There is a natural alliance that I haven’t seen happen, but both are in my network: pandemic preparedness and covid-caution. Both want clean indoor air.
The latter group of citizens is a very mixed group, with both very reasonable people and unreasonable ‘doomers’. Some people have good reason to remain cautious around COVID: immunocompromised people & their household, or people with a chronic illness, especially my network of people with Long Covid, who frequently (~20%) worsen from a new COVID case.
But these concerned citizens want clean air, and are willing to take action to make that happen. Given that the riskiest pathogens trend to also be airborne like SARS-COV-2, this would be a big win for pandemic preparedness.
Specifically, I believe both communities are aware of the policy objectives below and are already motivated to achieve it:
1) Air quality standards (CO2, PM2.5) in public spaces.
Schools are especially promising from both perspectives, given that parents are motivated to protect their children & children are the biggest spreaders of airborne diseases. Belgium has already adopted regulations (although very weak, it’s a good start), showing that this is a tractable policy goal.
Ideally, air quality standards also incentivize Far UVC deployment, which would create the regulatory certainty for companies to invest in this technology.
Including standards for airborne pathogen concentrations would be great, but has many technical limitations at the moment I think.
2) Public R&D investments to bring down cost & establish safety of Far UVC
Most of these concerned citizens are actually aware of Far UVC and would support this measure. It appears safe in terms of no radiation damage, but may create unhealthy compounds (e.g. ozone) by chemically reacting with indoor air particles.
I also believe that governments have good reasons to adopt these policies, given that they would reduce the pressures on healthcare and could reduce the disease burden in developed countries by ~5% if not more.
If anyone wants to be connected to the other side, send me a DM!
*Presumably, more interest groups can be identified that aren’t in my network, such as patient groups with lung diseases. Or nurses specifically for hospital air quality. Hospital-acquired covid is a bad and preventable thing.
Another group that naturally could be in a coalition with those 2 – parents who just want clean air for their children to breathe from a pollution perspective, unrelated to covid. (In principle, I think may ordinary adults should also want clean air for themselves to breath due to the health benefits, but in practice I expect a much stronger reaction from parents who want to protect their children’s lungs.)
There is a natural alliance that I haven’t seen happen, but both are in my network: pandemic preparedness and covid-caution. Both want clean indoor air.
The latter group of citizens is a very mixed group, with both very reasonable people and unreasonable ‘doomers’. Some people have good reason to remain cautious around COVID: immunocompromised people & their household, or people with a chronic illness, especially my network of people with Long Covid, who frequently (~20%) worsen from a new COVID case.
But these concerned citizens want clean air, and are willing to take action to make that happen. Given that the riskiest pathogens trend to also be airborne like SARS-COV-2, this would be a big win for pandemic preparedness.
Specifically, I believe both communities are aware of the policy objectives below and are already motivated to achieve it:
1) Air quality standards (CO2, PM2.5) in public spaces.
Schools are especially promising from both perspectives, given that parents are motivated to protect their children & children are the biggest spreaders of airborne diseases. Belgium has already adopted regulations (although very weak, it’s a good start), showing that this is a tractable policy goal.
Ideally, air quality standards also incentivize Far UVC deployment, which would create the regulatory certainty for companies to invest in this technology.
Including standards for airborne pathogen concentrations would be great, but has many technical limitations at the moment I think.
2) Public R&D investments to bring down cost & establish safety of Far UVC
Most of these concerned citizens are actually aware of Far UVC and would support this measure. It appears safe in terms of no radiation damage, but may create unhealthy compounds (e.g. ozone) by chemically reacting with indoor air particles.
I also believe that governments have good reasons to adopt these policies, given that they would reduce the pressures on healthcare and could reduce the disease burden in developed countries by ~5% if not more.
If anyone wants to be connected to the other side, send me a DM!
*Presumably, more interest groups can be identified that aren’t in my network, such as patient groups with lung diseases. Or nurses specifically for hospital air quality. Hospital-acquired covid is a bad and preventable thing.
Another group that naturally could be in a coalition with those 2 – parents who just want clean air for their children to breathe from a pollution perspective, unrelated to covid. (In principle, I think may ordinary adults should also want clean air for themselves to breath due to the health benefits, but in practice I expect a much stronger reaction from parents who want to protect their children’s lungs.)