Of the many extracorporeal reports created through this pandemic, moments when I thought, “What would Pre-Covid do of me if he saw me like this?”- none of them inspired me as much as having checked my temperature at the front of the interior spaces.
Traveling through Turkey in early September, at first I found it alien to technical restaurants, tourist sites and hotels with outstretched dolls, waiting for the guards to measure the warmth of my body with a gun-like device and (hopefully) salled. for me At the end of the journey, it was perfectly worldly.
Temperature controls are common in Turkey and many other countries, and are becoming increasingly popular in the United States. They occur in airports, schools and more and more in retail environments such as department stores and restaurants. But experts and consumers have wondered if they are effective. reducing the spread of Covid-19, and if not, why continue to do so?
Non-contact thermometers are used to check other people’s maximum temperatures, a sign that they would possibly become inflamed with Covid-19 The fever known at the beginning of the pandemic as a non-unusual symptom, but there is evidence in development that temperature controls might not be as effective as they seem.
Several studies have shown that a large proportion of patients hospitalized for Covid-19 do not have a fever: 43% of patients at admission according to one, 30% according to the other. In addition, it is estimated that 40% of other people inflamed with Covid-19 are absolutely asymptomatic. A separate examination found that 46% of travelers using Covid-19 would not be known through temperature controls.
Temperatures can also vary in your daily life. Someone who just pushed a few blocks could read that it has a maximum temperature when healthy. And a febrile user who was taking a drug like ibuprofen to decrease it wouldn’t get stuck in the scanners. even if they simply transmit the virus to other people.
It’s not just the peculiarities of biology and habit that make temperature controls less effective. In health organizations, there is some confusion about what reading a thermometer constitutes fever. There are also reports of other people guilty of using temperature controls that are not sufficiently trained in the use of the devices. Others do not have the right devices to start or use methods.
The medical network does not even agree on how to use contactless thermometers in the context of Covid-19. While many establishments are examining the visitor front, a UNES review in China found that wrist measurements were “more stable” than frontline ones. Measurements.
Even Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and America’s leading coronavirus expert, has been unable to monitor temperature controls. “We found in the NIH that it is much, much higher for other people when they arrive and Save time, because temperatures are notoriously inaccurate, many times,” he said in August.
And yet the world continues to do so. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a U. S. But it’s not the first time They analyze temperature controls in their recently reopened maximum guidelines, calling them an “optional strategy that employers can use. “In New York, where indoor food will soon be allowed for the first time since March, places to eat must perform temperature checks before admitting diners indoors. The CDC suggests temperature projections for local food and bar staff, but not for their customers.
Doing temperature checks is like panning for gold with a wide sieve; not guaranteed, but you’re lucky. Erer Ergenel describes it as a “tedious but ineffective” measure, the professor of Infectious Diseases at the Koç University Faculty of Medicine in Istanbul, and says that the hospital in which he practices recently Two instances of Covid-19 are known through non-contact thermometers; It is not a huge number, given the thousands of patients who are admitted to the hospital each week, but also nothing.
Most experts agree that temperature controls are a form of theater, a pershapeance designed to reassure us. As James Hamblin writes in The Atlantic, “Practice is a bit like spraying the sides of buildings, bathing football players with hand sanitist, or deep cleaning These things may help us feel safer, but they won’t protect us if they make us let our guard down.
I can attest to the functionality of this exercise. Although I had doubts about the effectiveness of the temperature controls, since they were applied to me, they still made me feel a little more secure. Especially when combined with other prevention methods, such as fitness quizzes and other screening tools, temperature checks can do a good thing. .
Ergonel argues that theatre is partly the point. When a user enters a place to eat or hotel, they run a greater threat of exposing themselves and others to the coronavirus. Non-contact thermometers remind them that “they must be involved in the severity of the pandemic. “”
This is why corporations can implement temperature controls in place, even if they are not mandatory. As consumers move forward in their tolerance to threats with their preference to live normally, they depend more than ever on trust. If consumers feel safer, they are more likely to spend.
Additional report via Alexandra Ossola
Do the temperature controls work for Covid-19? Wire / Quartz Services.