It makes sense to step back and take a world view of a persistent problem. The Atlantic did that on September 7, 2021, when staff writer Sarah Zhang published a remarkable post about slowing the pandemic. First she points out COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that spreads through the same air as influenza and common colds. And then she suggests a plan to control every respiratory virus by redesigning building ventilation.
We Need to Think Broadly About a Larger Problem
The cost of airborne disease is huge in terms of healthcare, and lost productivity. We should therefore be prepared to spend a similarly large amount to manage it, from a business point of view.
The City of London stopped a 19th century cholera outbreak with engineering. But they didn’t use a vaccine. They thought big, and separated the city’s drinking water and sewage systems using 318 million bricks, and 23 million cubic feet of concrete.
Since then our scientists have devised ways to fight dysentery, malaria, typhus, typhoid to mention a few contagious diseases. But they have failed to control the spread of airborne colds, influenza, and now coronavirus. Sarah Zhang suggests we need a new plan to control each of these respiratory diseases simultaneously. Because they spread the same way.
Plan to Control Every Respiratory Virus ‘Up in the Air’
Respiratory disease scientists were off to a bad start treating COVID-19 like a bad cold. They assumed it worked the same way as flu, with infected droplets quickly falling to the ground. We just needed to disinfect our hands and the surfaces we touched. That proved impractical, and moreover it did not stop the spread.
We’ll continue following Sarah Zhang’s line of reasoning in the next post. We promise you an interesting detour into building ventilation science. And perhaps even a long-term solution to managing COVID-19, if our governments can think out the box too.
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Preview Image: Ventilation from Underground Highway
