Some things I find missing/underemphasized in the Defense section:
Ventilation is mentioned briefly, mentioning that achieving aircraft-level ventilation (20 air changes/hour, ACH) is expensive and noisy. But substantial reduction already comes at 6ACH, and 12 ACH is really good (but would probably not stop Omicron BA1-level transmission in an immunologically naive population). Enforcing air quality standards in transport hubs seems a sensible and valuable policy to me.
Broad-spectrum antivirals aren’t empathized because they would be circumventable and face distribution issues. The first seems not a strong reason: a number of antiviral medications together would very significantly constrain the option space. There are also plenty of immunosupportive therapeutics in development that would be hard to circumvent. I would think production would be a bigger issue than distribution? Stockpiling seems like the obvious solution.
There’s decent evidence of certain nasal sprays (containing eg povidone iodine or carrageenan) being broadly effective against airborne pathogens. These could be stockpiled, freely distributed/cheaply promoted at travel hubs, or added to people’s daily routines (e.g. like washing hands and brushing teeth)
Regarding Detection:
I’m not sure how long it will take to convince institutions to do air sampling. As an intermediate solution, air sampling could also be crowdsourced. There are people measuring CO2 levels everywhere they go. Let them take swabs from the outside of their respirators or portable air filters and send it to a lab?
It’s a great overview.
Some things I find missing/underemphasized in the Defense section:
Ventilation is mentioned briefly, mentioning that achieving aircraft-level ventilation (20 air changes/hour, ACH) is expensive and noisy. But substantial reduction already comes at 6ACH, and 12 ACH is really good (but would probably not stop Omicron BA1-level transmission in an immunologically naive population). Enforcing air quality standards in transport hubs seems a sensible and valuable policy to me.
Broad-spectrum antivirals aren’t empathized because they would be circumventable and face distribution issues. The first seems not a strong reason: a number of antiviral medications together would very significantly constrain the option space. There are also plenty of immunosupportive therapeutics in development that would be hard to circumvent. I would think production would be a bigger issue than distribution? Stockpiling seems like the obvious solution.
There’s decent evidence of certain nasal sprays (containing eg povidone iodine or carrageenan) being broadly effective against airborne pathogens. These could be stockpiled, freely distributed/cheaply promoted at travel hubs, or added to people’s daily routines (e.g. like washing hands and brushing teeth)
Regarding Detection:
I’m not sure how long it will take to convince institutions to do air sampling. As an intermediate solution, air sampling could also be crowdsourced. There are people measuring CO2 levels everywhere they go. Let them take swabs from the outside of their respirators or portable air filters and send it to a lab?