I am so mad that we haven’t gone all out on ventilation and air filtration in the last 18 months. It would have a host of benefits beyond the very important benefit of knocking down transmission of covid, colds, and flus.

It would also make mask wearing less necessary. I hate wearing a mask: I can’t think quickly + clearly, I can’t keep my glasses from fogging up, it’s hard for people to understand me and to understand them, and wearing longer than about half an hour gives me a migraine.

While wearing masks is an important and useful NPI it is not as good as you might think. Sitting in an office with poor ventilation for hours with other people wearing masks? Unless you’re all in very well fitted N95+ masks you may as well not be wearing one.

Masks like we’re all wearing are useful for relatively short contacts with other people, not extended periods together.

Air purification and lots of ventilation ARE very useful for being indoors together for long periods of time. When covid rates are relatively high, combining masks and good air purification and ventilation is extremely protective even for extended close contact, like a university classroom.

Our focus on “individual responsibility” NPIs rather than structural is so limiting! Don’t tell folks to use water purification tablets - provide clean water!