Thread by @RealSexyCyborg

Sure🧵
Starting from First Principles- the question is wrong. It's based on having both decided on the problem, and the solution without being on the ground. It assumes the West is an authority on particulate filtration, and Asia needs its assistance in implementation.

https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1589410563989598208

Indoor air filtration aimed at reducing PM2.5 levels- particularly in schools and homes is far, far more common in Asia and has been for decades. A predecessor to the CR-Box- emerged from @SmartAirFilters in Beijing and some of the first Chinese hackspaces like @xinchejian.

It's a recent novelty to you- we've been doing it since long before the pandemic. Teaching Asians about PM2.5 with our pollution and wildfires with our far more diverse selection of filters, sensors, and masks in daily use really is teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

A team of Vietnamese or Singaporean researchers who posed the question "How can we improve the vaccination rate in Canada?" would be ignored- despite far higher vaccination rates, yes, due to colonialism, but in part due to cultural differences making policy transfer difficult.

This is a fairly well-known problem-
brightthemag.com/the-reductive-…
Distant problems are more interesting, and Westerners have a tendency to assume they are smarter than the people in developing countries who work directly with these problems- when really they just have more resources.

They come in with resources, solve the problem a few times in a way that will not scale without those resources, pat themselves on the back for their brilliance- and leave. Often having undermined and discredited the work of locals who are left worse off than when they started.

So here, having unilaterally decided that the most urgent air quality problem in Asia is particulates, it's decided that the best solution is DIY air filters-and these must be implemented. Which is basically a wrong sandwich with two pieces of wrong bread and wrong in the middle.

Obviously at the present time pathogens are a priority over particulates- one kills you now, the other kills you much later. The second, not being on the ground you miss that school filtration is already ubiquitous. Here- see students China, Korean and Japan:

We wear our filters- to, from, and at school. Masking is still enforced in most places- although Western influence has unfortunately, has an effect and some places have dropped them as a result. All the more reason to limit Western influence here- they aren't rational about air.

This doesn't mean air quality isn't an issue- of course it is, but with particulates at least someone mitigated, viral count and where transfer is most likely becomes the issue- particularly in canteens and washrooms where kids are unmasked. UR-GUV may be better for those areas.

When filtration is appropriate in Asia, expedient solutions like the CR-Box often are not. The CR-Box has become a go-to solution in the West, but a lot of people fail to understand why- and its brilliance. They look at it as a technical hack- it's not just that.

The CR-Box takes advantage of a loophole in Western bureaucracy- often, anything not expressly forbidden is allowed. In the early days of the pandemic, a few parents and teachers could execute a fait accompli- drop them in and equip every classroom in a school within a day.

It neatly bypassed administrators and the approval process- leaving COVID minimizes on their back foot having to argue for their removal- while the CR-Boxes went to work. They are every much a social engineering hack as a mechanical one- and saved countless lives this way.

Unfortunately, administrators have caught up- and are now obstructing classroom filtration with countless newfound excuses- if I were looking for a winnable battle in the West I'd start there by countering that with hard data and pressure to enact air quality policy.

In Asia the things that made CR-Boxes so powerful in the West- JIT deployment, comparatively low cost, expediency, lack of regulation, and default permissiveness- don't really apply. We have easy-to-source, powerful commercial filtration with a similar 5-year cost of ownership.

We've also always been at where the West is now- dealing with obstructionist administrators who won't accept ad hoc solutions. Whatever is implemented will be subject to review and duct tape and cardboard just isn't the image that any administrator wants- it looks like neglect.

The box fans and MERV filters that can be obtained with a quick trip to the local Home Depot in the morning and be finished CR-Boxes by the afternoon are far more difficult to source and even modified designs are hard to standardize within a single country without large orders.

Lastly, one of the few Achilles heels of CR-Boxes, is noise. Obviously, that takes a very distant back seat to keeping kids alive with sanitized air, and in the early days forgivable- but now, with more options on the table, it bears looking at.

Most CR-Box implementations are well outside GB 50118 (China) and AIJES-S0001-2020 (Japan) noise level recommendations for classrooms- something we take very, very seriously and that parents will certainly complain about.

In short- CR-Boxes are awesome, but what situations in Asia their use is suited for is best decided by people on the ground with a knowledge of local customs and resources.
If you are looking to support this- @JoshuaCAgar is doing amazing things with CR-Boxes in the Philipines.

*somewhat