What's Good for the King is Good for the Kids

We KNOW that Covid makes kids sick, which affects attendance, and we KNOW cleaning the air will help (since so many have been convince not to wear masks to class), but we'll still only implement solutions for the wealthiest 1%. 

Back in June 2020, the New York Times reported how Covid short-circuits the immune system: 

"In many patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, the immune system is threatened by a depletion of certain essential cells, suggesting eerie parallels with H.I.V. . . . and hints that a cocktail of drugs may be needed to bring the coronavirus under control. . . . Ordinarily, IP10 levels are only briefly elevated while T cells are dispatched. But in Covid-19 patients--as was the case in patients with SARS and MERS, also caused by coronaviruses--IP10 levels go up and stay up. That may create chaotic signaling int he body: It's like Usain Bolt hearing the starting gun and starting to run. Then someone keeps firing the starting gun over and over. What would he do? He'd stop, confused and disoriented. The result is that the body may be signaling T cells almost at random, confusing the immune response."

But then, unfortunately, "aerosol physicists were essentially ignored in favour of medical dogma when attempting to advise the WHO at the start of the pandemic. Many lives would have been saved had public health institutions focused on mitigating airborne transmission." 

Recently Dr. Deepti Gurdasani wrote about the cumulative risk of infections, which is becoming a controversial view despite the number of people being reinfected and experiencing worse symptoms:

"A huge point missing from the 'cumulative risk' discussion is that it's not just about the cumulative risk of developing Long Covid population-wide, but also what happens to the quality of life of those who have Long Covid with subsequent infections. Or does no one care? The limited research we have so far shows that this group is at high risk of worsening with each infection - significantly affecting their quality of life. Something not measured in cumulative risk studies - because those studies only measure new Long Covid among those who don't have it. Given the high levels of prevalent Long Covid in every single country (as shown by the ONS survey, the household pulse survey and others), shouldn't we also care about what repeated infection are doing to this very large population? 

Ultimately it's about quality of life at population level - and if millions of people are experiencing worsening quality of life - along with many others developing Long Covid anew - with each infection - that should be considered too. Studies and discourse need to go beyond simply talking about cumulative risk of developing Long Covid, but also what quality of life is like population-wide (including for those with Long Covid) with repeated infections. After all, even if the risk of developing new Long Covid post-reinfection was zero (it's not- according to the ONS - it's near 3%) - if you still had 40-50% of a cohort of 2 million people with Long Covid worsening with re-infection, that'd still be a pretty big impact at population level. 

Developing Long Covid shouldn't just be the end outcome when people are excluded from these cohorts. We need to actively study the impact of re-infection among people with Long Covid, and not exclude them in evaluation of cumulative impacts. I think it's very likely that risks of Long Covid are non-independent (i.e. correlated). Those who develop worsening after one infection are at much higher risk of developing worsening with subsequent ones. Excluding them massively underestimates population level impacts. What we then end up measuring is survivorship bias rather than impact at population level, which is what we should be measuring. Not to say that people who're at lower risk don't get Long Covid. They do. But there's a subgroup at much higher risk of worsening with each infection. Let's not exclude them. Their experiences, lives matter. And they're a huge group at population level."

Then this week, just over four years since it all started, the New York Times wrote, inexplicably, that the significant increase in school absences is caused by families valuing school less, ignoring the fact that kids are getting sick repeatedly in a way that hasn't happened before in all my decades of teaching and learning. 

Julia Doubleday wrote about it in The Gauntlet: 

"Almost unbelievably, the paper goes on to note that teachers are also missing more school - a mysterious coincidence to the authors, surely - before providing a list of reasons that finally mentions illness, last and certainly least. The piece, however, doesn’t acknowledge that teachers are sick more often, or that they, statistically, have one of the highest rates of Long Covid. It instead states that, “since the pandemic, more people are actually staying home when they’re sick.” It provides zero evidence for this claim, nor does it provide any data about rates of school attendance while ill, before or since 2020, but simply repeats it multiple times. 

Source: trust me, bro. . . . 

It's interesting what types of 'learning loss' are cause for concern to our media. Harming the health of millions of children, potentially long-term, is not to be mentioned. Imaginary bad parents, on the hand, are much easier to accuse of wrongdoing than the state. . . . The story here is that Covid was prematurely declared over; that there is no long-term immunity; that kids are thus stuck in a carousel of constant reinfection; that the constant reinfection is harmful. . . . As kids get sicker, pressure increases on them to attend school while actively ill, resulting in more sick kids and more absences. Perhaps more egregiously, a much-criticized public campaign in the UK encouraged parents to send kids into class with, among other things, headlice. This is bizarre, anti-social behaviour that almost anyone would be disgusted by prior to 2002. But with a 'new normal' of disease spread over disease control, it seems anything goes. . . . 

Parents, meanwhile, seem to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and accept that constant illness is now a fact of life. One mother posted this week her frustration with 'daycare' along with a shocking list of test results confirming that her child had not one, not two, but five concurrent infections. We are the adults. We need to address this situation, protect kids, and clean the air, not laugh it off or act like airborne viral infections are some sort of inevitable act of God."

Cat in the Hat wrote about a different but equally exasperating MSM article, bringing receipts:

"There’s nothing more irritating than when you see someone who is so close to joining the dots but doesn’t quite get there. I’m never quite sure if it’s intentional or just sheer ignorance (well actually, I think I can probably guess which it is).

Let’s take a look at what she says: 

“We must better support our children to attend school safely in any future similar event. . . . We cannot allow our elderly, those in care homes and the vulnerable to be placed at such risk in a future pandemic. . . . Most viruses are airborne." 

Somehow Suella Braverman has lined up all the pieces of the jigsaw, but still can’t see the bigger picture that is literally staring her in the face!

✅ Yes, another pandemic is coming (as well as the one we’re still in right now).
✅ Yes, we must be better prepared.
✅ Yes, we must make schools safer against the risk of virus transmission.
✅ Yes, we must do a better job of protecting the elderly, those in care homes and the clinically vulnerable.  
✅ Yes, most viruses are airborne.

So what’s the answer, Suella Braverman? If you’d read the science, you’d realise that the solution is quite clear. ➡️ We need to start cleaning our indoor air.

Cleaning the air by improving ventilation and air filtration is a simple, low cost, non-intrusive measure that could HUGELY reduce the spread of ALL airborne pathogens: Covid, measles, flu, RSV, AND whatever nasty airborne virus the next pandemic brings us! Clean air is not a restrictive mitigation; it’s an ENABLING mitigation. It would allow us all to live our lives with a little less risk, a little less sickness, a little less absence from school/work. And for the clinically vulnerable, it could literally be a life-saver!

There’s a mountain of evidence that improving ventilation & air filtration can hugely reduce the spread of airborne illnesses:
▪️A study conducted in Cambridge showed that air filters removed almost all trace of SARS-CoV-2 from the air.
▪️A Swiss study demonstrated that HEPA air filters delivering a clean air delivery rate of 5 air changes per hour (800m3/h) in a typical classroom led to a 5-fold decrease in the cumulative viral dose absorbed by exposed occupants.
▪️A study conducted in Bradford showed that Covid-related illness absence in schools was reduced by >20% when HEPA air filters were used in classrooms.
▪️An Italian study showed that ventilation delivering 6 air changes per hour could reduce transmission of Covid by a whopping 82%. 

If you’d like to read more research, here’s a link to a compilation of 56 research studies from around the world which all demonstrate the effectiveness of air filters at removing Covid from the air in different settings: It seems the government know this all already. Behind the scenes, they have quietly invested in clean air and installed state-of-the-art air filtration systems in the Houses of Parliament, Ministry of Defence and other government buildings, and the Department for Education have recently equipped themselves with brand new enhanced air handling systems at their Westminster headquarters. Even King Charles has recognised the need for clean air and has an air filter prominently positioned in his Buckingham Palace reception room when meeting guests.

So the question is: If Kings and politicians recognise the importance of breathing clean indoor air, why are our children crammed into poorly-ventilated classrooms on a daily basis (⬇️)? 

Why are air filters not the norm in hospital wards filled with sick vulnerable people? We don’t have to worry about the water we drink, because we invest in water treatment plants which filter and clean it to a high standard. It’s just one of those things we accept as a given. We wouldn’t drink dirty water, so why are we breathing dirty indoor air? Over to you, Suella Braverman. Are you ready to be on the right side of history? Will you advocate for clean indoor air in schools, hospitals and other public spaces to help us prepare for the next pandemic (as well as the one we’re still in!)? I’ll end with this brilliant article in Science (co-authored by an impressive list of 43 scientists & experts from around the world) which puts forward a compelling argument on the pressing need to mandate indoor air quality in public buildings."

Why indeed!! Far-UVC light can almost entirely eliminate airborne viruses - something we've known for decades. It's more expensive to install than a CR box, but it's even more effective. We HAVE the solutions for this problem. We CAN clean the air in classrooms (and busses and hospitals...), we're just overtly choosing not to.

Finally, Johnathan Howard did a takedown on how, "The failed 'We want them infected' movement is trying to rebrand itself as the 'All we really wanted was poor kids in school' movement.

"The sheltered pro-infection doctors who molded our disastrous pandemic response are furiously scrambling to sanitize their history in it, absurdly casting themselves as selfless crusaders for poor children, rather than allies of the virus."

Absolutely.