Indoors or Outdoors: which is the Safer!
By Philip Hayward:
This is an open letter to both health officials and citizens groups who are trying to make sense of Covid mitigation policy. It started out as something else; Gary saw a copy and wanted it turned into a blog post.
Gary: here is a quick summary with some editorial liberties:
The safest place to be is in the Great Outdoors.
The least safe place to be is indoors.
Poor ventilation increases the risk.
Philip reminds me of the chest hospitals and sanitoriums of the last century, with rose gardens where the ill would lie back and rest in the sun and fresh air. He reminds me of the "Sunshine Schools" design of post-WWII primary schools: Northwards facing, with large windows that open wide, and outdoor seating to relax and eat (you can still see some examples, such as Oraka Heights Primary School in Putaruru). I think of the health camps for sickly children, funded by postage stamp sales. My, how little our health policy experts know, with beginning ignorance of our own history of health care!
There has been a lot of controversy and concern over orthodox Covid mitigation policy. The focus has been on early treatments for Covid that have been suppressed, and the merits and risks of the novel vaccines that have been developed in short order and been selected as the primary strategy. Accordingly, well-credentialed experts raising legitimate concerns have become celebrities of sorts; Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Robert Malone, Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, and so on. Such people feature as guests in interviews and webinars around the world, including in New Zealand.
However, there is an over-arching failure on the part of the expert officials that is being missed, and this omission by concerned-citizen bodies is compounding the officials failure. However, it is this point on which the public is most likely to be awakened, and officials pressured to change course. I refer to the most basic point of how Covid-19 spreads in the first place, and how this also affects the severity of infection and the likelihood of death.
The orthodoxy about contact, droplets and surfaces has been wrong all along. There are numerous experts who were publishing on this from at least mid-2020; and they were also trying hard to get the WHO to accept the reality from early April 2020. The work and advocacy of people like Lidia Morawska, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Lynsey Marr, and Maurice De Hond should have turned them into celebrities with concerned citizens groups, but it has not; they have remained as unknown and unthanked warriors battling away out of sight.
Here is the ultimate collation of research on the subject of indoor environment risk from buildup of virus aerosols:
https://nursesunions.ca/cfnu-research-summary-on-covid-19/
That is from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, who are taking legal action based on this research, regarding the risk of their own working environments.
The best "starting reads" linked from there, are these:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/