WIT Press

Forward planning for the next pandemic

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

Volume 5 (2022), Issue 2

Pages

11

Page Range

185 - 196

Paper DOI

10.2495/EI-V5-N2-185-196

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

Rockley G. Boothroyd

Abstract

This paper is mainly concerned with providing a safe workplace in future pandemics which are likely to be similar to the present COVID-19 crisis. It concentrates on methods to avoid expensive future lockdowns. More advanced air conditioners are considered which exclude the effects of dangerous viruses. Such designs which have these beneficial qualities depend on adequate basic data concerning viruses. This information is vital for adequate design of engineered equipment. These requirements are also specified here. The general insufficiency of this information is also examined. the airline industry faces a particularly complicated set of problems which are treated in more extensive depth with recommendations for an acceptable new system up to 2050. Our civil airline industry is probably the most vulnerable in a future pandemic. By exploiting the nature of modern industrial development, it is recommended that the economically destructive effects of extensive lockdowns can be largely avoided in modern economies. For want of a better name (ID-LID?), the recommended system is called ID-LIP which stands for: “inherently down-lockable industrial plant”. This approach is advantageous for the wholesale side of a nation’s economy. however, because retailing is associated closely with human sociability, which viruses also exploit, improving this commercial aspect requires different remedial methods. One of these is the more extensive use of on-line retailing.

Keywords

air travel; vaccines; virus bioaerosols; workplace health and safety