To be honest, I’m most skeptical about spaces for disease mitigation as being effective. It seems hard to make a big difference here as society is unlikely to rebuild all of its buildings just to reduce disease given the massive expense.
Thanks for the comment! Fair, this might be true. My thinking was that you probably end up focusing on things like HEPA filters, UVC disinfection, antimicrobial coating of surfaces or other interventions that might be easy to retrofit in existing buildings. I actually need to do more digging to see how effective can these get and whether now would be a good time to focus on them given the momentum post-covid, and if there are interesting groups currently working on this.
I feel like when I’ve heard people talk about this it was often targeted at specific high-importance, high-density buildings like schools, hospitals, government institutions, etc. rather than every office building.
My thinking was that you probably end up focusing on things like HEPA filters, UVC disinfection, antimicrobial coating of surfaces or other interventions that might be easy to retrofit in existing buildings
Actually that’s sounding a lot more tractable than I thought. I thought you were talking about either rebuilding or building new buildings; not retrofitting.
We have many buildings now that have survived decades and centuries. Thousands have spent time in them, many spend a third of their daily lives working in them. If only new buildings were fitted with disease resistant architecture you would still potentially be averting thousands of cases of illnesses over time. That is not to even speak of retrofitting older buildings as they become due for repairs
To be honest, I’m most skeptical about spaces for disease mitigation as being effective. It seems hard to make a big difference here as society is unlikely to rebuild all of its buildings just to reduce disease given the massive expense.
Thanks for the comment! Fair, this might be true. My thinking was that you probably end up focusing on things like HEPA filters, UVC disinfection, antimicrobial coating of surfaces or other interventions that might be easy to retrofit in existing buildings. I actually need to do more digging to see how effective can these get and whether now would be a good time to focus on them given the momentum post-covid, and if there are interesting groups currently working on this.
I feel like when I’ve heard people talk about this it was often targeted at specific high-importance, high-density buildings like schools, hospitals, government institutions, etc. rather than every office building.
Actually that’s sounding a lot more tractable than I thought. I thought you were talking about either rebuilding or building new buildings; not retrofitting.
It still seems quite effective to me, even if you’re only affecting the construction of future buildings
We have many buildings now that have survived decades and centuries. Thousands have spent time in them, many spend a third of their daily lives working in them. If only new buildings were fitted with disease resistant architecture you would still potentially be averting thousands of cases of illnesses over time. That is not to even speak of retrofitting older buildings as they become due for repairs