[HN Gopher] Real-world data show that filters clean Covid-causin...
___________________________________________________________________
Real-world data show that filters clean Covid-causing virus from
air
Author : bruceb
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-10-09 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| In Canada, Many school, and public buildings still have asbestos
| used throughout and very outdated ventilation systems. Schools in
| smaller towns were built in the 60s and 70s. Asbestos was a town
| in Quebec before they changed the name.
|
| Vaccines are pushed in part so hard, because its the cheapest
| solution for government to implement. Not building extra
| hospitals. Firing unvaccinated nurses, and hospital employees
| during a pandemic is the other government solution. This of
| course will blow back hard, should the vaccine efficiency wane
| over winter.
| jeeeb wrote:
| Here in Australia states have been been putting portable air
| filters in schools, age care homes and so on.
|
| Victoria for example ordered 51,000 filters recently to place
| across all schools.
| dboreham wrote:
| Suspect that "These organisms are not typically thought to spread
| through the air" was not evidence-based.
| junon wrote:
| "COVID-causing virus"
|
| So.. COVID.
| _Microft wrote:
| The disease that develops after being infected is called
| _COVID-19_ which means _Co_ rona _Vi_ rus _D_ isease (first
| seen in 20) _19_. The virus that causes it is _SARS-CoV-2_ ,
| the _S_ evere _A_ cute _R_ espiratory _S_ yndrom _Co_ rona _V_
| irus _2_ , which is one of many coronaviruses. The _2_ is there
| because there was an earlier coronavirus caused disease (SARS)
| in 2002 for which the pathogen was called SARS-CoV(-1).
| dragontamer wrote:
| > which is one of many coronaviruses.
|
| There's only like 7 coronaviruses that have been discovered
| to infect a human. Three of which are SARS, MERS, and
| COVID19.
|
| Its pretty novel, all else considered.
| weaksauce wrote:
| I mean you are dropping the whole colds are coronaviruses
| too part though. though, the "cold" has a bunch of possible
| viruses that cause it (something like 200 different
| viruses) with the rhinovirus being one of the larger ways
| since it's so resistant to being inactivated comparatively
| to sars2 which only lasts for a day to three as a fomite
| vector, is neutralized by soap and water or 70% IPA. If
| covid had a viral vector like a rhinovirus that can last
| for months on surfaces in wide variety of conditions on
| surfaces and also spread via aerosolized particles it would
| have been a completely different pandemic that would have
| been far more deadly.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I mean you are dropping the whole colds are
| coronaviruses too part though.
|
| There's only 4 coronaviruses that causes a cold: HCoV-
| OC43, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-229E, and HCoV-NL63
|
| The rest are rhinoviruses.
|
| -------
|
| That's literally only 7 coronaviruses to care about
| (including the 4 that cause "common cold").
| redis_mlc wrote:
| 1) WIV took down their database, and a NIH version, in
| 2019.
|
| Those listed around 30 corona sequences.
|
| 2) We don't know what corona viruses WIV is cultivating
| in its humanized mice and lab monkeys.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| OC43 used to be a pandemic one itself in 1895.
| makomk wrote:
| Only 4 known coronaviruses that cause a cold, anyway.
| While it'd be a bit surprising if there were more, HCoV-
| HKU1 was only discovered surprisingly recently.
| lovecg wrote:
| "Coronavirus disease-causing virus"
| umvi wrote:
| HIV is to AIDS as SARS-CoV-2 is to COVID
| est31 wrote:
| Not entirely. AIDS is only the name for the final stage of
| the disease, when your immune system is rendered totally
| unable to defend your body. It usually takes years from an
| HIV infection until AIDS develops. In the first viremic phase
| of HIV you can even have fever but often people don't notice
| it or put it off as some innocent cold. COVID-19 however is
| used however to refer to all stages and forms of the disease.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS#Acquired_immunodefici.
| ..
| b1gz1m wrote:
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|
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|
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|
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| dukeofdoom wrote:
| So who makes a good room air filter? I have a dozen container
| ships go by, a few hundred meters away from my window a day.
| chmod600 wrote:
| How effective would a mediocre filter be, just by physically
| bouncing the virus around? Is the virus fragile enough to be
| deateoyed that way?
| peakaboo wrote:
| How are they going to make billions of profit from air filters?
| bradknowles wrote:
| Have you looked at the prices of HEPA filter machines?
|
| Check out the cost of IQAir units.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Those are like the Louis Vuitton of air filters. I think most
| people can get by with a Winx air filter.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't want a hospital I'm in to "just get by"...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The machine is mostly just a question of convenience, as
| long as the flow rate is right it's the filter that does
| all the work, and those are relatively much cheaper.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| You can build your own high-flow HEPA filter for about $45:
| 1x 20-inch box fan ($20) 1x 20x20 MERV-13+ MPR-2400+ HVAC
| air filter ($20) 1x roll of duct tape ($2.50)
|
| Air particle meters and other testing show they work just as well
| as big expensive machines (it's just the filter doing all the
| work). This is indeed a dirt cheap way to improve overall health.
| 404mm wrote:
| Go with MERV-17 - 20 to achieve HEPA-like filtration.
| pkulak wrote:
| I see people post this all the time, but I really don't think
| an axial fan can pull air through a HEPA-like filter. You need
| to spend $150 on a real solution. It's really not much,
| includes the filters, and looks a hell of a lot better to boot.
| xxpor wrote:
| Plus mine has a sensor too, so the fan is only loud when it
| needs to be.
| tootie wrote:
| This Old House has a really good breakdown on filtration and
| air volume and have a pretty clever DIY box fan approach
| using multiple filters. Still costs under $100. The
| Wirecutter recommended Coway filter is $185 on Amazon.
|
| https://youtu.be/aw7fUMhNov8
| dragontamer wrote:
| > 1x 20x20 MERV-13+ MPR-2400+ HVAC air filter ($20)
|
| That's a MERV-13 filter, not a HEPA filter.
|
| HEPA filters 99%+ of small (0.3um) particles per pass. A
| MERV-13 filter only filters like 60% per pass IIRC.
|
| That means that a 1000 cu. feet of air through the HEPA filter
| will result in 990+ cu. feet of clean air. While the MERV-13
| filter will only produce 600 cu. feet of clean air.
|
| --------
|
| A MERV13 filter would be good enough to improve most air, but
| its not HEPA and shouldn't be confused with it.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| This is fascinating! If MERV 13 filters 60% with each pass,
| can we put 5 in a room to increase the circulation/filtration
| and eventually get to 99% filtration?
|
| Also, I found this article which I found informative. Judge
| it as you please:
|
| https://www.iso-aire.com/blog/what-are-the-differences-
| betwe...
| jph00 wrote:
| Thanks to a higher CADR, it can actually be _better_ than
| HEPA in practice, if you use 4 filters to create a corsi-
| rosenthal box, as shown here:
|
| https://www.texairfilters.com/its-all-about-the-air-flow-
| thr...
| clairity wrote:
| note that phrase like "600ft3 of clean air" are misleading.
| filtration drops off rapidly with distance from the air
| purifier, so the fan would need to be quite oversized for a
| room to experience relatively even filtration. for most
| rooms, that wouldn't be comfortable, for both noise and draft
| reasons.
|
| i'm down with air purifiers for indoor particulate matter
| (i.e., air pollution), but they're not really going to make a
| dent in covid transmission rates. transmission happens mainly
| during long face-to-face conversations, which mostly
| precedes/bypasses room air filtration.
| bsilvereagle wrote:
| It's worth noting that filter efficiency is a function of
| particulate size. A MERV13 and a HEPA filter are nearly
| equivalent for filtering pollen, but have drastically
| different performance for smoke and virus particles.
|
| There's a plot 1/3 of the way down the page that shows the
| curves:
|
| https://frdmtoplay.com/nagivating-air-purification/
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| "Virus particles" do not float free in the air to spread
| disease. It's usually mostly salt water aerosols with a few
| virus particles in them.
| cottager2 wrote:
| Is that known? I don't think it's been conclusively
| decided whether or not the virus spreads via aerosolized
| droplets or if it's truly airborne.
| jcims wrote:
| I thought they became airborne by being expelled in a
| droplet ang the droplet evaporating.
| epgui wrote:
| It is known fairly well in the context of SARS-CoV-2, but
| other viruses may have different distributions.
| epgui wrote:
| They certainly can free-float, generally speaking, but
| SARS-CoV-2 in particular is indeed known to be mostly in
| droplets and aerosols.
|
| Personally, I'd caution not to over-generalize this fact.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Yeah, it's actually pretty complicated.
|
| MERV13 also needs less pressure, and a box fan is bad with
| pressure. If you stuck a HEPA filter on a box fan, it might
| only do 100cu feet of airflow. MERV13 is maybe 200.
|
| HEPA is designed for higher pressure centrifugal fans.
| MERV13 is likely the best balance for home made designs
| hammock wrote:
| There is a cubic design that people have been doing with
| HEPA filters (4 sides and a cardboard bottom) that solves
| the airflow issue.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| This is fascinating! If MERV 13 filters 60% with each pass,
| can we put 9 in a room to increase the circulation/filtration
| and eventually get to 99.7% filtration? Does it even work
| like this?
|
| Also, I found this article which I found informative. Judge
| it as you please:
|
| https://www.iso-aire.com/blog/what-are-the-differences-
| betwe...
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| You're right, thanks for the clarification, this is a "DIY
| air purifier" not a "HEPA" filter. (Apparently products today
| even have to clarify if they are "true HEPA" due to
| misleading marketing)
|
| According to this website
| (https://freshairaustralia.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-does-
| merv...) a study for underground mining filtration found a
| MERV-16 filter superior to HEPA in terms of airflow and cost,
| with a negligible difference in filtration efficiency.
|
| According to the study, the MERV-16 filters have higher flow
| rates than a HEPA filter, which would both make the MERV
| filter a better fit for an inefficient fan, and increase the
| air filtration rate. The author of that site also finds that
| the airflow rate can be more important than a filter's rated
| efficiency:
| https://freshairaustralia.blogspot.com/2020/01/why-air-
| flow-...
|
| After some web searching, it seems you can buy smaller
| replacement HEPA filters and MERV-16 filters starting at
| ~$40. So I guess you can spend less if you only need "air
| purifying", and more if you want the real deal.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Wouldn't be a bad idea to start having air filters in confined
| spaces.
|
| Elevators, gyms, restaurants.
|
| Not saying it has to happen all at once, but it would help
| decrease most respiratory diseases from spreading.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| classrooms
| sschueller wrote:
| Classrooms where already an issue before Covid. Concentration
| goes way down when the air starts to get thick and same goes
| for meeting rooms. How many times have you entered a meeting
| room where the air was so thick you felt it as soon as you
| stepped in?
| nradov wrote:
| I'm skeptical that would be good for overall long term health.
| There are only a limited number of endemic respiratory viruses.
| Most of us will be exposed to them at multiple times in our
| lives regardless of what protective steps we take. So I'd
| rather get them while I'm still relatively young and healthy
| because the resulting immunity will give me at least partial
| protection later in life.
|
| Of course ideally it would be better to have effective
| sterilizing vaccines for all those various respiratory viruses,
| and perhaps someday we will. But those generally don't exist
| today for the vast majority of viruses.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| It's pretty standard in all office buildings, well before the
| pandemic. I don't think expanding it to classrooms and gyms
| is going to cause problems.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| There are significant health benefits to cleaner air, not
| just from infectious disease, but also from particulate
| pollution and various other harmful substances. I strongly
| suspect that on the balance it would be a significant net
| positive from that aspect alone, though I don't have
| possession of any hard evidence to back that up.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Not surprising? HEPA filters have been known to be able to filter
| viruses for some time; it's maybe the main reason they were
| invented? Not sure about that though.
| auslegung wrote:
| 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.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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!
| kadoban wrote:
| 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.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The sound increases with the air pressure requirement. A
| true HEPA filter requires much greater air pressure than
| a typical air purifier filter.
| kadoban wrote:
| The ones I have are HEPA and the fan speed is still
| variable, and very quiet on low.
| gpm wrote:
| Can you recommend the model you have?
|
| The one I have is loud enough on it's lowest setting that
| I don't like leaving it on in the background :(
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| nostrebored wrote:
| Risk/reward here is absurd. This has never been about the
| safety of the children.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Ending the pandemic is totally in the interest of the
| children.
| nostrebored wrote:
| Aside from extremely poor studies about long covid in
| kids: why?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| In the US about 120,000 children lost a primary care
| giver to covid. Is you are sane that counts for
| something.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The right answer is to buy better air purifiers, as good
| ones are nearly silent.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > have the central HVAC system be renovated
|
| 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.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| They probably have those with windows that open, too,
| thanks to the last pandemic.
| roughly wrote:
| Is that a thing? I hadn't heard that
| [deleted]
| amluto wrote:
| Or upgrade to MERV 16, which is nearly as good, much
| cheaper, and has much lower pressure loss.
| nucleardog wrote:
| The obvious answer would be for the school to not rely on
| portable fans with filters on them, but instead actually
| upgrade the building you're in.
| clairity wrote:
| 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.
| roughly wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| seventytwo wrote:
| 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.
| roughly wrote:
| > 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.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > 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.
| seventytwo wrote:
| Those local regulations may not be using the best
| recommendations, either. There's been plenty of cases of
| locales not using the best guidance.
|
| My point remains.
| [deleted]
| spqr0a1 wrote:
| HEPA filters were developed for radioactive dust during the
| Manhattan Project. Only several years later did the technology
| get declassified and started being used in biology and
| medicine.
| jpe90 wrote:
| It's not surprising if you understand how HEPA filters work,
| the particulate sizes that they're effective for, and the
| particulate sizes of viruses. Most people are not familiar with
| one or more of those things, so these stories are worth
| amplifying to the end of the earth and back, so that we can be
| better prepared to deal with this pandemic and the next.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Obviously.
|
| So what would've happened if we had created a zillion jobs
| installing air filtration to create healthier workplaces across
| many dimensions (not just Covid) instead of paying people to stay
| home?
| AreYouSirius wrote:
| WRONG !
|
| You are force to think this way !
|
| BUT
|
| What if you asked hospital staff if those ventilation unit in
| ICUs do have filter inside or they just recycle indoor infected
| hospital air and just add clean oxygen ???
|
| so basically if you get into hospital and they hook you up onto
| ventilation unit, you will increase virus load inside your
| lungs because all those viruses you exhale are not filtered and
| you will inhale them later.
|
| So just imagine how much is ventilation hookup in hospital good
| and how much is bad for you !!!
|
| not talking about HVAC, im talking about medical equipment
| directly pumping hospital air into your lungs.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Do you have a time machine to bring this bit of information
| back in time?
|
| And, would anyone have believed you?
|
| Many things are obvious in hindsight.
| AreYouSirius wrote:
| no hindsight needed, why are all those millions of people
| wearing masks ? because WE ALL know filtration WORKS.
| whiddershins wrote:
| We had the information. It's why we didn't have huge
| outbreaks related to planes.
|
| Anyone who looked into this, including me, knew this more
| than a year ago.
| nprz wrote:
| Someone made an interesting point that we got rid of cholera by
| drinking cleaner water and that we'll get rid of Covid by
| breathing cleaner air.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| wut?
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| You won't often catch covid from stray particles but from the
| person breathing next to you, which these filters can't help.
| This study was in a hospital where everyone is wearing serious
| PPE, so its a super edge case to get rid of covid in the air
| because the main use case of catching covid has been handle by
| plain old PPE.
|
| This doesn't have sweeping applicability. It won't stop covid
| among the general population. Its for maybe hospitals that are
| on super covid lockdown that want a little more protection for
| their most vulnerable patients.
|
| We get rid of covid through mass vaccination like any other
| virus. There's no shortcuts for those who refuse masks and
| vaccines.
| dmix wrote:
| > "This study suggests that HEPA air cleaners, which remain
| little-used in Canadian hospitals,
|
| What, they are "little used"? I'd assume that's the first place
| that would have adopted them. So strange how some hospitals
| operate.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I suppose the cost of installation outweighed the minor
| inconvenience of colds and flus spreading in the past. Only now
| that we have a deadlier virus does it make sense.
| trutannus wrote:
| Most likely. Canada also has a habit of under-spending on
| healthcare in general. The system is also hypersensitive to
| political whims and can end up getting neglected as a result.
| This is because the provinces have direct control over every
| aspect of the healthcare system, and set the budget for them
| directly.
|
| Unlike other nations like Germany and Estonia, Canada's
| healthcare system is fully dependent on the provincial
| government to exist and be funded. If I'm not mistaken, in
| the two countries I mentioned, clinics can get private
| funding while providing universal access in most cases, which
| means they have a larger buffer between the political whims
| of the state, and their ability to provide service. If the
| state under-provides, the clinics can seek investors to cover
| the new costs, all the while maintaining universal coverage.
|
| That's not something Canadians can do. Talk of any private
| involvement, or restructuring in general, in Canada's
| healthcare system is often very politically charged and not
| particularly honest, so change is not happening any time
| soon.
|
| I suspect the issue here is that the hospitals know that
| having HEPA filters would be a good idea, but political will
| isn't there to give them what they need. Canadian politics on
| both sides lately has been more about the appearance of
| progress through large gestures, rather than careful
| consideration of long term solutions. It's very unfortunate.
| jleyank wrote:
| Have you lived any length of time in Canada? If so, where?
| While I have been fortunate enough to not have needed to go
| to hospital, my dental office reopened after the initial
| lockdown last year with a HEPA filter, doorway screen and
| other paraphernalia which made each workarea look like a
| clean room. And they shifted from water to air-driven
| cleaning and dressed like sci-fi actors. I would imagine
| the hospitals were similar due to the stress put upon them.
| Anecdotally, my wife had a breathing test in hospital a few
| days ago and they checked vaccination status and accepted
| the mask she walked in with.
|
| Given that the federal government is responsible for
| funding much/most of the provincial health care system,
| they have some input into how things operate. Most
| provinces have a good handle on covid unless their
| government went too deep into the "covid is over" bit
| (Alberta, Saskatchewan). The covid response here was
| delayed due to the need to secure vaccines from others, but
| the end result has been quite good.
|
| I have lived all over N America, and the
| freedom/flexibility of the Canadian health system has been
| better than anywhere except St. Louis, MO when I was there
| - and that required full-time employment.
| trutannus wrote:
| > Have you lived any length of time in Canada?
|
| Yes, I am a Canadian. I lived there for 25 years. I have
| Canadian citizenship. Most of my family still lives
| there. I also ended up stuck in Ontario for most of
| COVID. I have family in Ontario, in Quebec, and elsewhere
| in the country. I don't think Ontario had a very good
| handle on COVID. It's also no secret that Canada is
| suffering a major staffing, and funding shortage in the
| healthcare sector right now.
|
| While most of your reply is about dentists (I'll get to
| that later), I see you're comparing Canada's healthcare
| system to the USA. I'm not. Compared to other systems in
| NA, yes, it's much better since it's free and somewhat
| fair. But that's the problem. Canadians should be looking
| to other developed nations with public healthcare. Not to
| the United States which operates on a completely
| different paradigm. My comment that you're replying to is
| entirely contrasting Canadian healthcare with EU systems,
| not Americans.
|
| > dental office reopened
|
| The majority of dentists are private entities, and are
| not subject to the same funding rules as hospitals.
| They're not licensed through the same entities, funded,
| or managed in the same way at all. Likely why they were
| able to adapt so quickly. See: https://www.cda-
| adc.ca/stateoforalhealth/servicescanada/
|
| > [..] they checked vaccination status and accepted the
| mask she walked in with.
|
| I'm not really sure what you're getting at here, this
| does not really relate to funding, or anything I'm
| talking about really. This is more about safety policy,
| not funding, which is what I'm trying to discuss.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I've had some good experiences with
| the system as well, but that does not mean it shouldn't
| _significantly improved_.
| jleyank wrote:
| The masks might have been after seeing a different
| comment, sorry. The problem with improving the system is
| that 1/3 of the country seems to want the US system in
| healthcare and probably (lots?) of other things. So it
| goes. Re: Ontario, I was looking at Ottawa specifically,
| the province generally and while it's "blessed" with a
| Conservative premier he's taken more medical advice (or
| indulged his populist leanings) more than other such
| premiers. Canadians, for the most part, are willing to
| play along which also helps.
| overton wrote:
| Early on in the pandemic, the Canadian IPAC (Infection Control
| and Prevention) establishment came down hard against theories
| of airborne COVID transmission, at first even going so far as
| to not recommend masking. Even now that the science of airborne
| transmission has been established, they're waging a rearguard
| battle to obfuscate/deny it and airborne protections such as
| better ventilation and masking. If you go to a Canadian
| hospital wearing an N95 these days there's a good chance they
| will insist you to take it off in favour of a "clean" surgical
| mask with gaps around the sides and nose.
| berberous wrote:
| N95s often have exhaust filters which make a surgical mask
| safer for everyone else around you.
| coralreef wrote:
| > If you go to a Canadian hospital wearing an N95 these days
| there's a good chance they will insist you to take it off in
| favour of a "clean" surgical mask with gaps around the sides
| and nose.
|
| Wouldn't that just be because of protocol, ie. they don't
| know if you, a member of the public, actually have a legit
| N95 mask, or if you know how to correctly implement it, etc.
| agustif wrote:
| Is a surgical-mask better than a fake N95 mask?
| Animats wrote:
| _actually have a legit N95 mask_
|
| Incidentally, if you want to validate 3M N95 masks, 3M has
| a web site for that.[1] You type in the code on the bottom
| of the box and 3M checks it. You can only do this once per
| code; the site will tell you if a valid code has been used
| before. They suggest signing and dating the box after doing
| this, to indicate that check has been done.
|
| [1] https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/worker-health-safety-
| us/3m-safeg...
| jbay808 wrote:
| > If you go to a Canadian hospital wearing an N95 these days
| there's a good chance they will insist you to take it off in
| favour of a "clean" surgical mask with gaps around the sides
| and nose.
|
| Happened to me many times. Sometimes they let me wear it over
| my (certified) N95, sometimes they don't.
| jdsully wrote:
| Having some experience with hospitals and N95 they asked that
| we put a surgical mask over the one we came with. Pointless
| and unnecessary but I guess it's easier than having staff
| validate the mask your wearing.
|
| They never required we remove a mask.
| makomk wrote:
| Airborne transmission and the usefulness of filters still
| doesn't seem that clearly established - this study didn't
| find that much virus in the air even without the filters, and
| most of the real-world transmission seems to involve people
| who were directly exposed to virus particles before they even
| had a chance to go through a filter, via standing next to
| someone or directly in an airflow path coming from their
| direction.
| clairity wrote:
| thanks for pointing this out. it gets lost in the fervor of
| trying to "fight the virus". most of our interventions are
| useless, and yet, we still insist on doing them. the virus
| just isn't aloft and active for very long. that's why the
| most dangerous activity is _close conversation_ , something
| we tend to do around people we know well (friends &
| family), not strangers in public.
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