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DanHess00's avatar

In February and March of 2020, as I read all I could about respiratory infections and watched where COVID-19 was having its worst impact, I realized that the dry indoor air of winter makes viral respiratory infections much worse (this is not the only factor, but it is a very big one). The data have born this out.

The mechanisms are simple:(1) Mucociliary clearance, the mechanism by which foreign particles are carried out of the lungs, functions poorly in very dry air as mucus dries out.(2) Dry air can lead to damage of surfaces of the throat and lungs (in the same way that dry air gives you cracked lips). This makes you vulnerable to inflammation and infections at the site of the injury. The virus can enter through such fissures.

I made it my goal to let the world know about winter humidifiers against COVID and I mostly failed as I am not well-known and the level of noise on this is extreme. But alas. Once more into the breach.

Since nobody will listen to me, here is leading COVID-19 expert Prof. Akiko Iwasaki of the Iwasaki virology lab at Yale Medical school and her team speaking:

For those who like to read scientific papers, a 2020 review of respiratory virus seasonality with some 130 citations explains things well (figure 4 says it all):https://www.annualreviews.o...

And for the lay person:https://www.washingtonpost....

The effects of humidity are dramatic. Florida and Texas have been almost completely open while New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan have been largely locked down, and yet those lockdown states have had much worse disease and death than those humid states. Humidity is the difference because indoor air is generally temperature controlled everywhere.

I bet a few hundred thousand lives will be saved this winter if this becomes widely known.

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RobinHanson's avatar

In the usual way economists that count these things, the value that the old put on their lives counts in total value, so reducing it is a cost.

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