Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, go ask
Speaker 1: Alice when she's ten ft tall. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Volcan, and I'm Joe McCormick. I was rather surprised
Speaker 1: by that one, Johnathan, Well, you know who that's by, right, Jefferson.
Speaker 1: It's Airplane. It's from the n album fun Fact, y'all.
Speaker 1: I have seen Starship in concert, yeah, at the Riverbend
Speaker 1: festival in Chattanooga, which likes to bring lots of fans
Speaker 1: that used to be rather big, that used to be good.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a Starship used to be good.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess Starship used to be Jefferson Airplane,
Speaker 1: which was used to be good. Yeah. So this episode
Speaker 1: is not about Jefferson Airplane, but we will be talking
Speaker 1: about airplanes quite a bit. Sure. We wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about a sort of different way of addressing the how
Speaker 1: can we live a healthier future question today? So on
Speaker 1: this podcast we talked about all kinds of vaccines, medical treatments,
Speaker 1: weird new surgeries, bug venoms you can take to cure
Speaker 1: your diseases. But one thing we haven't talked about much
Speaker 1: is environmental engineering for better health, trying to make a
Speaker 1: space that a lot of people are sharing for any
Speaker 1: given amount of time as pathogen free as possible, right,
Speaker 1: because we cannot all be hermits as often as we
Speaker 1: want to. I mean, we feel the stress of this sometimes.
Speaker 1: Working in an open office as we do, there perhaps
Speaker 1: not as many walls, dividers, barriers and so forth as
Speaker 1: we might like. We have a we have a very
Speaker 1: uh proactive manager who is is keen to send people
Speaker 1: home should they exhibit any sign ins or symptoms of illness. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sadly she is not in our Atlanta office anymore. So
Speaker 1: I worry about what flu season is going to be
Speaker 1: like next year. Oh man, there was a while back
Speaker 1: I was I had a cough and I felt so
Speaker 1: bad being in the office, but I had stuff I
Speaker 1: had to do. Uh, everybody's looking at me, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I know, I'm sorry. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, we're going to talk about environments like airplanes
Speaker 1: or even trains, things things where you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people in an enclosed space, and what can you
Speaker 1: do or what can be done to make those uh,
Speaker 1: you know, cleaner safer for people less likely to spread
Speaker 1: a disease. Should someone who is infected with something get
Speaker 1: on that that or get in that enclosure? Sure, because
Speaker 1: it's not just common sense that these you know, tubes
Speaker 1: of mass transit are going to probably have some some
Speaker 1: bugs flying around him. Yeah, um, they're is plenty of
Speaker 1: actual evidence of this, oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, Now the numbers vary. I've seen
Speaker 1: as low as sixteen and as high as twenty two,
Speaker 1: but around twenty or so people aboard an international flight
Speaker 1: were infected by a single passenger who had STARS. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a serious issue there. In fact, it's in
Speaker 1: the name. It's a very dangerous condition to a disease
Speaker 1: to contract. And I think ultimately sixteen people also came
Speaker 1: down with stars, but there were as high as twenty
Speaker 1: two were infected in some way, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people pointed to that to say, here's a way how
Speaker 1: where air travel can end up being a vector for
Speaker 1: a disease to spread very rapidly, because then you you
Speaker 1: expand that not just to the people who are on
Speaker 1: board the flight, but then the folks they come into
Speaker 1: contact with after the flight is over, and this also
Speaker 1: becomes a starting point for every zombie outbreak movie you
Speaker 1: have ever seen or the novel you've ever read. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a long overseas flight. It's almost like a sort of
Speaker 1: like culture dish. Yeah, human one, and you hear about
Speaker 1: things like recycled air. We'll talk about that in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh. You know, it sounds like you're seated
Speaker 1: next to people for most of the flight, you aren't
Speaker 1: really able to move around, You can't really separate yourself
Speaker 1: from everybody else. So it's it's a prime candidate for
Speaker 1: UH disease to spread from person to person. So we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that. But in order to
Speaker 1: understand all of this, we really need to kind of
Speaker 1: lay a foundation. So we usually do that on this show.
Speaker 1: We like to start from the ground and work our
Speaker 1: way up. So I thought it'd be important for us
Speaker 1: to actually talk about what pathogens are sure, So this
Speaker 1: is going to mean that we're limiting the discussion today
Speaker 1: to communicable diseases, not diseases like not how to engineer
Speaker 1: environments to prevent you from getting back pain or something
Speaker 1: right to to stop the spread of bacteria and viruses germs. Right, So, pathogens,
Speaker 1: most of the pathogens will be talking about in this
Speaker 1: episode fall into one of two categories that they are
Speaker 1: biological agents that cause disease or illness to a host.
Speaker 1: Usually we talk about multicellular organisms being the host, although
Speaker 1: there are unicellular pathogens as well, or pathogens that can
Speaker 1: affect unicellar cellular organisms that is, but we're not unicellular,
Speaker 1: so we're not really concerned about that in this episode.
Speaker 1: You don't care if the bacteria on your skin gets sick.
Speaker 1: You might you might need to depending upon what the
Speaker 1: bacteria are supposed to do, but at any rate, um
Speaker 1: the two types we're really going to be talking about
Speaker 1: our bacteria and viruses, and so we need to explain
Speaker 1: the difference between those. And the differences are many between
Speaker 1: the two. Although we often if you know, if you're
Speaker 1: not if you're not keen on your science, like you
Speaker 1: haven't really studied biology very much, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to mix up the two, you know, or get
Speaker 1: confused over which which ones are treated by antibiotics versus vaccinations,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, right, especially because in a lot
Speaker 1: of the common types of diseases that they cause. The
Speaker 1: symptoms tend to be really similar, right, Yeah, The symptoms
Speaker 1: for diseases that are caused by bacterial infection or a
Speaker 1: viral infection can be very similar, and so they can
Speaker 1: be a little confusing. Which are the ones that cause
Speaker 1: the zombie outbreaks? It's typically a virus, but you know
Speaker 1: it's well, and these are modern times, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot more fear of viruses. I think therefore also
Speaker 1: random radiation that can also and I guess you could
Speaker 1: say that viruses are sort of zombies themselves, both living
Speaker 1: and not. Yeah. Yeah, So let's start with bacteria. Bacteria
Speaker 1: single cell micro organisms. They're prokaryotes, meaning that they lack
Speaker 1: a membrane, any membrane bound organelles, including the nucleus. They
Speaker 1: don't have a nucleus. They are small, just a little
Speaker 1: sup of stuff inside, Yeah, a little soup pill, duff
Speaker 1: soup pill, soup pill there. They are usually only a
Speaker 1: few micrometers in length. They tend to affect the body
Speaker 1: in a localized infection as opposed to a systemic infection.
Speaker 1: So like if you get a wound that gets infected,
Speaker 1: that's typically going to be a bacterial infection rather than
Speaker 1: a viral right, and and now that can end up
Speaker 1: developing into a blood infection, which can spread through the
Speaker 1: rest of your body, and that's very dangerous obviously, infect infections.
Speaker 1: One of those big dangers of of wounds is that
Speaker 1: if if you don't bleed out, the next big danger
Speaker 1: is infection. Um. They're typically treated with anybody, so anybodys
Speaker 1: kill bacteria. They can sometimes kill both good and bad bacteria.
Speaker 1: We've talked about how our bodies are veritable bacteria cities
Speaker 1: Metropolis is oh yeah, yeah, they out number our own
Speaker 1: human cells tend to one within our bodies. So uh.
Speaker 1: And not all the bacteria that's in our bodies is
Speaker 1: actually harmful. Oh yeah, Lots of it is either harm
Speaker 1: less or or helpful. Yeah, and uh. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a really interesting study about hospitals that looked at
Speaker 1: different types of bacteria, some of which were incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1: I'll mention that a little bit later in the episode
Speaker 1: as well. Bacteria can survive and thrive even on non
Speaker 1: living surfaces. In other words, you could end up having
Speaker 1: a batch of bacteria sitting on all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you could end up, you know, coming into contact
Speaker 1: with that and getting bacteria on you as a result.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that makes bacteria pretty tricky
Speaker 1: stuff because it's not like it's it's not like it'll
Speaker 1: immediately die outside of the body. It doesn't. It's it
Speaker 1: can survive, can hang out in especially moisture, anything that
Speaker 1: has water on it or in it baia. A lot
Speaker 1: of them can even multiply in that in that case,
Speaker 1: not just inside a body. When they infect another organism.
Speaker 1: They survived between cells. In other words, they aren't inhabiting cells.
Speaker 1: They're surviving with you, between all the different cells, so
Speaker 1: they are inter cellular. Then we have viruses, which are
Speaker 1: small protein structures that contain either DNA or RNA. Whether
Speaker 1: they are a form of life or not is a
Speaker 1: matter of debate because they exhibit some aspects that we
Speaker 1: associate with living things and they lack other things. So
Speaker 1: they do replicate, but they replicate by infecting a host cell.
Speaker 1: Typically it's a specific type of host cell for that
Speaker 1: particular virus. They tend to have these old protein markers
Speaker 1: that have them seek out specific types of cells and
Speaker 1: latch on and then inject a bunch of their DNA
Speaker 1: or RNA, whichever the case may be, into that host cell,
Speaker 1: and they turn the host cell into virus making machine
Speaker 1: until the host cell is essentially consumed from within and
Speaker 1: bursts and with all the new little viral bits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they all go launching off looking for other cells
Speaker 1: and so on and so fourth. Uh So that's horrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty nasty stuff. Uh. They require a living host to multiply.
Speaker 1: They don't multiply outside of a host because they need
Speaker 1: that cell to infect. They cannot replicate on their own. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are intracellular because they infiltrate cells. Now, they are
Speaker 1: much smaller than bacteria. Said, bacteria tend to be a
Speaker 1: few micrometers in size. Viruses tend to be between twenty
Speaker 1: and four hundred nanometers in size. One thousand nanometers is
Speaker 1: one micrometer, So they are much smaller than bacteria are.
Speaker 1: And a viral infection is systemic rather than localized. It
Speaker 1: can be treated with anti viral medications, but this typically
Speaker 1: slows down the viruses replication. It doesn't necessarily stop it.
Speaker 1: It gives your bodies immune system enough time to deal
Speaker 1: with the virus itself. Uh. You can also get vaccinated
Speaker 1: vaccinations typically involve in get an injection of a dead
Speaker 1: virus of whatever type you are immuni immunizing yourself against,
Speaker 1: and then you have an immunity to that particular strain
Speaker 1: of the virus, not necessarily all strains of that virus, right, right,
Speaker 1: but it lets your body recognize that certain type of
Speaker 1: virus and fight it off in the future, right, just
Speaker 1: say no way, mr and and turn it away. So, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that those are the major differences between the bacteria and
Speaker 1: the viruses. Uh. You know, you mentioned Joe that that
Speaker 1: wounds are really you know, if you have an infection
Speaker 1: with a wound, it tends to be a bacterial infection,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely true. Virus can enter through a wound.
Speaker 1: Oh sure. Your your skin is really your body's very
Speaker 1: best defense against viruses and bacteria and other pathogens as well.
Speaker 1: Your your skin is designed to be this terrific uh wall,
Speaker 1: like like a giant fortress wall against that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But but these things can get in either through cuts
Speaker 1: in your skin or through your mucous membranes around your eyes,
Speaker 1: your nose, your mouth, et cetera. And then of course
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other types of parasites they can
Speaker 1: get at you, such as malaria. Neither a virus nor bacteria. Sure,
Speaker 1: there's also UH fungi. There toxins that are also pathogens.
Speaker 1: So there are other types, but the two were mainly
Speaker 1: concerned with our viruses and bacteria. Those are the two
Speaker 1: that tend to be passed from a person who is
Speaker 1: infected to a person who is not UH, and so
Speaker 1: we wanted to specifically focus on that. And also in
Speaker 1: order to talk about how to make places, especially things
Speaker 1: like airplanes and trains that sort of stuff safe, we
Speaker 1: have to look at how are these these various pathogens
Speaker 1: passed from infected to healthy. Sure, so ever since the
Speaker 1: early sixteenth century, we've known that diseases are mostly spread
Speaker 1: by evil night vapors. When you check your humors to
Speaker 1: see if they are in balance, and you know there's
Speaker 1: an imbalance of humors, you know you had a case
Speaker 1: in the vapors. You know, we do still have kind
Speaker 1: of a well. Another popular theory, of course, used to
Speaker 1: be the miasma theory. You know that it was like
Speaker 1: there's something in the air and well, you know, you
Speaker 1: would have a foul smell. You would associate the foul
Speaker 1: smell with some sort of disease and then therefore the
Speaker 1: smell was what was causing the disease, right, And we
Speaker 1: know that's not true scientifically now, but it does still
Speaker 1: sort of have a very strong intuitive appeal, like the
Speaker 1: idea that there's just sort of like some bad air
Speaker 1: around somewhere and it's like, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: near that. Yeah. Yeah, Well it's it's not entirely inaccurate technically,
Speaker 1: because some bacteria and viruses can spread through the air.
Speaker 1: That's true. Sure, you can have airborne contact to contractive
Speaker 1: virus or bacteria like a thing that can be expelled
Speaker 1: in droplets when somebody coughs or sneezes, right, Yeah, sneezing
Speaker 1: in particular is pretty nasty because it's like a bazooka
Speaker 1: blast of pathogens from someone who is who is actually
Speaker 1: infected with some form of illness, whether it's the flu
Speaker 1: or the common cold or something similar. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: expelled droplets containing the pathogen, which if you come into
Speaker 1: contact with them, if you breathe them in, or you
Speaker 1: otherwise are touching surfaces, if it's a bacteria, and you're
Speaker 1: touching surfaces that have been affected by this and then
Speaker 1: touching your eyes or anything like or you eat or
Speaker 1: anything like that, you could be introducing that same pathogen
Speaker 1: into your body. Uh. There's also some that can be
Speaker 1: passed through direct contact. That's like your scary door knob yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be more like that. Or or even say
Speaker 1: you you get on the plane. Everyone on your plane, everybody,
Speaker 1: every single other person that is getting on the plane
Speaker 1: perfectly healthy, not a problem. Person who got on the
Speaker 1: flight before you, very sick, sat in the same seat.
Speaker 1: You are in direct contact with that seat that they
Speaker 1: have had contact with they were in a very long flight.
Speaker 1: You could potentially pick something up that way. Planes generally
Speaker 1: are disinfected in between in between flights. Yeah, sure, well,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's one of the reasons why when a
Speaker 1: plane has been deplaned everyone has left, there's still a
Speaker 1: at least a half hour, usually half hour more between
Speaker 1: then and when the people are allowed to board the plane,
Speaker 1: because the plane actually does have to be serviced, and
Speaker 1: by that it means lots of stuff, including disinfecting surfaces.
Speaker 1: Those loose potato chips that you find in your airplane
Speaker 1: seats are a gift to you from the airplane nomes
Speaker 1: and you should definitely eat them. Okay, what about the
Speaker 1: types of diseases you get from kissing people like mono? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's oral transmission. You can have oral transmission or just
Speaker 1: spitting in each other's mouth, that would again be oral transmission,
Speaker 1: also known as the smoochy smoochy sickness. Um. That that's
Speaker 1: one method. Uh. There are a lot of other ways
Speaker 1: of getting very sick through oral transmission, including very unpleasant
Speaker 1: ones the oral fecal transmissions not pleasant to think about.
Speaker 1: It does happen not as frequently in developed nations as
Speaker 1: in other places where sanitation is not as as uh
Speaker 1: strong water supply issues. Yes, that was a common way
Speaker 1: that polio was spread, right, Yeah, it was through people
Speaker 1: like swimming in water where there was a fetal to
Speaker 1: oral transmission route. So it's it's definitely one of those
Speaker 1: things that can happen. It's less likely to happen, but
Speaker 1: it can mean depending again on the hygiene of the
Speaker 1: people who are also around you. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of these means of transmitting diseases, but these are
Speaker 1: the main ones we would focus on for public spaces. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are other methods. I mean there's sexually transmitted diseases,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about airplanes and trains, so for the
Speaker 1: large portion of the people actually using these, that's not
Speaker 1: going to be a factor. Put your genitals on the
Speaker 1: public transportation, please don't. I've seen it happen. So, speaking
Speaker 1: of all these different of transmission, the ones that were
Speaker 1: specifically looking at oral and airborne in direct contact, that
Speaker 1: tells you, all right, well, here are the main ways
Speaker 1: that a disease can be transmitted. Airborne's probably the the
Speaker 1: the actually the one that's most frequent in at least
Speaker 1: in the case of a lot of people in an
Speaker 1: enclosed space. So with that in mind, how can we
Speaker 1: perhaps design environments to better protect against that sort of thing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it seems like if we know what the vectors
Speaker 1: are like, if you know the routes that these diseases
Speaker 1: are trying to exploit in order to infect new people,
Speaker 1: you should be able to put up barriers to those vectors, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you at least can take it into
Speaker 1: account and say what sort of design elements can we
Speaker 1: put in place that are best going to protect people
Speaker 1: while not negatively impacting their experience. While you know you
Speaker 1: don't want to have a little isolation tubes descend and
Speaker 1: and surround each person. Oh actually, I totally want that.
Speaker 1: There's no space on an airplane already that you wanted
Speaker 1: to be further confined with an isolation too, Yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 1: just pump the air. You don't need as much leg
Speaker 1: room as well. In general, what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: sort of mechanical methods of protection from disease. An analogy
Speaker 1: would be if you're talking about malaria. One way that
Speaker 1: people have found is very effective in treating malaria rather
Speaker 1: than you know, medications and things, is just mosquito nuts.
Speaker 1: The prevention just having a barrier in place that prevents
Speaker 1: the infection vector from getting to you. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: thing we can do, and and people actually will do,
Speaker 1: is look at hospitals and say, what are the most
Speaker 1: effective means of preventing transmission of disease in a hospital environment?
Speaker 1: Because as you would imagine hospitals, clearly there are two
Speaker 1: big things come along with it. One, you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of sick people there, so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunity for disease to pass from one person to the next.
Speaker 1: Is where the sick people go. Yeah, and the other
Speaker 1: one is that you've got people who are in very
Speaker 1: delicate states. They may have compromised immune systems, so you
Speaker 1: have to be very good about preventing that from happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you also have a high traffic population of lots of
Speaker 1: people coming and going, lots of nursing staff changing over
Speaker 1: exciting plane basically right. And you've got you've got various
Speaker 1: staff visiting multiple patients. So that means there's another potential
Speaker 1: means of transferring a disease from one person to another,
Speaker 1: whether it's from one patient to another, or a patient
Speaker 1: to a member of staff, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of things that we can
Speaker 1: learn by looking at effective methods and policies and hospitals.
Speaker 1: And uh I actually saw a really cool video and
Speaker 1: read up on a project that I thought was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It's called the Hospital Microbiome Project. And they look at
Speaker 1: hospitals as ecosystems. They almost think of it as a living,
Speaker 1: breathing entity because it has its own They think of
Speaker 1: the So, who are the apex predators at the hospital?
Speaker 1: That would that would probably be insurance companies, But at
Speaker 1: any your rate, uh, at any rate, the uh SO
Speaker 1: the hospitals there, their respiratory system would be the like
Speaker 1: the HVAC system, right, the air filtration system that would
Speaker 1: be part of it. And they talk about how it's
Speaker 1: a very complex system. You've got different air pressures built
Speaker 1: up in different rooms. Right. Not all the rooms have
Speaker 1: doors that are open, so there's actually differences in air pressure,
Speaker 1: which means that directs the flow of air whether it's
Speaker 1: coming into the room or out of the room. Uh,
Speaker 1: the filtration system has to have a really good air
Speaker 1: filter in order to catch as many pathogens as possible
Speaker 1: to prevent them from spreading throughout the facility. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a complex system. They started looking at all
Speaker 1: sorts of different factors to try and determine which ones
Speaker 1: are most important, which ones correlate with the spreading of pathogens. So,
Speaker 1: for example, they started looking at things like patients the
Speaker 1: temperature of the patient's room. Now, patients generally have control
Speaker 1: over that for their comfort, right, they can set the
Speaker 1: thermostat to higher or lower, And so they wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that the room temperature was not going to
Speaker 1: be correlated with the spread of pathogens because of it
Speaker 1: is then maybe you have to take the control away
Speaker 1: from the patients. They found that there was no real
Speaker 1: correlation between room temperature and the spread of pathogens. But
Speaker 1: they did find that and this is no surprise because
Speaker 1: what Lauren had said earlier, humidity is a factor. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you've got more water droplets in the air, then
Speaker 1: you have a better chance of stuff like bacteria transmitting
Speaker 1: through them. Yeah, so humidity control could actually be an
Speaker 1: effective means of limiting pathogens spreading in a hospital. So
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that the project recommends is
Speaker 1: installing equipment that would allow for the control of humidity
Speaker 1: to limit that kind of of spread. So that was
Speaker 1: really interest sting, uh, and they looked at lots of
Speaker 1: other things too. They included r f I D tags
Speaker 1: with staff so that they could track who goes where,
Speaker 1: They had different bio sensors to really look at all
Speaker 1: sorts of of criteria to kind of judge what is important,
Speaker 1: and they even went so far as to uh measure
Speaker 1: the bacteria in the hospital before it opened. They used
Speaker 1: a hospital in Chicago that had not yet opened, so
Speaker 1: they were evaluating the hospital before any patients were in it,
Speaker 1: and they took a sample of the various bacterial cultures
Speaker 1: that were inside the hospital before it even opened. Then
Speaker 1: they started measuring the new bacteria that came in once
Speaker 1: patients were admitted to the hospital, and they have a
Speaker 1: real time kind of graph that shows the different populations
Speaker 1: and how closely related they are. And they realized that
Speaker 1: the bacterial uh populations that were already in the hospital,
Speaker 1: one we're not harmful, they weren't pathogens, and two we're
Speaker 1: limiting the spread of pathogen bacteria. So they were almost
Speaker 1: acting like bodyguards in a way. And so they said,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting stuff in may tell us more
Speaker 1: about the kinds of bacteria we might want to intentionally
Speaker 1: cultivate cultivate in hospitals to help prevent the spread of pathogens,
Speaker 1: because again, bacteria is not a blanket term for bad stuff.
Speaker 1: And I found it really interesting. So I'm hoping to
Speaker 1: be able to look into more about this particular project
Speaker 1: because it seemed like such a cool way of addressing
Speaker 1: the thing, the the issue, and also could potentially apply
Speaker 1: to other environments. Now I'm not saying that we're going
Speaker 1: to be introducing tons of cultures of different types of
Speaker 1: bacteria inside of aircraft. Maybe we will, but um, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got an open office floor plan here we can
Speaker 1: and we and we all use this tiny little podcast studio.
Speaker 1: I think that we would be really just the perfect population. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know what I think we should do that some
Speaker 1: hospitals do now is that ultra violet sanitization procedure where
Speaker 1: when people leave a room they blast it with UV
Speaker 1: radiation to just kill it all. Yeah, you spacetime based,
Speaker 1: hand and naked. Yeah. And now granted the folks that
Speaker 1: the Microbiome Project would say, yeah, you don't really want
Speaker 1: to kill the bad along to kill them all? A right, Well,
Speaker 1: let the bacterial gods or them out. I'm sorry that
Speaker 1: probably was hasty. Yeah, yeah we should. I mean I
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent you can trust good bacteria to
Speaker 1: remain good, Like if you know that they're not generally
Speaker 1: pathogenic and attacking humans, are there certain scenarios where they
Speaker 1: might would they become opportunistic if somebody has a weakened
Speaker 1: immune system or something like that? I would imagine that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am not a microbiologist, so I should
Speaker 1: should I should preface everything I say all the time,
Speaker 1: just a question. I should be like, I'm not a microbiologist,
Speaker 1: but I like the color blue. Uh no, but I'm
Speaker 1: not a micro Pizza is delicious, exactly. I'm not a microbiologist,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine it's sort of like saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I know there's no record of a gerbil
Speaker 1: attacking and eating a fully grown man, but if the
Speaker 1: opportunity arose with the gerbil, do that? Because you know, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, fair enough, I'll move on. So what one
Speaker 1: thing that we could actually do in this our open
Speaker 1: office environment is install filters. Yeah, these are really really awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are the the types of air filtration
Speaker 1: systems meant to eliminate or will really capture, uh, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of pathogens that could pass through that system,
Speaker 1: especially the airborn ones. That's kind of hard to imagine,
Speaker 1: because when I think of air filtration, I think of
Speaker 1: off like the filtration rectangle that I shove into the
Speaker 1: furnace under my house to filter our heating and air
Speaker 1: and the I mean there, it looks basically like it's
Speaker 1: going to catch some hair and dust, but basically but
Speaker 1: anything very small could get through it. Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: obviously talking about a totally different level of filtration. Here
Speaker 1: is something that's able to catch stuff that's on the
Speaker 1: micrometer level. Yeah, HEPA stands for high Efficiency Particulate Arrestants
Speaker 1: Filter Particulate Arrested Squad. Sorry, there's a whole series of
Speaker 1: cops that's just based on that. So, uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: they're designed to capture particles that are point three micrometers
Speaker 1: in size or larger. So anything below that would potentially
Speaker 1: pass straight through the filter. So remember we mentioned viruses
Speaker 1: can be between twenty and four hundred nanometers, so anything
Speaker 1: that's three hundred nanometers or larger the filter could catch.
Speaker 1: But anything smaller than yes, they could potentially pass through. However,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at just the sheer number of pathogens,
Speaker 1: this would catch a lot of them, like nine, like
Speaker 1: around ninety upper ninety percentile for the pathogens of point
Speaker 1: three micrometers and size are larger and um. The thing
Speaker 1: to remember is that while they catch the pathogens, they
Speaker 1: don't kill them, right. So, if you have airborne bacteria
Speaker 1: and you've got one of these filtration systems in the
Speaker 1: bacteria gets sucked up into the filtration systems and they
Speaker 1: hit that filter so that they cannot be recycled back
Speaker 1: into the environment. They may be stuck on that filter,
Speaker 1: but they'll still be alive. Yeah. So, so don't lick
Speaker 1: your HEPA filter. And and when you are disposing of it,
Speaker 1: be very careful. If you happen to be the person
Speaker 1: who is doing this, I you know, get some training
Speaker 1: and make sure you don't shake it out over uh,
Speaker 1: I mean compromised patients right right. You just go to
Speaker 1: the waste basket and you're you're pounding it against your
Speaker 1: hand kind of like the carpet or or like the
Speaker 1: filter in a dryer. You know, take it off them
Speaker 1: after a load of laundry and you're like trying to
Speaker 1: get all the lent out. Don't do that, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be foolish. Yeah so, but they are
Speaker 1: incredibly effective and in fact, in fact, these are very
Speaker 1: similar to filters that are already in aircraft. Uh so. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of aircraft that we really essentially
Speaker 1: all aircraft that are currently in use have a filtration
Speaker 1: system that is similar to, if not identical to, Yeah,
Speaker 1: many of them do. You use hype filters. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about how we can take what we've talked about,
Speaker 1: plus some other ideas to make things like planes and
Speaker 1: trains safer from a contagion standpoint. H And a big
Speaker 1: part of it is looking at ways of using airflow
Speaker 1: to help protect people from pathogens. Right, because we've got
Speaker 1: these filters in these planes, but it takes a minute
Speaker 1: for air to circulate through a cabin and get back
Speaker 1: to one of these filters. Yeah, so that air is
Speaker 1: going to continue to be there inside the cabin until
Speaker 1: it gets pulled through the filtration system. And while it's there,
Speaker 1: you know, you have plenty of opportunity to encounter all
Speaker 1: sorts of pathogens. Now I should also add that, you know,
Speaker 1: we started off talking about the stars story, but that
Speaker 1: is really the exception, not the rule. It was an
Speaker 1: exceptional case. In fact, there are a lot of experts
Speaker 1: who say that really, when you look at it from
Speaker 1: a broad study, people don't tend to pass disease along
Speaker 1: or catch a disease while traveling. It can happen, and
Speaker 1: it is an opportune place for it to happen, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen so frequently that it's like an epidemic
Speaker 1: or anything. All that being said, one of the things
Speaker 1: you can actually do, you you can take action and
Speaker 1: make your plane right uh safe. According to experts is
Speaker 1: you can turn on the air vent and aim it
Speaker 1: so it's hitting your lap, So it's blowing down on you,
Speaker 1: hitting your lap, and it acts as kind of an
Speaker 1: air force field. And so if someone else sneezes or
Speaker 1: coughs uh, that downward air is going to help protect
Speaker 1: you from any airborne bacteria that would otherwise get into
Speaker 1: your breathing space. So that's a d I O Y
Speaker 1: approach of of trying to make your trip a little
Speaker 1: less germ infested. Little bonus fact, you can use a
Speaker 1: similar method to protect yourself from mosquitoes. Have you ever
Speaker 1: tried this? No? Yeah, apparently I've read about this. If
Speaker 1: you set up an oscillating fan and sit in the
Speaker 1: breeze of the fan, mosquitoes aren't gonna get to you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah they can't. Yeah they're they're weak, They got
Speaker 1: these weak little wings. I can't do it. They can't.
Speaker 1: I like the fact that they are. They are upset
Speaker 1: about it too, not just that they can't, but then
Speaker 1: totally picturing Luke Skywalker from from Empire strikes back. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: the same thing is true about Gary Oldman. I woke
Speaker 1: up and he could not get to me. Because I
Speaker 1: had an oscillating fan set up. Well, you better be
Speaker 1: careful to avoid fan death though, Yeah, I will be
Speaker 1: careful about that. Let's talk about also another little side
Speaker 1: note about what you can do if you're on a
Speaker 1: If you're going on an airplane trip and you want
Speaker 1: to you know, you're concerned about about the possibility of
Speaker 1: encountering pathogens, particularly if it's something like during flu season
Speaker 1: something like that. On top of using the vents set
Speaker 1: to like lower medium to blow straight down onto your lap,
Speaker 1: you might also consider carrying some hand sanitization gel. I've
Speaker 1: seen recommendations of sanitization gel that has like sanitizer has
Speaker 1: like alcohol content in it. Question. Yeah, I've actually heard
Speaker 1: it is not such a great idea to use hand sanitizer. Well,
Speaker 1: not necessarily all the time, because if you're doing it
Speaker 1: all the time then and you could be helping contribute
Speaker 1: to uh superbugs. But for something where you are in
Speaker 1: an environment where you are concerned about the cleanliness of
Speaker 1: that environment, Let's say that someone is coughing and you
Speaker 1: want to eat your airplane food, but you're worried that
Speaker 1: maybe your hands have come into contact with pathogens. You
Speaker 1: would want to clean your hands and another top on
Speaker 1: top of that, another issue is that if you go
Speaker 1: into the washroom to wash your hands, the water on
Speaker 1: airplanes is not always clean. In fact, I've seen experts
Speaker 1: suggest that if you wish to brush your teeth on
Speaker 1: an international flight, you may want to consider using bottled water,
Speaker 1: because the fecal content in airplane water in some studies
Speaker 1: has proven to be higher than what you would like
Speaker 1: it would know, I mean, we all accept some level
Speaker 1: of feces in our water, but what is unacceptable? Uh,
Speaker 1: the amount that would make you sick as is my
Speaker 1: answer to that. But I don't what that specific palpable
Speaker 1: That would definite when you can see it. But but
Speaker 1: about about hand sanitizer and hand washing both, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just want to make sure that you're not overdoing it,
Speaker 1: especially if you're I mean, you know, I would say
Speaker 1: that the more important thing is to not touch surfaces
Speaker 1: and then touch your mucous membranes immediately afterwards. But but
Speaker 1: if you do choose to use sanitizer to wash your
Speaker 1: hands before you, for example, eat a meal, then just
Speaker 1: watch out for skin dryness because all of that washing
Speaker 1: and sanitization can make your skin dry out and crack,
Speaker 1: which then introduces a new vector through which microbes can
Speaker 1: get into your body that you otherwise would have been
Speaker 1: protected from. So if you are going to do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, maybe just carry a little bottle of
Speaker 1: moisturizer to use after you do the washing hand or sanitizing.
Speaker 1: That little one court bag is getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: That makes me wonder if a thing from Fantastic four
Speaker 1: gets sick a lot. Oh man, poor dude, he probably does,
Speaker 1: whereas I wonder if thing from the Adams family gets
Speaker 1: sick a lot. I mean, he touches everything with his hand,
Speaker 1: he does, that's all he is. But he doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a respiratory system, so that's true, so maybe he's okay. Alright,
Speaker 1: So next we we wanted to mention Also we talked
Speaker 1: about how the air filtration system is very similar to
Speaker 1: the hospital ones, including some aircraft that actually do use
Speaker 1: Heppa filters. Specifically, uh A lot of the air in
Speaker 1: uh an airplane cabin is recycled, not all of it,
Speaker 1: and it does go through this filtration system. So the
Speaker 1: air going through the filtration, you know, people talk about
Speaker 1: how you're breathing recycled here that's what's making you sick. Actually,
Speaker 1: no breathing and recycled heir is great because it's all
Speaker 1: those pathogens are being caught by the filtration system. It's
Speaker 1: before he got recycled, pre recycled. It's bad. Yeah. According
Speaker 1: to the Airport Cooperative Research Program, which is an f A,
Speaker 1: a sponsored consortium of airline and airport councils here in
Speaker 1: the United States, aeron flights is generally a mix of
Speaker 1: recycled air and air that is pulled in from outside
Speaker 1: of the airplane, which, certainly when you get to cruising
Speaker 1: altitude is fine. Nothing's really living in that air at
Speaker 1: that point. Um. It is filtered before they put it
Speaker 1: directly into your plane. So if you're concerned about kem trails,
Speaker 1: which you shouldn't be, uh, then then you know that's
Speaker 1: taken care of. Um. And and that air is supposed
Speaker 1: to be exchanged some ten to fifteen times per hour
Speaker 1: while you're on a flight. So so that's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually a good system. So if we move, But
Speaker 1: I'm sure the water is also not supposed to have
Speaker 1: fecal matter, yes, well, and I should I should add
Speaker 1: that this is not something that's that's found across all aircraft,
Speaker 1: across all airlines, all the time. It was just there
Speaker 1: was a study done in which out of I think
Speaker 1: there was something like a hundred and thirty airplanes where
Speaker 1: they tested the water and something like twenty of them
Speaker 1: came back with that's a significant number, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's more than zero. Yes, it's it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things where again, you know, if you're aware of it,
Speaker 1: then you can take precautions against it. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is particularly important if you are someone who, let's say
Speaker 1: that you know that your your immune system has been
Speaker 1: compromised in some way. It's important for you to know. So,
Speaker 1: but let's let's look at some ways that are being done,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that's outside of the filtration systems in
Speaker 1: the d I Y methods, some proposals that could also
Speaker 1: help protect people. So there was this was what was
Speaker 1: actually inspired this podcast in the first place, the story
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, which is at a high school
Speaker 1: student named Raymond Wong one first place at the Intel
Speaker 1: International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh on May fifteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, and he was specifically looking at using
Speaker 1: airflow kind of like what we were talking about with
Speaker 1: the events UM to design aircraft cabins where the airflow
Speaker 1: itself would protect passengers from the spread of pathogens, airborne pathogens,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. And he did this by running
Speaker 1: various computer simulations and uh it did I think thirty
Speaker 1: two different computer simulations showing what would happen in a
Speaker 1: sneeze with different types of airflow. The animations are pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: He used a dark blue color to represent the spread
Speaker 1: of the sneeze and so you watch the different uh
Speaker 1: computer simulations like whoa, that would make it way worse
Speaker 1: or this would essentially mean you're just sneezing on yourself.
Speaker 1: Like That's kind of how it turned out. But it
Speaker 1: was interesting to see the different simulations. And he one
Speaker 1: first place and seventy dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Now, while this
Speaker 1: was a cool idea, and while he was awarded first place,
Speaker 1: there are those who have pointed out that perhaps it's
Speaker 1: not as grand an idea as you might first consider.
Speaker 1: Wong himself had said that the um the design would
Speaker 1: end up increasing fresh air availability in the cabin by
Speaker 1: a hundred nine percent and that would cut down on
Speaker 1: pathogens more than so. It's really pretty impressive, but um,
Speaker 1: some experts have said, you know, it may be that
Speaker 1: it prevents the immediate spread of the pathogens through the air,
Speaker 1: but you still have the droplets to contend with, and
Speaker 1: some of those are going to be traveling at least
Speaker 1: around the immediate area, and that you would you could
Speaker 1: still encounter those pathogens. It's just that, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're like three rows ahead, you might not be but
Speaker 1: if you're next to the person, you probably would still
Speaker 1: be exposed to them. So it's just a good idea
Speaker 1: to you know, keep that hand washing and moisturization combo
Speaker 1: in mind just in case. So, but it was it
Speaker 1: was neat to see a student come up with a
Speaker 1: clever means of potentially protecting people. Whether this ever gets
Speaker 1: built into actual aircraft as part of the design is
Speaker 1: another matter entirely. It may never be incorporated directly there,
Speaker 1: although it is very similar to that method we talked
Speaker 1: about about turning the vent on and having it pointing
Speaker 1: down at you. What about other practical ways that we
Speaker 1: could re engineer our airplane environments. Well, one thing would
Speaker 1: be addressing a different vector, because right now we're talking
Speaker 1: about the airborne vector disease spread, which is very common
Speaker 1: and probably the main thing we should worry about. But
Speaker 1: what about contagion by contact? Right now? On aircraft, Again,
Speaker 1: assuming that they're doing the you know, the clean walk
Speaker 1: through between flights, you shouldn't have to worry too much
Speaker 1: about the in the first place. But there's a way
Speaker 1: you could add to that that security. Plus, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about something like a train where they obviously are
Speaker 1: not going to walk through and clean every surface between
Speaker 1: every stop, they can't, and certainly not on Marta Atlanta, No, no,
Speaker 1: not on Martha, so probably not in any public transportation.
Speaker 1: There's just no, there's no practical way. Yeah, yeah, even
Speaker 1: if even if the demand were there, there's no practical
Speaker 1: way of of performing that. So one thing that could
Speaker 1: be done is that you could start using materials that
Speaker 1: are antimicrobial in the actual upholstery of any sort of
Speaker 1: cushions you might use. Now, granted Marta it's all hard plastic.
Speaker 1: There are very few trains. There might be one or
Speaker 1: two that still have the cushiony chairs, but they are
Speaker 1: very not terribly cushiony. They're mostly vinyl and no padding.
Speaker 1: So uh, anyway, but if you were to use sort
Speaker 1: of a cotton upholstery, you could have a silver nanoparticle
Speaker 1: infused cotton. Silver has anti microbial uh effects. Somehow that
Speaker 1: sounds expensive. Well, here's the thing. We're talking nanoparticles, right,
Speaker 1: so you don't need a lot of silver started into
Speaker 1: a bunch of nanoparticles. So I'd imagine almost any kind
Speaker 1: of nanoparticles are probably kind of expensive a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the nice thing but we actually do use silver
Speaker 1: right now and things like um like uh bandages, there
Speaker 1: are bandages that have silver nanoparticles in them because of
Speaker 1: that antimicrobial effect. Yeah. There, it's incredibly effective. It is. Uh.
Speaker 1: Usually you're looking actually at an eye on the silver
Speaker 1: and it ends up disrupting the bacterial cells and killing them.
Speaker 1: So it's very effective in that. So imagine that you
Speaker 1: had this stuff used to upholster a seat. Then that
Speaker 1: anti microbial effect would mean that any bacteria that landed
Speaker 1: on that at least any bacteria that are um vulnerable
Speaker 1: to silver would not be viable for very long. They
Speaker 1: would they would they would die. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: types of bacteria that are resistant, they don't they aren't
Speaker 1: affected by silver in that way. But again, you're looking
Speaker 1: at the best way to eliminate or at least decrease
Speaker 1: the number of pathogens to you know, increase the chances
Speaker 1: that no one on board is going to get a disease. Now,
Speaker 1: this might actually be the answer to a question that
Speaker 1: we asked in the podcast about the future of fashion,
Speaker 1: about whether people are ever gonna just be naked all
Speaker 1: the time. And of course the problem was it's not
Speaker 1: really sanitary. Yeah, that's that was the conclusion. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you just made everything that people might publicly
Speaker 1: sit on or whatever out of all the silver stuff there,
Speaker 1: you go, well, I mean, it'll kill the bacteria, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's still be gross. Yeah, still be pretty gross.
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking about the heat wave we're currently experiencing
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and how much I personally am sweaty, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to subject anybody else to that. And
Speaker 1: I knew they don't want me to do it, because
Speaker 1: they've told me. But but yeah, to to talk about
Speaker 1: the silver and nano particles, I mean, they've actually proven
Speaker 1: that a a some cotton that has been infused with
Speaker 1: silver nano particles and cured, And it's not just that
Speaker 1: you dip it in the stuff, you have to actually
Speaker 1: treat it. Um can reduce the cell counts of certain
Speaker 1: types of bacteria like E. Coli. In fact, it can
Speaker 1: reduce it by n That is really significant. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. So are we going to see silver cotton
Speaker 1: door knobs in the future and silver cotton handrails? That
Speaker 1: sounds delightful. Unlikely though, I mean, you could technically work
Speaker 1: in the silver nano particles into other things besides cotton.
Speaker 1: That's just what they've used in the experiment. So all
Speaker 1: of this, you know, as kind of scary as it
Speaker 1: can sound, it's not by any means meant to to
Speaker 1: scare you guys. No, no, really, we were wanting to
Speaker 1: look at what are the potential ways that we could
Speaker 1: limit pathogens from spreading. But to be honest, they don't
Speaker 1: spread that quickly in aircraft, at least not according to
Speaker 1: a study that was performed in two thousand nine by
Speaker 1: the European Center for Disease Control, they were looking at
Speaker 1: disease transmission. I think they were looking at a list
Speaker 1: of twelve different diseases and they looked across a broad
Speaker 1: range of flights and found that the rate of onboard
Speaker 1: transmission of diseases was really pretty low. Like, it's not
Speaker 1: a frequent occurrence, so it's not something that is again
Speaker 1: like anywhere close to an epidemic level. It's just one
Speaker 1: of those things like how can we make it better.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's a broken system or that you're
Speaker 1: guaranteed to get sick the next time you get on
Speaker 1: an aircraft, it's just how can we make those chances
Speaker 1: even lower? Right, So that's that's good news. There are,
Speaker 1: of course exceptions. So sometimes if if someone is infected
Speaker 1: with a really contagious disease, whether that's another passenger or
Speaker 1: a flight attendant, there are opportunities for that disease to
Speaker 1: pass on to other people, particularly flight attendance. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're going to be stopping at a lot more people
Speaker 1: and have potentially contact with lots more people, including handing
Speaker 1: over things like snacks and drinks that kind of stuff. Sure,
Speaker 1: there are also differences between a first class passenger being
Speaker 1: infected and an economy class passenger being infected. Another study
Speaker 1: that was published in two thousand nine, this one out
Speaker 1: of U c. L A, looked at the spread of
Speaker 1: influenza A H one and one on commercial air flights
Speaker 1: and it found that yes, being in the larger population
Speaker 1: larger cabin area and less personal space of an economy
Speaker 1: class cabin does lead to higher rates of passenger infection.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you can afford to fly first class,
Speaker 1: it might be worthwhile, especially if you're taking very long flights.
Speaker 1: You also get infected by a much more affluent class
Speaker 1: of bacteria, right right, you know, it's it's the kind
Speaker 1: of bacteria that go really well with uh, with caviare
Speaker 1: and they do, and they really have those neutrals worked
Speaker 1: out this year. Um. But uh, other than other than that,
Speaker 1: you know, mostly just be aware of your body's defense mechanisms.
Speaker 1: You know, if your immune system is compromised, or if
Speaker 1: you are in close contact with someone who's immune system
Speaker 1: is compromised, then talk to your doctor about you know,
Speaker 1: hand sanitizers and personal filter masks and any other countermeasures
Speaker 1: that you might be able to take. If you're healthy,
Speaker 1: you don't honestly need to worry that much. You know,
Speaker 1: get rest before and after you travel, Drink some water.
Speaker 1: Hydration is usually good. Eats and vegetables maybe, uh, try
Speaker 1: not to touch shared surfaces and then immediately touch your eyeball. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good, good advice in general. And if you guys
Speaker 1: are sick, could cover your mouth and nose when you
Speaker 1: cough and sneeze. Were you raised by flying wolves? Yes?
Speaker 1: But still, I mean, you know, I have to conform
Speaker 1: to societies norms. When you fly on a plane. Do
Speaker 1: you ever wear one of those surgical masks just to
Speaker 1: mess with people? Really, the surgical mask is better to
Speaker 1: be worn by someone who has some form of of
Speaker 1: that's not that yeah, yeah, because yeah, well as opposed
Speaker 1: to they're The thing is, I think the perception is
Speaker 1: that you wear it to prevent yourself from getting sick,
Speaker 1: but really you're wearing it to prevent other people from
Speaker 1: getting what you have, because it's it's a great filter
Speaker 1: for catching anything where you call for sneeze out because
Speaker 1: you've got a mask on, as opposed to filtering out
Speaker 1: stuff that's coming in. Uh. That's why doctors wear them
Speaker 1: during the medical procedures, so they don't pass any germs
Speaker 1: onto their patients who are already in a compromised uh
Speaker 1: you know, their their immune systems may be compromised by
Speaker 1: whatever that procedure is. You don't want to sneeze into
Speaker 1: somebody's tour. So no, it's generally frowned upon so yeah,
Speaker 1: so what when if I were wearing a mask? So
Speaker 1: you're thinking of if people are aware of that fact,
Speaker 1: they immediately assume that you have something. You're just assuming
Speaker 1: that everybody has a false impression that you're just being paranoid.
Speaker 1: I this is way too much time to spend on this.
Speaker 1: It's a safe assumption. And mostly what I want to
Speaker 1: put out there is that everyone should just dress cyber
Speaker 1: goth whenever they go on an airplane. You know, I
Speaker 1: do kind of wonder about these these sorts of systems,
Speaker 1: like if we are able to continually in engineer environments
Speaker 1: that edge closer and closer to being totally pathogen free,
Speaker 1: would that be good for us? So the idea being
Speaker 1: that if we were to eliminate pathogens, or so close
Speaker 1: to eliminate them that it's practical to say they no
Speaker 1: longer exist, would it be good for us, because if
Speaker 1: we ever were to come into contact with the pathogen
Speaker 1: system would go Yeah. I mean, I don't think we
Speaker 1: would ever create a world where they don't exist. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying like, in our environments, were increasingly controlling all
Speaker 1: the aspects who are of our environments to a very
Speaker 1: tiny level, and we're using air filteration to get rid
Speaker 1: of viruses and bacteria, and we're sanitizing all our surfaces
Speaker 1: with the UV radiation. I mean, what like, is that
Speaker 1: going to be bad for our health? I would say,
Speaker 1: in at least certain applications, is absolutely necessary for things
Speaker 1: like hospitals. Well yeah, in other environments, I would really
Speaker 1: have to question the validity of the methodology because not
Speaker 1: not whether or not it was effective, but whether or
Speaker 1: not it was warranted, right, Like, what is the risk
Speaker 1: of contagion? What sort of diseases are we talking about?
Speaker 1: What what's the population like in that particular environment? Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know zombie outbreaks do happen? Then, yeah, wipe down
Speaker 1: those surfaces, real good guys, cover your mouth, cover your
Speaker 1: mouth zombies. Um, but I can't even get a good
Speaker 1: brains out because of the Coughing's right, right? But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I am kind of along the
Speaker 1: belief system of like occasionally you should eat some dirt
Speaker 1: and lick some surfaces, uh, just just to just to
Speaker 1: you know, refresh your immune system, get it working good,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I mean, not not really, but I
Speaker 1: I try really hard to not worry too much. About
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, especially with all the research that
Speaker 1: we've done about anti microbial issues and building superbugs and
Speaker 1: you know so so for hospitals, Yeah, for for situation
Speaker 1: students in which people could be genuinely harmed by stuff,
Speaker 1: all the all the cleanliness do it do. But I
Speaker 1: think I think in certain environments where you know, you
Speaker 1: have the risk of of diseases spreading quickly and potentially
Speaker 1: affecting a lot of people outside of that initial transmission area,
Speaker 1: then we need to think about it. So things like
Speaker 1: public transportation or aircraft or schools where you've got you know,
Speaker 1: fairly large populations all in an enclosed space. Outside of that,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, let's not worry about it
Speaker 1: too much unless you're talking about a really serious outbreak,
Speaker 1: in which case obviously you have to start reconsidering your
Speaker 1: options for day to day. I would say I would
Speaker 1: never have a house that would have all this technology
Speaker 1: built into it. I don't think that that would be warranted.
Speaker 1: I think it would be an unnecessary expense. I think
Speaker 1: ultimately I would be get doing myself more harm than good.
Speaker 1: And I would recommend people, you know, be aware of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, but don't don't get obsessed with it, right,
Speaker 1: don't let that like dictate your decisions. Um, it's that's
Speaker 1: going to end up causing you more grief than what's worth. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, a couple of days being sick because you
Speaker 1: didn't remember to wash your hands before opening up the
Speaker 1: the you know, the the seatback or whatever on a
Speaker 1: plane is not that big a deal. So I was
Speaker 1: glad that we got to look at this because it
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting to look at the engineering challenges. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I just thought of a joke I never made this
Speaker 1: whole time. Was that, Well, it would be something about
Speaker 1: if Howard Hughes had continued manufacturing airplanes, surely they would
Speaker 1: have to have like the maximum disease filteration. They would
Speaker 1: have the isolation booths and a little a little bowl
Speaker 1: for you to collect your various finger and toenails, um,
Speaker 1: so as you could have them separated by finger and
Speaker 1: everything and keep keep track of them. It would be
Speaker 1: an interesting world. However, we do not live in that world, sorry,
Speaker 1: little Howard. So that wraps up this discussion. As weird
Speaker 1: as it was, now, this was fun. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: had a chance to to look into this. If you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future episodes of podcasts or
Speaker 1: or the video series. Maybe there's something you specifically want
Speaker 1: to hear about, like how is that going to work
Speaker 1: in the future. We're eager to hear from you. Send
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses f W Thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, or you can always drop us
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Speaker 1: search fw Thinking in the Facebook search bar will pop
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