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