We have a right to clean air.
Just as 19th century disease was (to oversimplify a tad) erradicated by providing people clean water. And 20th century disease by clean surfaces. The 21st century will be all about clean air.
In offices, public spaces, and especially in public transport, the air is infectious. It doesn’t matter if you wear a mask, or disinfect your hands and doorhandles. Modern diseases are adapted to spreading through the air and air-conditioning.
As long as the poor are forced to travel daily in overcrowded buses and trains, the epidemics will continue.
We’ve seen that lockdowns, hand sanitisers, vaccination, etc, are all only slightly effective against airborn disease.
But some territories have started to take the first steps toward eliminating covid. Small incremental improvements to ventilation. And it will help a bit. But it’s worth remembering that it won’t be enough - this is a disease of overcrowding, and the only effective cure is to improve living conditions.
There are several possible solutions I’ve thought of, though others could maybe find better ones:
- Zoning so that houses and workplaces must move closer together.
- High taxes on workplaces near the most overcrowded parts of the transport network.
- More buses and bus lanes of course. If people need to stand, it should be considered overcrowded. The bus/train company should have to pay the standers, as an incentive.
- Limit the rate of entering the metro, to physically prevent overcrowding. People have to queue, or traven at a different time.
- Free travel outside rush hour. Because extra passengers do not cost the provider anyway.
- Reducing the vacancy in inner-city housing, through a UBI-style tax and benefit system.
I’m planning on splurging on an Air Purifier when I move to Korea. I’ll let you know how it goes, and if the difference is enough to gain a point for team “Clean air” :)
Yes you should have at least one. They are cheap. The problem is, it’s impossible to measure how effective they are at all, if you would have gotten sick many more times if you hadn’t used one.
The great thing would be a credible disease control policy on a national scale. You could measure all sorts of details, much more accurately than is done today. For example you could know the exact disease risk associated with every time of urban space, and how to improve them.