HVAC systems is what schools need. Not just reverse-cycle air conditioners, that don’t introduce fresh air or…

HVAC systems is what schools need. Not just reverse-cycle air conditioners, that don’t introduce fresh air or remove stale air. Not just windows. The NSW Government’s Covid ventilation audit of schools was a desktop audit that resulted in little more than ‘open a window’. /1 https://t.co/pLtPvFkilZ

Proper HVAC systems can seem expensive. Estimates though say it’s about 1% of the cost of the avoided infections. I think that’s conservative, given that schools are the breeding ground for much respiratory infectious disease in society. /2 https://t.co/In5HNnjES8

The other way to see this is to ask, how many other major public, or even private buildings, with hundreds or even a thousand or more occupants, don’t already have HVAC systems? How much of our ‘normal’ pre-Covid life of up to 10 colds a year was the result of this gap? /3

There’s an interesting study to be done on the role of schools in the development of the pathogen ecosystems we inhabit now. Maybe somebody has already done it. How much ‘just like a cold/flu’ is really describing the absence of basic HVAC, in schools. /4

I’m old-fashioned, I prioritise the needs of my kids above my own most of the time. It seems an appalling indictment of our culture that schools are so often shitholes for kids, physically and mentally. That we don’t even care they breathe filthy air. /5

Reality has a way of inserting itself into that stupidity. As we’re discovering now with Covid, where schools provide a constant new stream of chains of infection out into the wider community. Time for some grown-up governance, methinks. /end