The fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic did not go well. If you are a policy addict, the spread of this pandemic has shown the failure of political leadership: not to interrupt early enough, dismantle the workplace of the pandemic, not invoke the Defense Authorization Act, not to position a national mask order, and sometimes not to believe in medical science.
However, there is one explanation rather than an undeniable narrative from left to right. Political responses do not take into account American culture. Use social controls, such as social estrangement and mask use, to delay the spread of the virus until we detect that the vaccine poses two obvious problems.
First, Americans are smart to comply with regulations. Countries that have been most successful in the fight against Covid-19 adhere to regulations, either through a government willing to enforce strict regulations, such as China, or through strong cultural norms, such as South Korea, Japan and northern Europe.
Second, the strategy is based on detecting other inflamed people and creating a very effective vaccine. This requires you to realize the arrival of the virus for one to two years to expand testing methods and cheap vaccines. This strategy ignores the fact that vaccines are not very smart for viruses because viruses evolve around vaccine defenses. And this coronavirus is adaptive.
That’s why we have annual flu vaccines with an effectiveness of between 20% and 60%.
But there is an older solution, discussed through nuclear engineer Charles Forsberg at MIT. Water-borne epidemics have been halted for more than a hundred years thanks to the structure of drinking water and sewerage systems. Malaria has slowed down by killing mosquitoes that transmit the disease to humans by draining water, mosquito nets and insecticides, or by making them sterile with low levels of radiation.
Engineering responses are guilty of preventing maximum pandemics and maximum increases in life expectancy. Technical responses to infected water did not require social controls, so everyone boiled water before drinking it. Medications, other medical remedies and vaccines are the backup equipment, in which they are intelligent.
Today, we have SARS-CoV-2 in its ideal environmental niche that we have created for this virus. It’s just a question of when such an effective air virus would place its place.
SARS-CoV-2 is an air-borne virus that is transmitted from one user to another. Therefore, the rate of spread of the disease depends on the number of other people with which an inflamed user comes into contact. If the rate of multiplication of the disease is higher than one, a pandemic occurs because more than one user contracts the disease of the affected user.
From the virus’s perspective, a single user who will paint in New York City through the bus, subway and elevator can infect more people in a single than a user leading to a workplace construction or a one- or two-story factory. in a week or a week. For a virus on public transport, each and every day is a party at the bar, as other people are overcrowded face to face, maximizing the transmission of the disease from one user to another.
For aerial viruses, we have created cities with infected water and sewage flowing through the streets. This is most likely not the last virus to locate this environmental niche and take credit for it. In addition, this virus exchanges genetic clothing with almost anything that is alive and probably transmits its talent to other airborne pathogens.
A technical solution is necessary: filtered air in white so that we do not breathe mucous membranes from each other. The solution doesn’t have to be perfect. All you have to do is get a virus multiplication rate of less than one.
It is no secret how the virus spreads. Air flows horizontally between people, such as the loading ramp between an airplane and the airport terminal, from the front of the bus or subway to the back, or in the school aisle. We want filtered air that goes up or down to have our own blank air source in overcrowded environments and avoid breathing each other’s air.
It’s not an exact science. Many plants produce hazardous gases, but staff are a few meters away due to the way ventilation systems are designed to keep harmful air away from people. There are short- and long-term solutions. At airports and grocery shopping malls, kiosks can be installed, all with filters and fan. Air enters from above near the ceiling, through a filter, through a fan and horizontally at ground level.
Circulate all the air in the room through filters in both one and both minutes. Airport loading ramps want filtered air in or out; do not pass horizontally and spread the virus when passengers pass from one terminal to another. Planes already have filters that prevent viruses, but ventilation is designed to combine air in several rows of seats. Cabin models showed a better way to supply blank filtered air to the passenger by having filtered air entering under the seat and exiting above the seat.
Engineering responses have 3 significant advantages: (1) they oppose all airborne diseases and simply oppose this specific virus, (2) you want to know a year in advance which virus is arriving to expand a control and a vaccine, and (3) strict social controls are needed, which this pandemic has proven to be incompatible with American culture.
And again, there is no need for an optimal solution. Simply lower the rate of transmission among others so that less than one new user is inflamed per inflamed user.
Once you start thinking about engineering solutions, much of what happened is clear. While the virus made the first impression in Washington state, it did not explode. This is partly due to a competent state government and the fact that pandemics reflect local cultures. If other people came from Japan or northern Europe, cultural influence a century later still exists.
However, it is equally vital that other people don’t spend as much time breathing other people’s air. Seattle’s domain has more cars with limited public transportation, more personal housing, and lower population density than New York City. In addition, thanks to the temperate climate, many condominiums and apartment constructions have external doors for each condominium or apartment; there are no interior corridors, elevators or ventilation systems in the building to spread the virus among others.
By accident, Seattle incorporated technical barriers to air-borne viruses. In contrast, Public Transportation in New York City (buses, subways, elevators), crowded bars and vertical dwellings are the best breeding ground for an aerial virus.
It is time to avoid the exploitation of the outdoor equivalent of untreated sewage flowing in the middle of the street. Engineering responses can decrease this pandemic and all long-term air pandemics. Then the medical network can erase what’s left. Requiring these adjustments today is none other than what we did more than a hundred years ago when we made the decision to build water treatment plants and sewer lines.
I have been a scientist in the field of earth and environmental sciences for 33 years, specializing in a geological garage of nuclear waste, energy-related research,
I have been a scientist in the field of earth and environmental sciences for 33 years, specializing in geological garage of nuclear waste, energy-related research, planetary surface processes, radiobiology and shielding of area colonies, underground transport and environmental cleaning of heavy metals. I am director of the Herbert M. Parker Foundation, WSU assistant, LANL-affiliated researcher and strategic plan representative for DOE, EPA/state environmental agencies and industry, adding corporations that own nuclear, hydro, wind, solar panels, coal. and fuel plants. I also consult with the industry and state environmental agencies / EPA on cleaning heavy metals from soil and water. For more than 25 years, I have been a member of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, the Environmental Defense Fund and many others, as well as pro societies such as the America Nuclear Society, the American Chemical Society, the Geological Society of America. and the American. Association of Petroleum Geologists.