Engineering solutions may be better for coronaviruses than social solutions

The fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not going well. If you are a political addict, this pandemic spread is an indication of political leadership failure. They don’t block trips fast enough, they don’t dismantle pandemic offices, they don’t mobilize defense authorities, they don’t introduce state mask delegations, and they generally don’t believe in medicine.

However, there is more than just a simple left-right narrative. Political solutions cannot explain American culture. Use social controls such as social distance and the use of masks to delay the spread of the virus until two obvious problems with the vaccine are found.

First, Americans are not good at following the rules. The most successful countries in the fight against Covid-19 are subject to strict rules such as China and rules from governments willing to enforce strong cultural norms such as South Korea, Japan and Northern Europe.

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Second, the strategy is based on detecting infected people and creating highly effective vaccines. This usually requires 1-2 years in advance notification that the virus is coming in order to develop low cost and effective testing strategies and vaccines. This strategy ignores the fact that vaccines are not so good for viruses as they evolve around vaccine protection. And this coronavirus is particularly adaptive.

Therefore, we carry out influenza vaccinations that are 20% to 60% effective every year.

But there are old solutions discussed by nuclear engineers Charles Forsberg at MIT.. Waterborne epidemics have been thwarted over the last 100 years by building clean water and sewer systems. Malaria is slowed down by killing mosquitoes that transmit disease to humans by draining stagnant water by using window screens and pesticides, or by using low levels of radiation to make them infertile. ..

Engineering solutions are responsible for stopping most pandemics and increasing life expectancy. The engineering solution to polluted water did not require any social control to boil water before drinking it. medicine, Other medical And the vaccine becomes a reserve unit that they are good at.

The ideal environmental niche created for this virus today is SARS-CoV-2. It was a question of when such an effective aerial virus would find its home.

SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne virus transmitted from person to person. Therefore, how quickly the disease spreads depends on the number of people the infected person contacts. If the growth rate of the disease exceeds 1, a pandemic occurs because multiple people develop the disease in everyone with the disease.

From a virus perspective, one person commuting by bus, subway, or elevator in New York City is more likely to travel in one trip than a person commuting to a one- or two-story office building or factory by car. People can be infected. weekly. With the virus on a mass transit, people are face-to-face and crowded, making it a party day at the bar every day, maximizing the epidemic from one person to the next.

For the viruses in the air, we created the equivalent of a city with polluted water and sewage running down the street. There is no doubt that this is not the last virus to find and use this environment niche. In addition, the virus is likely to exchange genetic material with almost anything living and pass on its talent to other airborne pathogens.

So an engineering fix is ​​needed-clean the filtered air so that it does not inhale the mucous particles of each other. The solution does not have to be perfect. You only need to have a virus growth rate of less than 1.

It is not a secret how the virus spreads. Air goes horizontally between people-in front of loading ramps, buses or metro cars between planes and airport terminals, or down the school corridor. Filtered air that rises or falls is required to provide each with its own clean air in a crowded environment and to prevent the inhalation of each other’s air.

This is not rocket science. While many plants generate dangerous gases, ventilation systems are designed to keep dangerous air away from people, so workers are safe a few feet away. There are short-term and long-term solutions. Airports and shopping malls can have kiosks, each with its own filter and fan. From the top near the ceiling, air passes through the filters, through the fans, and exits horizontally at floor level.

Circulate all the air in the room through the filter every few minutes. Airport loading ramps require filtered air up and down to spread the virus as passengers move from the terminal to the aircraft rather than move horizontally. Airplanes already have filters that stop the virus. However, ventilation is designed to mix air in multiple rows of seats. The cabin mockup showed how filtered air could enter underneath the seats and exit all seats with filtered air exiting from the top of each seat.

Engineering solutions have three important benefits. (1) It works against all airborne diseases, not just this particular virus. (2) You don’t have to know a year ago which viruses come to develop tests and vaccines. 3) No strict social regulation is required. This proves that this pandemic is incompatible with American culture.

And you don’t need a perfect solution. Just reducing the infection rate between people will result in less than one new person being infected for every infected person.

When you start thinking about engineering solutions, much of what has happened becomes apparent. The virus first appeared in Washington, but did not explode. This is partly due to the competent state government and the fact that the pandemic reflects the local culture. Even if there are people from Japan or Scandinavia, the cultural influence of the first century remains.

But equally important, people do not spend so much time breathing each other’s air. The Seattle area has many cars with limited public transportation, many private housing, and a low population density. In addition, thanks to the mild climate, many condominiums and apartment buildings have exterior doors for all condominiums and apartments, lacking internal corridors and elevators, ventilation systems throughout the building, and spreading the virus among people. I am.

Coincidentally, Seattle has built-in technical barriers to airborne viruses. By contrast, New York City’s public transportation (buses, subways, elevators), crowded bars, and vertical homes are excellent breeding grounds for airborne viruses.

It’s time to stop operating outdoors, equivalent to the untreated sewage flowing in the middle of the street. Engineering solutions can reduce this pandemic and all future aerial pandemics down to size. Then the medical community can clean up what remains. Today, demanding such changes is no different than it was over 100 years ago when it was decided to build water treatment plants and sewers.