go, it's good to see this stuff enter the discourse. What's more, this is all early days, and there are probably some serious, easy gains yet to be won.
Image: Jim Rosenthal
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Image: Jim Rosenthal
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