THIS IS THE CHALLENGE OF YOUR LIFETIME. Maybe you're thinking..."that's a job for #epidemiology", and you're right, in part...
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Scooped by
Lorien Pratt
onto Pandemic Safe Buildings |
THIS IS THE CHALLENGE OF YOUR LIFETIME. Maybe you're thinking..."that's a job for #epidemiology", and you're right, in part...
Pandemic Safe Buildings
News about keeping buildings safe -- for facilities executives, architects, risk officers, safety officers, civil engineers, retrofitters, public health officials, safety equipment vendors, building owners, and more. Our focus is on _evidence-based_ advanced technology and models that help decision makers to understand the cost and safety impact of safety choices. Our holy grail is a list of the optimal decisions for every individual building, given the current knowledge about the pandemic. In the past, we've kept buildings safe from dangers like fire, flood, and mold. Now it's time to add pathogen safety to the list. This page tracks the latest news. Sign up here to join the pandemic safe buildings community. Click here to subscribe: https://forms.aweber.com/form/93/1344673093.htm Curated by Lorien Pratt |
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"Making decisions about risk and uncertainty is hard. For instance, trying to think through the probability of catching a potentially deadly virus while going to an indoor movie theater is difficult. So people tend to think in terms of binaries — 'this is safe' or 'this is unsafe' — because it’s easier.
The problem is that answering easier questions instead of trickier ones leaves you vulnerable to cognitive biases, or errors in thought that affect your decision-making.
One of the most prevalent of these biases is the availability heuristic. That’s what psychologists call the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily it comes to mind. How much a certain event is covered in the media, or whether you’ve seen instances of it recently in your life, can sway your estimate."
This article points out the risk of making decisions based on our cognitive biases. Decision intelligence gives us a methodology for identifying these biases and basing our decisions on actual information. For example, rather than basing our decision on the availability heuristic, we could base our Covid-19 decisions on information that gives us actual probabilities of being infected.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"This overview of the history illustrates the pervasiveness of “belief perseverance,” the psychological tendency to maintain a belief despite clear and strong new evidence that should challenge it. In an era of amazing scientific advances, where mRNA vaccines were designed in a few days following virus sequencing also obtained in a few days, the very slow acceptance of critical new knowledge reminds us that the human aspects of science remain as pervasive as they were in past eras.
However, the intense research and debate associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has finally begun to generate a paradigm shift in the understanding of disease transmission. Not only are respiratory diseases not transmitted exclusively by droplets, but also it is likely that many or most respiratory diseases have an important airborne component of transmission. It is also clearer that for a disease to cause a fast-spreading pandemic, airborne transmission is likely to be an essential component. This does not mark a return to past miasmatic ideas, but a more informed understanding of airborne transmission as more complex and less scary than in the past, and certainly as a tractable problem."
This article reinforces a critical factor in understanding data. We often tend to overlook facts that don’t match our beliefs, and this confirmation bias can have unintended consequences. The work we’ve been doing with risk assessment and mitigation in buildings exposes these truths with visualizations backed up by data. To learn more, visit https://bit.ly/3pjh8n9.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"'We understood that washing your hands and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ wasn’t going to quite cut it,' explains Chief Operating Officer, Craig Fenton. 'Covid-19 highlighted a problem in the construction industry that buildings are designed with aesthetics and comfort in mind, not biosafety for occupants. Our goal is to help design buildings that are more biosafe and reduce the risk of disease and infections for people.'
EPCC – a world-class supercomputing centre based at the University – supported their simulation tools, while their work with UNCOVER – a network of population health researchers and information specialists providing Covid-19 evidence reviews for policymakers – helped shape the platform’s epidemiological modelling."
Understanding how infectious Covid-19 droplets and aerosols move through the air in a building and where they concentrate will let us tune HVAC systems and design safer buildings.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"During this pandemic, we’ve developed and deployed vaccines in real time. Meanwhile, sars-CoV-2 is replicating not in a dozen flasks but in tens of millions of people, some of whom have been immunized, all of whom exert selective pressure for the virus to find new, more efficient replication strategies. The virus will continue to mutate every moment of every day, for years, for decades. The fear is that it will hit upon a second citrate moment: a mutation, or set of mutations, that enables it to circumvent our vaccines, which so far have proved spectacularly effective and resilient."
Three future scenarios for Covid-19 and its variants: win, lose, or draw.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
As we think about restrictions lifting and potentially getting back to work, how will we know our workplaces are safe with a highly aerosolised virus going around? We already have this problem and accept roughly 20,000 deaths from flu each year - but what is the answer?
As we reach the limits of vaccine effectiveness, we need solutions that directly address how to keep buildings safe from COVID, and more. datainnovation.ai is pushing the boundaries, providing breakthrough solutions to Scotland, the UK, and beyond.
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Rescooped by Lorien Pratt from Decision Intelligence News |
"As the U.S. heads toward the winter, the country is going round in circles, making the same conceptual errors that have plagued it since spring...
The grand challenge now is, how can we adjust our thinking to match the problem before us?” says Lori Peek, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies disasters. Here, then, are nine errors of intuition that still hamstring the U.S. pandemic response, and a glimpse at the future if they continue unchecked. The time to break free is now."
MUST READ. Fixing the pandemic is about much more than just vaccines; it is now about mindset. This article describes nine new categories of cognitive errors we all must understand. Our lives depend on it.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"...medical lore has it that such droplets—defined as particles expelled while breathing that are more than five microns across—cannot travel more than a couple of metres after they have been exhaled. And some of those who became infected during the lunch were farther than that from the “index” patient."
We are seeing a paradigm shift in our understanding of Coronavirus particles, which applies today and into the future. This understanding means that our optimal way of reducing illness and death is also changing, from investments in hand-washing to opening windows. We must all understand this.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"The long-standing misunderstanding of the importance of airborne transmission of pathogens has left a large gap of information in how to best construct and manage building ventilation systems to mitigate the spread of disease—with the exception of some manufacturing, research and medical facilities. Instead, buildings have focused on temperature, odor control, energy use and perceived air quality. So while there are safety guidelines for chemicals such as carbon monoxide, there are currently no guidelines, globally or in the U.S., that regulate or provide standards for mitigating bacteria or viruses in indoor air resulting from human activities.
'Air in buildings is shared air—it's not a private good, it's a public good. And we need to start treating it like that,' said Miller.
...
Lidia Morawska, director of Queensland University of Technology’s International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health. (Credit: Queensland University of Technology)
Lidia Morawska, lead author on the article and director of Queensland University of Technology’s International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, said there needs to be a shift away from the perception that we cannot afford the cost of control. She notes that the global monthly cost from COVID-19 had been conservatively estimated as $1 trillion and the cost of influenza in the U.S. alone exceeded $11.2 billion annually."
Arguments that air - like water and electricity - is a public good, which has potentially dangerous side effects as we have learned in the pandemic. This article makes the case that this is why indoor air quality should be regulated, just as air pollution is in many countries.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
Top experts in how diseases spread are calling for massive improvements to the air in buildings.
I heard this morning that a lot of infectious disease expertise came from our experience with non-airborne infections like anthrax, listeria, and similar. With pandemics, everything is different.
Rescooped by Lorien Pratt from Decision Intelligence News |
‘Citizens don’t understand that someone is doing this hard job and sometimes they are going to be wrong and if they’re wrong, it’s not because they’re idiots or malicious or corrupt; it’s that the job is making decisions in conditions of uncertainty."
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"To date, the transmission of COVID-19 has been classified by major institutions as Contact/Droplet, which has resulted in mitigation protocols such as handwashing, masking guidelines, physical distancing rules and disinfecting surfaces. Others have challenged this definition, and assert that in addition to contact/droplet, airborne/aerosol plays an important role in transmission. They are calling for additional mitigation protocols, such as respiratory PPE and ventilation strategies. This seminar will host an international panel composed of global leaders who will break down the science behind the two paradigms, and explore whether we should double down on current efforts or re-think our approach."
The deep story on aerosols vs. droplets for #covid19 transmission: Two pro-aerosols scientists debating one pro-fomite (droplet) at the University of Calgary.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"Federal health officials on Friday updated public guidance about how the coronavirus spreads, emphasizing that transmission occurs by inhaling very fine respiratory droplets and aerosolized particles, as well as through contact with sprayed droplets or touching contaminated hands to one’s mouth, nose or eyes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now states explicitly — in large, bold lettering — that airborne virus can be inhaled even when one is more than six feet away from an infected individual. "
This news from the New York Times is the most important thing you need to know right now. It is particularly important for those of us interested in keeping people healthy in indoor spaces: you must rebudget right now from hand washing and disinfecting to managing the air.
See https://bit.ly/3bdlXqM for the CDC brief.
Rescooped by Lorien Pratt from Decision Intelligence News |
"Healthy Buildings was a nascent field, Joseph G. Allen says, until COVID...My hope is that we move from fixing problems in buildings after they happen to a more proactive approach. That’s been the goal of the Healthy Buildings program. Before COVID, healthy buildings was a nascent field. Now, it has exploded and everyone is rightly talking about indoor environments. I feel a deep responsibility to help shape what comes next, now that everyone is paying attention. The healthy buildings movement will be a failure if it’s confined to those with resources. This must be a movement that serves all."
How #covid19 has driven the Healthy Buildings movement, from a thought leader in the field.
How #covid19 has driven the Healthy Buildings movement, from a thought leader in the field.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"Decades of painstaking research, which did not include capturing live pathogens in the air, showed that diseases once considered to be spread by droplets are airborne.[4] Ten streams of evidence collectively support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted primarily by the airborne route.[5]"
One of the consequences of a lack of a decision intelligence bridge from research to decision makers, is that important findings like this are slow to be disseminated, and slower to be implemented as part of personal or organization decisions. We ignore this "last mile" action challenge at our peril.
One of the consequences of a lack of a decision intelligence bridge from research to decision makers, is that important findings like this are slow to be disseminated, and slower to be implemented as part of personal or organization decisions. We ignore this "last mile" action challenge at our peril.
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Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
So far only 10 controlled trials of non-drug interventions have been registered, with three reported.
This makes no sense.
There is a large asymmetry in the amount of research investigating non-pharmaceutical interventions to COVID, compared to their effectiveness. This article describes a remedy.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"...This is a symptom of a number of problems we face as humanity. These include Covid-19, climate change, and global inequality. These problems:
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
If annual averages were the only information we considered, 79 AD in Pompeii was a slightly warmer year than usual—hardly a situation worthy of serious concern. As you can see with this example, averages, when assessing outlier risks, often make very bad metrics.
More about how average values can be misleading, and so getting more granular can help us understand covid-19, climate change, and more.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"...the temperature of 95°F is such a value. Stay below it, and very few people die. Rise above it and people start dying, and the higher the temperature rises, the greater the mortality. The chart below shows why a 5.7°F rise in average temperature over 50 years can lead to such deadly results."
when we use a summary statistic like an average - whether for climate temperature or Covid-19 incidence - it can mask important underlying dynamics that can make a big difference.
When we use a summary statistic like an average - whether for climate temperature or Covid-19 incidence - it can mask important underlying dynamics that can make a big difference.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
The agency has not fully reckoned with airborne transmission of the coronavirus in settings like hospitals, schools and meatpacking plants, experts said.
We spend 90% of our time indoors, and many people will be going back to work in the coming months. It's time to get serious about truly Covid-19-safe workplaces, and, increasingly, the scientific community, as well as the NYT, agree.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"In the last three decades, we’ve seen a massive change in marketing. It used to be that “one size fits all” television advertisements sent to the entire country at a time were very expensive. In contrast, today, we can spend much less money on a simple Google, Facebook, or Twitter ad that only appears on the screen of people who are likely to want to purchase the product or service. Once a pipe dream, this “one-to-one” advertising model is now standard practice worldwide....
However, this revolution in data and AI technology has not been, by and large, applied to the most impactful problems of our time, including Covid-19 and climate change. We see guidelines issues by federal and state authorities that have the same “one size fits all” character, reminiscent of television ads of the 1970s. Data about Covid-19 and climate is presented in summary statistics characterizing entire states or counties, and is often averaged out over long time periods, thereby losing its power."
AI has by and large, been applied to only a small subset of the problems that it's applicable to. Here's how AI can help with climate change pandemics.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"Evidence gathered this fall around the world and in the U.S. suggests that schools can open, even in conditions of wide community spread, and achieve low and even near zero transmission in the school building. This evidence, combined with the benefits to learners of in-person schooling and harms of remote schooling, suggests that the time has come to pursue in-person learning across most school contexts, provided that the school in question has established reasonable infection control protocols to safeguard student, educator (including paraprofessionals), and staff safety. The federal governments should include investments in school infection control in the next coronavirus relief package.
...The most important elements of infection control that matter are:
"
(boldface mine)
General-purpose guidelines for all schools, which promises near-zero infection rates. If this is true (I haven't validated the research behind it myself yet: please drop me a line if you have) it's very important news.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
The project involves an environmental monitor small enough to fit on a desk that tracks air quality and ventilation; a wrist monitor that tracks sleep and physical activity; and an iPhone app that feeds researchers real-time data.
unifying personal health with building health data, Harvard's Joe Allen's most recent project builds on years of work studying all facets of safe buildings.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"Today there are over 55 million documented COVID-19 cases and over 1.3 million deaths, impacting countries and territories worldwide. As vaccines are developed and countries implement recovery plans, regional authorities lack the ability to test “what if” intervention plans that optimize COVID-19 mitigation strategies while reducing the economic and social impacts."
This is a very important project, which includes both predictive and prescriptive analytics.
Scooped by Lorien Pratt |
"From office workers to students, Americans facing colder weather and more time inside have a pressing question: How can they keep safe amid a pandemic that scientists say thrives in indoor settings?
The search for answers has prompted a new look at what architects and their buildings can do to help, both now and in the future."
A good introduction into how the pendemic is accelerating already important issue, which is how buildings can be as healthy as possible for the people who occupy them
Some tough love for my #datascience and #softwarearchitecture friends: if you're not actively helping to solve #covid19, you're part of the problem.