We are still in a pandemic. It might not be an emergency anymore, but the Sars-Cov-2 virus (and its innumerable mutations) are still around, spreading unchecked among a mostly indifferent population.
Very few of us bother wearing a respirator (or even a mask) anymore. Vaccination rates are plummeting. Waves come and go and most people are now normalising a level of constant illness that most of us had never seen before in our lives.
The biggest casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic is the concept of public health. We are now in a neoliberal “You do you” attitude where each person is meant to assess risk and decide the level of prevention they are willing to take, on their own. But health is a collective project, particularly when it comes to infectious pathogens.
And now, the spectre of H5N1, aka Avian flu, that has been looming in the background for over a year’s time seems to be materialising. It has already decimated bird populations in places like England, it has jumped to mammals and done the same with seals in Peru, and it is now spreading through cattle farms in the US.
The Profit-First system we live in creates the wrong incentives. Farmers are worried that their livelihoods will be put at risk and are reluctant to let in any health inspectors. Workers at farms are, likewise, pushing through with work, regardless of whether or not they are infected. We do know there have been stories of dead cats around these farms, raw milk seems to be a vector of transmission. There’s a chance meat is another one. It could also be airborne.
On the one worker infection that has been made public the virus seems to be able to infect through the eyes.
It doesn’t bode well.
But everything could be much better if we just cleaned our indoor air.
Schools would not need to be a place of constant sickness. Hospitals could be safe for patients who are often immuno compromised. We could reduce infections of not only COVID-19, and the likely incoming H5N1, but all respiratory diseases like RSV, influenza and even the common cold. Our cognitive capacity would also improve, along with our mood.
All of this is not new, the famous British nurse Florence Nightingale said “Fresh air, the only defence a nurse needs”, in the 19th century. She stressed the importance of open windows for hospitals in patient recovery and infection control.
We can do this again. We have the tools. We can monitor air quality, we can filter and mechanically circulate the air, we can open windows and we can make it easier and more enjoyable to socialise outdoors. We can also use UV lighting to eliminate and neutralise most pathogens.
We only lack the political will to do it. And meanwhile we are repeatedly infecting ourselves and our kids with a serious disease that we now know causes brain damage, immune dysfunction, organ damage, vascular damage and that increases the chances of heart failures, strokes, and so many other problems.
I am convinced that in the hopefully not so distant future we will be astonished by our collective refusal to take steps towards breathing clean air. Just like we now look in disbelief at the time where sewage and drinking water were not properly separated by infrastructure. Or the way most people nowadays can’t believe the story of Dr Semmelweiss, who advocated for doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies, and was ostracised by his then radical ideas. A scientific fact that was rejected at his time, but we now accept as common sense.
We wouldn’t accept drinking water that would make us sick. Why should we breathe air that is full of infectious diseases?
Please, let’s Clean the Air.
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