Sep 23 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Is there actually any evidence that ventilation 🌪 actually reduces Covid infection rates in humans 🦠? (1/9)
Yes some want more evidence from the US 🇺🇸. There are some very small-scale trials of air filtration (US/UK) I am aware of but data from these trials most probably won’t be available until next year. Even then their scale will be merely a few percent of data from Italy.
(2/9)
This week I spoke to 2 researchers on an Italian study of 10,000 schools 🇮🇹. From understanding their methods not apparent to me from reading their preprint, there is unlikely to be anything remotely close on the horizon from anywhere in world 🌎. (3/9)
Italian study shows ventilation can cut school COVID cases by 82%
It was like appearance of Haley’s comet ☄️. Stars will not align for such a study for many years. One region of Italy 🇮🇹 (Marche) invested heavily in high rates of ventilation for 300+ schools months before Omicron🦠 (they could not have foreseen) (4/9)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.02678
They were also testing for infections during that time. To get near this scale of data requires regional-scale ventilation investment + testing + new wave of Covid 🦠. All 3 stars are unlikely to align in the near future especially now that no one is testing or investing. (5/9)
Just as with any Covid drug or vaccine, if no investment, no testing, no wave then no good data. Due to the hesitancy of investments in ventilation and testing in the US 🇺🇸, we will be unable to gather the same scale of data as the Italian 🇮🇹 study unless… (6/9)
(1) a similar regional ventilation + testing investment is made in the US like in Italy in advance of a future wave and (2) then there happens or be another wave like Omicron on which to evaluate the ventilation investment. (7/9)
No way to learn to surf 🏄♂️ unless you get in water 💦 with surfboard and wait for a wave 🌊. Data gathering on ventilation is not rocket 🚀 science. If US (CDC) is serious about data we could have done 10 studies like Italians did by now. But we did not, opportunity lost. (8/9)
If paralyzed by fear of being “wrong”, US federal govt insists they will not act on ventilation targets (ACH) w/o more data tied to human infection rates, it is a fait accompli. Essentially guaranteed not to find any for a long time if ever (except for the Italian study). (9/9)
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* 10,000 classrooms (not schools)
* 300 classrooms (not schools)