I have believed this for about a year, based on things I was reading at that time. I thought this was widely known because as you point out, that’s kinda their purpose. This article acknowledges that it was shown to be effective in lab settings and this is mainly about seeing those results in real life settings.
But come on, if anyone finds something that’s probably effective based on science and isn’t going to negatively affect anyone, let’s shout it from the rooftops. If schools had been given funding to improve air circulation and filtration as well as a local gym now does after a $500,000 upgrade, I’m sure many would feel better about sending their children to school.
With the added bonus that it would be better for the students’ health generally and would likely improve overall educational outcomes.
An awful lot of our handling of COVID has been farcical (a year and a half in, we’re still relying on cloth masks and obsessively sanitizing surfaces), but in the case of schools it’s veered toward absurdist/tragic.
Maybe in some places. Thankfully in our school district they took the time while kids were doing school from home to upgrade ventilation and filtration (I believe a large part through federal grants). Also following CDC guidance for schools (masking, distancing, etc). Our county isn’t exactly highly populated but thankfully the school system has been great. It’s stressful with the kids back in school yet there have been no outbreaks at the school but we only seem to average one notification a week if someone who was sick (but we’ve gotten no close contact notifications). Sure seems like people are getting COVID elsewhere and potentially bringing it into school versus it spreading in school.
The authorities have long since stopped recommending cloth masks and surface cleaning. Anyone still applying or recommending those methods isn’t up to date.
There’s nothing farcical about recommending cloth masks and surface cleaning during the first few months of the pandemic when nothing was known about how the virus spread and when masks needed to be reserved for those on the front lines.
The only farcical piece is how our society reacted to the recommendations of the experts.
> Anyone still applying or recommending those methods isn’t up to date.
That's why it's farcical. In my area, you're required to wear your mask when you enter a restaurant and keep it on until you reach your table. Employees spend 8 hours breathing in the building through a cloth mask. Many places are still serving using single-use dishware to "stop the spread". Many people are still walking around with gloves on.
I'm not saying these were bad recommendations at the time, but they've turned into talismans and rituals we do to ward off the evil spirit of COVID while people broadly go about their lives as before.
Meanwhile, things like updating and repairing HVAC systems or restructuring buildings to maximize airflow, which both actually address COVID and have actual positive effects on health and wellbeing get short shrift, because we're wearing masks, so we're safe, and doing real work is expensive.
> The authorities have long since stopped recommending cloth masks
That depends completely on where you live, there are plenty of places that still have indoor or outdoor mask mandates, despite them being completely useless.
If one looks at a typical FFP2 or FFP3 mask, they have two years written on them - 2001 and 2009 - which reference the years the standards for such masks were published.
Now this pandemic started around 2020, which is more than decade later.
So recommending cloth masks was and is indeed farcical. Doing it after recommending against mask usage is idiocy. And no, the world’s collective scientific understanding of masks didn’t change between 2020 and 2021.
I'm student teaching in a third grade classroom, and I want to add a least a small counter:
We are required to have two HEPA filters always running in the classroom. They are loud. Combined with the fact that (1) children mumble, (2) the children have masks on, and (3) everyone is supposed to stay 3+ feet apart, it's quite hard to hear what a lot of kids are saying!
I don't know what the right answer is, but what we have now really sucks!
The point would be to have the central HVAC system be renovated to boost circulation with HEPA filters in the loop precisely so that you don't have to have two noisy things doing a middling job of a similar task in the classroom itself.
Speaking for many schools in heating dominated climates: renovate the what? (Many schools have forced water radiators, which are obviously not able to be retrofitted for effective air filtration.)
There's quiet filters. I can barely hear the one(s) in my house, and they're just cheapo ones. Typically the key is to keep the fan speed reasonable, if you crank it up all the way almost any fan is going to be loud.
Sure, ya it's the Winix 5300. Bit confused on the price though, I remember it being significantly cheaper than the prices I see for it now. I do like it though (one note: I never use the "plasma wave" or whatever that is, just the filtering).
If you go on Amazon they have many HEPA models that advertise their decibel levels explicitly. If its listed as going down to the low 20s in decibels it will be almost completely silent.
using air purifiers like that for corona is mostly theater anyway, since air purifiers don't filter the air evenly (despite the misnomer metric "air changes per hour") in a room. mostly, it filters really well near the purifiers and poorly everywhere else. this of course depends on the strength of the fan, but for most consumer air purifiers, it's likely a few feet radius at best. that's not to say that even that isn't worth having in an average bedroom, but in a classroom, it's likely not doing much at all.
also, you're already distancing (which is doing nearly all the work there) and wearing masks (which is mostly theater in a distanced classroom as well). the virus isn't free-floating live in the classroom. most virus falls to the ground directly. of what's aloft, it becomes inactivated pretty quickly for all sorts of reasons (dessication, ph, temperature, radiation, etc.) and most likely won't land anywhere near a viable infection spot. so almost no active virus is filtered out before it has a chance to reach a moist, viable passageway in another person.
even huge central commercial systems likely wouldn't filter out coronavirus before they die off or land somewhere harmlessly. it's another potential intervention that sounds plausible on the surface, but is mostly useless against covid.
So much of what you’ve said is wrong. Not saying you’re a terrible human being, but what we know about these things is still, unfortunately, not settled. Can you give citations for
1. Air purifiers don’t filter the air evenly (commercial ones since that’s the context).
2. Social distancing indoors is doing most of the work (ie is almost all that’s needed to stop the spread).
3. The virus isn’t free-floating live in the classroom
no, but you’re welcome to present your own perspective and rationale for discussion. research is ongoing, but we certainly have enough time and information to form and debate hypotheses by now.
for instance, this study did not link air filtration to a reduction in transmission, only that a hepa+uv filter can reduce sars-cov-2 from known aerosolized air, basically an expected result in a controlled study (not “real-world”, as claimed).
We have the Austin Air Healhmates at work. They are quiet.
That said the real failure was the FDA not making getting the vaccine approved for your 3rd graders by the start of the school year. Frankly I don't know how those guys can look themselves in the mirror while they are shaving in the morning.
I think vaccine approval for 5-11 year olds is coming in early November.
Ending the pandemic is in everyone's interests, as it would help repair the economy. Kids would be included in that as the economy changes how adults are able to care for kids.
Kids have been separated from their parents due to increased evictions, their parents may not be able to work which means less money for food/clothing/services/healthcare, their parents & extended family are dying, their education has been impacted, and everyone has been going crazy from being cooped up with their families & not being able to play with friends or do extracurriculars.
What bothers me is about 7-10 years ago there was a high quality paper linking transmission of flu to temperature, humidity, and air turn over. Depressingly the response was 'oh well nothing we can do cause too expensive'
We'd be in a lot better shape if we'd decided to actually do something instead of falling back on the usual learned helplessness.
But come on, if anyone finds something that’s probably effective based on science and isn’t going to negatively affect anyone, let’s shout it from the rooftops. If schools had been given funding to improve air circulation and filtration as well as a local gym now does after a $500,000 upgrade, I’m sure many would feel better about sending their children to school.