Air quality is in a funny place where 1. directionally, it is clear that removing pathogens from the air is definitely helpful in reducing infection (also removing other pollutants is useful as well) but 2. the level of benefit requires further research to quantify (i.e. if you remove 99% of pathogens from the air every hour, we don’t know what % effect that will have on transmission). The benefit of piloting is A. it makes implementation and adoption much more efficient and convenient and B. it can generate evidence to help quantify the benefits.
That is all to say I think “we shouldn’t clean the air because we don’t know the impact of cleaning the air” ends up being a bit self-defeating (insofar as piloting air safety is the best way to generate evidence on the impact).
Air quality is in a funny place where 1. directionally, it is clear that removing pathogens from the air is definitely helpful in reducing infection (also removing other pollutants is useful as well) but 2. the level of benefit requires further research to quantify (i.e. if you remove 99% of pathogens from the air every hour, we don’t know what % effect that will have on transmission). The benefit of piloting is A. it makes implementation and adoption much more efficient and convenient and B. it can generate evidence to help quantify the benefits.
That is all to say I think “we shouldn’t clean the air because we don’t know the impact of cleaning the air” ends up being a bit self-defeating (insofar as piloting air safety is the best way to generate evidence on the impact).