re: Travis County is re-banning outdoor gatherings of over 100 people

quote:

---

Not an infectious disease expert but I doubt that. It’s young people in bars and parties engaging in all of things people usually do at bars or parties. Especially while on vacation.

---

quote:

---

Unlike when you open a window and allow air to pass through, air-conditioning recirculates a lot of the same air inside a building. Though the exact risks are still unknown, this has the potential to create a virus-laden stew in offices and, yes, hotels. Earlier this month, two researchers from Harvard Medical School argued in JAMA that, beyond washing hands and wearing masks, “air disinfection” has been a largely missing element of the strategy to prevent coronavirus transmission. The issue could be especially important as we head into summer: Hotter temperatures will drive people indoors just as many places are reopening and we’re supposed to go about our “normal life.”


The airborne spread of the coronavirus has been well documented. Famously, outbreaks have emerged from choir practices and other indoor gatherings, with infection rates so uniquely high that it’s unlikely everyone got infected by touching the same surface. Over a long period in an enclosed space, it seems, singing can spew virus into the air until it accumulates to the point of danger for people who are well over six feet away.

Once a virus is hanging in the air—and we know that the coronavirus can linger for hours—it will travel with air currents. One ominous study of a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, documented how air-conditioning appeared to spread the virus between tables at opposite sides of the room. The issue wasn’t that the virus was traveling through the air-conditioning unit, but that it was getting pushed around the room by the stream of air. The takeaway is that while airflow is good when it’s coming from open windows, it could make things worse when it’s coming from an AC unit that’s blowing air around a closed room

---

quote:

---

Air conditioners will take air and re-circulate it through the room, and it's through that mechanism that these coronavirus droplets can be transmitted," said Qingyan Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University.


Chen pointed to what happened on the Diamond Princess cruise shop, where 700 out of 3,000 passengers got sick. "After quarantine, many people still got sick on the ship and I suspect that the air conditioning system could played a role there."

---

quote:

---

It’s purely political at this point.

---