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Oct 16 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
This is an example of the reality that we really did know just about everything about transmission very early in the pandemic. A short thread:
Feb 9, 2020 - airborne, ventilation, filtration, portable air cleaners...

March 4, 2020. repeat of my Feb 2020 article essentially, but this time for US audience. (NYT rejected this piece in JANUARY 2020. Took me another 6 weeks to convince them...)
nytimes.com/2020/03/04/opi…
March 26, 2020. Fomite risk wildly overstated. Yes, you can accept packages and the mail. No, you don't need to wipe down groceries.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
April 2, 2020. Everyone should wear a mask. They work.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Before I get "@'d" on masks. They all work. Some better than others. Also very true that efficacy at population scale can be different than efficacy on individual scale AND this can change over time (behavior, compliance, variants, type of mask...)

Back to thread. April 20, 2020. Layered defense. Hierarchy of Controls...

April 29, 2020. Hierarchy of Controls. w/ my #HealthyBuildings co-author @cleantechcities

hbr.org/2020/04/what-m…
And then wrote a few to address misguided focus on low-risk environments rather than actual high risk locations.

May 18, 2020. Introducing how ventilation and filtration work on airplanes, and why airplanes are low risk...

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
June 2, 2020. Wrote a piece shortly after this pointing out that elevators are low risk...introducing "intensity, frequency, duration"...

usatoday.com/story/opinion/…
Then, focus on schools...

June 12, 2020
June 20, 2020. Yes, kids should be going back to school in the fall. Low risk from covid, high risk from disruption, AND we know how to protect kids AND adults in schools.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
June 24, 2020. We paired the op-ed with a 60-page "how to" report...

including tips on ventilation and filtration...
That summer we kept going. Built a tool to select portable air cleaner, 5-step guide for assessing ventilation, QAs for parents,

On and on...
Anyway, I didn't intend to write a thread this morning. Just hit me that we knew so much, so early in the pandemic. And here we are coming up on 3 years, talking about what we knew on Day 1 (and before Day 1...article w/ @WaringIAQ Dec *2019*)
Oooh, forgot a good one in this thread.

April 16, 2020, on N95s for healthcare workers and importance of FIT. Introduces "rainbow passage" and "user seal check" (and alerts issue of counterfeit KN95s from China).

w/ colleague David Christiani
statnews.com/2020/04/16/n95…

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More from @j_g_allen

Joseph Allen Profile picture
Oct 12
It was a day
Read 5 tweets
Joseph Allen Profile picture
Oct 12
Sign the Pledge

“The White House is inviting building owners and operators across the country to join us in our efforts to continue fighting the spread of COVID-19 by publicly pledging to meet the Clean Air in Buildings Challenge.” whitehouse.gov/cleanindoorair/
The Challenge: 4 Key Commitments
Leaders, owners, and operators of businesses, schools, and other buildings participating in the Clean Air in Buildings Challenge have raised their hands and pledged to take four action steps
Read 5 tweets
Joseph Allen Profile picture
Oct 3
THREAD: Buildings as a First Line of Defense against Airborne Infectious Diseases

(excerpt from my book #HEALTHYBUILDINGS, out Oct 18, available now)
WE’VE LONG KNOWN THAT BUILDINGS can make us sick. And yes, sometimes the solution is as easy as opening a window, as Florence Nightingale told us long ago. But at some point, we lost our way.
We forgot these basic lessons from centuries ago, that bringing in more fresh air is a simple—but effective—infection control measure. Since the days of mech ventilation, with each revision of the ventilation standard leading to less fresh air and more tightly sealed buildings,
Read 11 tweets
Joseph Allen Profile picture
Sep 20
I understand the concern that Biden saying “pandemic is over” might lead people to let down guard/not get boosted. But that wasn’t his full quote. He started by saying: “We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lotta work on it.”

Here’s an inadvertent issue…
1/4
Those expressing concern that Biden message might lead to letting down guard, may actually be *contributing to* the problem they are concerned about by amplifying only half of his message

2/4
ie, if you say that ‘Biden is throwing his hands up’ when he said ‘pandemic over’, without pairing it w the statement that he said there’s still a problem to be dealt with, you’re just telling people that the president thinks we’re all done. Which isn’t what he said.

3/4
Read 4 tweets
Joseph Allen Profile picture
Sep 17
A thread from @TheLancet @CovidCommission on school closures:

--> 195 countries closed schools during the pandemic, affecting more than 1·5 billion children and young people and posing enormous long-term and unrecoverable costs to them, their parents, and the economy.

🧵1/n
--> School closures have had devastating effects on student learning, mental health, socioemotional outcomes, and lifetime earning potential, such as education backslides, increasing drop-out rates, and increased abuse and neglect.

2/n
--> In-person schooling was deprioritised even as other non-essential or less essential community and economic activities continued.care centres, schools, or universities.

3/n
Read 26 tweets
Joseph Allen Profile picture
Sep 15
"The pandemic has also shown that insufficient attention was previously paid to the design and management of ventilation and filtration systems for healthy indoor environments, including safe workplaces, safe schools, and safe public transport."

1/n
 sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
The final report from our @TheLancet Covid-19 Commission is out. A short thread highlighting just a few key areas where the work of our Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School, Safe Travel can be found.
2/n
A paradigm shift in how we view and address the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases is underway. Airborne transmission in both the near-fields and the far-fields is a crucial, if not dominant, exposure pathway for SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses.
3/n
Read 12 tweets

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