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Leuven Info

Recycling and Separation

Step 1: know what the “fractions” are. Best separation info I have seen is the photo below:

This handy info is in the Living in Leuven from A to Z handbook under ‘W’ for waste. KU Leuven distributes the handbook at orientation. I wish there were a better photo of this somewhere. Maybe a poster? Anybody?

Step 2: get yourself some bags based on what you think you need. Maybe coordinate with neighbors as the bags are quite large for one person. Where to buy the recycling bags? I bought mine at Carrefour. Various places sell them. Ask at the checkout.

Step 3: the Recycle! app (icon below) can tell you when trash will be picked up at your address. Once you put your address in the app (ask your neighbors or landlord exactly what to enter) it tells you what will be collected what days and can remind you.

The app can also tell you where to take items in fractions that are not one of the main categories.

Note: I heard from multiple sources that in March 2021 the pink bags are going away and the items in that fraction will be joined with the blue bags – so don’t buy a lifetime supply of pink bags now.

The app cannot help you know what to separate. The grainy picture above is better than the app for that.

Groceries

  • Delhaize is good. It is the only grocery store I have been to so far. Delhaize also has a delivery option that works great.
  • Grote Markt has farmer’s food markets on Saturday. It may be everyday, but I know I saw them Saturday. I believe they are the best price.
  • ALDI has better prices than Delhaize I hear but I haven’t had a chance to compare yet.
  • There are little markets everywhere.
  • You can have restaurant food delivered with Deliveroo. Easy to use, but gets expensive fast.

Miscellaneous Shopping

  • HEMA is not the “saver” option but has many things: bed sheets, kitchen items, utensils, pots and pans, many things.
  • Carrefour is where I bought my city trash bags.
  • Action, I have not been to yet, but I think has more items like HEMA.
  • Handy Home Merckx is a big hardware store. I bought a coffee thermos and power adapter there.
  • SPIT is second-hand items so if you get lucky there and find what you want you save money. If you have extra, you can donate here.
  • Diestsestraat from the Leuven city center to the ring road, if you have a shopping list and walk that street you are sure to find many things you need. Also, the Stadskantoor (CIty Hall) is very visible at end of Diestsestraat and you will need the Stadskantoor. The train station is by the Stadskantoor as well.
  • Also Bondgenotenlaaan, which is one street over from Diestsestraat, has shopping.

Cell phone SIM card

If you need a Belgian SIM, Orange works great for €15 per month for 4Gb plus texts and 50 minutes prepaid. The data is valid for a month, so the result is usually €15 / month unless you want more minutes. If you do not need the data, the minutes and texts are valid I think 3 months so even cheaper that way.

Fun Dutch language material, click here.

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Reality Overdose

With modern technology, media, and communication, one can access unlimited amounts of whatever one wants. For me, I went “extreme reality.” For years I selected entertainment that was pure non-fiction of some form. The following is a short list of the most mind-blowing descriptions of reality that I consumed, either by reading or listening:

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I include this mostly because so many people mention it when discussing reality topics. It is good, but it takes a distant second place to Sapiens.

The History of our World in 18 Minutes, TED Talk by David Christian. Fascinating, just what the title says. The universe in 18 minutes. What to Watch 6

What is so Interesting about the Human Brain, TED Talk by Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Mind-blowing. “Man smart, therefore man make fire,” … ? No. Well yes, but, “Man make fire, therefore man get smarter.” The cause-effect is reversed according to her because of food energy. Makes sense. What to Watch 6

The Fall and Rise of China, a lecture series in The Great Courses, by Richard Baum. I listened to this beginning to end twice. The extremes of the Chinese Communist Party and China in general as a country are absolutely shocking.

What to Watch 24: Energy of an Industrialized Society. I do a pretty good job here of putting modern energy consumption in historical context – in under four minutes.

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger. This is focused on US military experience and connects the experience to our human need to feel belonging in small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding.

Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, a look at global systems from the indigenous perspective. Imagine there is an indigenous university with an anthropology department studying industrialized global systems. What he says is recognizable in everyday life.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Horari. This is the real kicker. If you want to skip the rest of reality, start with this. Every chapter, you are left thinking, “My God, no way. But yeah, sounds about right.” I personally think he goes too far in predicting a hyper-tech bionic man future with aspirations of “a-mortality,” but maybe I’m just hoping.

Sapiens asserts that a unique quality of humans is our complex language, our ability to communicate complex imagined realities, and our ability to act in unity on shared imagined realities. As he described what appears to be the probable objective reality, I felt the strong urge to immediately stop reading, and curl up into a ball until I can forget what he said and return to the blissful ignorance of human fantasy-land.

My favorite novel is The Great Gatsby. I read it for the second time in 2015 and that may be the last time I read a novel before five years of all reality. But now it’s time to return to fiction.

All, Rage and Frenzy Politics

Evan Sayet on Modern Liberalism – OK Now What

2007: Evan Sayet – Regurgitating the Apple How Modern Liberals “Think”

Historical Context

The historical context I notice is that Evan Sayet presents himself as a New York Jew who would by his upbringing typically identify as a liberal, but due to events that were recent at the time of the speech – in 2007 – he identifies politically as a conservative Republican. He uses an analogous story – starting ~9:00 – to place himself and his own political conversion within the historical context of the points he drives home.

The Perceived Problem

Modern Liberals don’t think. Starting at ~9:30 Evan Sayet reasons out exactly why modern Liberals “don’t think.”

The Actual Problem

We are all considering issues nationally instead of locally. We are getting most of our information from impersonal national sources like television and the most popular participants on social media. We are imagining that our problems and their solutions come from national change.

Liberals usually think up change and drag conservatives kicking and screaming to a better place with national change while the conservatives filter the change with prudence. Now, Liberals are thinking up how to destroy what’s been created while both sides are distracted from important local problems with nationally-created mass media and consumer culture. Neither side will give up the comfort the system provides even while the system itself crumbles.

What the Mainstream Media Says

The mainstream media blasts entertaining political provocation like this at full-volume 24/7.

My Opinion

The idea that modern Liberals have arrived at a point where they can’t find anything to change is not new. I believe it is accurate. I believe the content of the video is a mostly-accurate description of what has happened to modern Liberalism. However, there are just a few words I would alter. Instead of saying modern liberals “don’t think,” he should have said, “liberals focus exclusively on how to make change nationally through government and mass media. In their fanaticism for change, near perfection has required them to consistently mess everything up.”

Solutions

The core of the solution is to address our problems that appear national at a local level. The only way Hollywood and other national entertainment will improve is to be abandoned and replaced locally. The only way the federal government will improve is to be less by being challenged by local governments.

Evan Sayet gives the solution at 24:10. “We have to take back universities, schools, media, the entertainment industry.” I agree. This is best done with participation in local government, local decision-making, and local entertainment. If we must educate our own children because the Liberal-influenced education administrators will not do it properly, how can we get it done? Fortunately our schools are funded locally, but we must participate in their governance. How can we entertain ourselves locally? Live minor league baseball, youth sports, adult sports leagues, golf, live local bands, symphonies, plays, and concerts are the answer. Unfortunately we face the challenge to eliminate what threatens these things with complacency: TV and air conditioning. We must turn off the TV, open the doors and windows, go outside and socialize.

At 43:22 Evan Sayet says modern Liberals question authority and attack the ability to distinguish right and wrong, but we have not replaced the authority and morality with anything. We need to replace this authority locally. A return to dressing decent in public would help. Once we turn off amoral TV, what do we do? We will only know once we do it. If a state were to refuse federal funding in order to maintain sovereignty, what would be the effect? How would we fund local projects and infrastructure? Are we prepared to really challenge the power of the federal government? How can we prepare? Are we educated voters on these issues?

I list five “bad” items in my Industrial Plagues category that bring only comfort and complacency and should avoided to the max extent possible: TV, cars, air conditioning, sugar, pills. These five items are almost entirely new in our daily lives in the last century. They barely existed in 1900. Nationalism and the internet are equally as new as the “bad” five items, but they each have a good side. They bring more than just comfort and laziness. Nationalism keeps relative peace and the internet enables almost unlimited bi-directional communication. We must learn what these two things really mean in order to understand the solutions to the complete failure of national leadership. Nationalism is only effective if the large whole is made up of strong, healthy individual parts. We cannot outsource everything to the national specialization. Hollywood and Netflix cannot be our source of entertainment. The internet can enable local entertainment and I don’t mean friends on Facebook and YouTube. Blogging is a great way to experience the bi-directional internet. Blogging can be as simple as organizing your internet experience and sharing it with others in a positive way that you completely control. Pay attention to local events through the internet. The internet, unlike television and Netflix, is just as powerful locally as it is nationally.

All, Rage and Frenzy Politics

“Science”

“Science” is the labeling of what one feels like saying with the name science to give a conclusion credibility by association with real science through the word. The connection to science is often also established through implication by quoting whatever study or statistic feels like it supports a conclusion. Usually characterized by:

  • Using a personal survey of media headlines as evidence to support a conclusion.
  • Citing “a consensus of scientists” as evidence.
  • Using a correlation, however weak or even just perceived, to establish a cause-effect relationship.
  • Presenting a conclusion to an audience who mostly follows the same “science.”
  • Use of some form of the phrase, “They say…”
  • A religious adherence to a conclusion.
  • A religious dependence on what “they say.”
  • Accusation of the use of “science” by an opposing view.
  • Adherents to the religion of “science” almost always watch some TV and / or read mainstream media.
  • Reference to a well-known opposing individual or a story of a scientist who fabricated data in order to shift discussion to easier more familiar opposition.
  • Grouping complex issues into “two sides” due to low-resolution thought, short attention span, and inability or unwillingness to comprehend complexity / a continuum.
  • Reacting to a lack of evidence by shifting to a more extreme conclusion rather than adjusting hypothesis, level of certainty, or searching for objective evidence.
  • Claims of reading “both sides” to get a “balanced view,” under the assumption that the right answer is “in the middle.”
  • Misunderstanding and misapplication of the terms evidence, hypothesis, reproducible, correlation, cause-effect relationship, theory, objectively, confirmation bias, and other terms critical to disciplined science.
  • Lengthy discussions between disagreeing parties, both using “science” to support opposing conclusions.
  • Equating the opposition suggesting a bias with conspiracy theory.
Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Scientific_method

Religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Both science and religion have their place. Mixing the two, or using one or the other to harm other people is bad.

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COVID-19 Restructuring

A “shared air” virus has emerged that has entered into the public collective conscious. Fact. While few large-scale long-term changes have yet been solidified, a restructuring began in March. Just assuming some knee-jerk change remains and becomes permanent, long-term change has already occurred. If attitudes persist, the stage is set for widespread adjustment in individual decision making. What loses and what wins? To close the post on a positive note, the winners go second.

Have Lost
  • Skyscrapers. Ventilation retrofit is expensive at best. Lower density is less money. They face the challenge of convincing their tenants of their safety with respect to the shared air environment. Even if real science can determine a building is perfectly safe, the challenge remains against the alternative of guaranteed safety (work from home). Skyscrapers rely on high-density. High-density indoors has taken a direct hit globally.
  • Commercial real estate, especially office space. The work-from-home gradual movement became a revolution overnight. No longer is the worker tentatively requesting the employer to work from home. Now the employer is maybe asking the employee to return to work. Even the employer may be happier transferring the office costs to the employee. Neither is strongly incentivized to continue paying rent.
  • Commercial real estate, retail. The online buying gradual movement became a revolution overnight.
  • Urban residential real estate. People don’t go to offices and big retail malls, then people don’t have a reason to live near them. Urban landlords are searching for tenants. Tenants are asking for month-to-month.
  • Some travel. Hotels, cruises, casinos – tourism economies.
  • Airlines. Business travel, the bulk of their business, is near zero. However, airlines are more prepared for this than most people realize. Aircraft cabins, partially due to physical requirement to maintain positive pressure gradient, are very well ventilated. This video explains very well: https://www.pall.com/en/aerospace/commercial-fixed-wing/how-cabin-air-systems-work.html
  • Indoor sports arenas. Is the indoor ventilation and large space as good as being outside? Time will tell. Studies will be conducted. The people must be convinced.
  • Science and “science.” Trust and credibility of leadership is the real loser here. There has been a glut of misinformation hastily disseminated, labeled as science, but much of the information deserves the title “science.” Those who care are now more skeptical than ever and in many cases still confused by the conflicting information. Those who follow science and “science” equally are just confused. We all lose when trust is lost.
  • Public Schools. Public schools maintained a minimum education standard and integrated a wide range of people within a community from a young age. They educated and indoctrinated good citizens. They are a staple of America. Their value has historically been:
    1. Access to curriculum
    2. Paid professional teachers
    3. A disciplined environment conducive to education
    4. Collective agreement – all the other kids in town go to public school.
    5. Sports
    6. Reliability
    1. The internet has removed public schools’ information advantage making curriculum universally available to anyone who downloads it. The internet spoils the classroom in the form of distracting smartphones.
    2. With the virus, schools have to convince teachers to return to work.
    3. The virus impacts discipline by introducing multiple standards for multiple approaches to the virus.
    4. The virus forces parents and adolescents to collectively reconsider the value of school all at the same time.
    5. Sports outside school have been rising for decades as competitive parents look to give their kids an edge. Independent sports leagues now offer parents a like-minded group of peers around which to organize independent education.
    6. Public schools are not opening in many places. How much worse can it get than the school self-identifying as not essential?
The Winners
  • Sailing. naturally ventilated, the frontier of the ocean looks more attractive with the land inhabited by “sick” humans wearing masks and avoiding each other.
  • Rural high-speed internet providers. Many rich work-from-homers will require fast internet in rural places. An internet-enabled ruralization has already begun.
  • Remote Work Destinations: Estonia comes to mind with its remote worker visa and dedication to quality internet (I have heard for several years now, never been). Croatia is working on a similar visa I have heard. Tourism destinations are naturally built to handle several times their native year-round population. Currently that space remains largely unused. Do these places win or lose as the hoards of TV-brainwashed remote worker zombies descend upon them? I don’t know, but they make money.
  • Suburbia. City dwellers will not move to farms and ranches in the middle of nowhere. They will move to the first place with a house big enough for a home office that has a yard.
  • Architects. New buildings will pay more for design. Many old buildings may retrofit better ventilation. Money will be spent on building design. Building design is front and center for public health, no longer for just aesthetics.
  • HVAC. So far HVAC companies are making more money just changing filters, selling expensive germicide filters, and general attention to ventilation. Long-term they may have to come up with proven solutions. Money will be spent on ventilation, HVAC.
  • Jaywalking and other minor rule-breaking. The information dissemination by media and rule-making by the government has been so poor that people who would otherwise follow just about any rule now feel empowered to “blow them off.”
  • Street parties. Combine minor rule-breaking with a virus that primarily spreads indoors and people are finally drinking on sidewalks.
  • Speakeasies. Let’s be real. People are going to gather. This isn’t the first time the bars have been closed. This time we don’t even have to make our own booze. Let’s just hope for good ventilation.
  • Street vendors. Eat outside. Low overhead when the weather is bad.
  • Camping and RV-ing. People wanna get away! RV’s are on wait lists.
  • Chick sales. People are raising their own chickens.
  • Awnings and umbrellas. Bars and restaurants are creating as much outdoor space as possible.
  • Skylights. Let in that sanitizing UV sunlight!
  • Garage doors, especially well-insulated glass garage doors (very expensive). Bars and gyms are more viable if they can ventilate well and people feel like they are outdoors.
  • Fans. Ventilation, not enclosed air conditioning.
  • Golf. Golf courses are winning. Just ask them. You might even say golf courses are taking a piece of the office space pie!
  • Outdoor sports attendance, including minor league baseball. Hot take! I am calling it a winner. I believe people will remain skeptical of the indoors and transfer sports watching to in-person live sports. People will prefer to go to a big local stadium outdoors than crowd into a bar or stay at home to watch TV.
  • Bicycles and electric-assist bicycles “e-bikes.” With people avoiding public transit, bicycles are the outdoor way to get around. E-bikes make it even more viable long-distance.
  • Bike lanes. With more people in bike lanes, more people vote for funds for bike lanes.
  • State government power. The federal government quickly passed off decisions to the states. Governors immediately took the power and dictated. Local governments could be winners, but with many schools still shut down, local governments are missing a key component of their authority.
  • County Sheriffs. In the wake of knee-jerk outlandish dictation from on high, sheriffs became legislators overnight, deciding in many cases what would and would not be enforced.
  • Private Schools. Parents are recognizing the need to take responsibility for their children’s education. The first option by those who are willing to pay for it is private schools.
  • Trade Schools. As parents and adolescents are forced to reconsider the value of public school curriculum that has long ignored practical trade education, those willing to educate themselves, show up on time, and work for a living will quit school, stay out of debt, learn a trade, and prosper.
  • Home schooling. Many educated people already considered home schooling. Public schools are flaky at best through the pandemic. There will be more home schooling. I am not talking about isolated families holding classroom-for-two in the dining room. I am talking about parents taking responsibility and coordinating with other parents to educate their children. This is with neighbors, sports teams, classmates.
  • Video games. Sad but true. To some people, this is an opportunity to veg.
  • Home improvement. People are home. They look at their homes and make them better. Home Depot and Lowe’s sales are through the roof.
  • Pools. Sales for home pools are through the roof.
  • Local production: to the extent that trade is disrupted, local production may have a void to fill.
  • Corporate bankruptcy lawyers. Restructuring means some failures. Bankruptcy is restructure through failure.
  • Government social programs. Let’s be real, many handouts will remain and become permanent.
  • Gun sales. Gun and ammo sales are up.
  • Biotech. Money will be thrown at this. Fact.
Pent-Up Demand
  • Change management consulting. Businesses are restructuring. Currently the change is being done on-the-fly. Change management consultants are studying that change and preparing to help businesses navigate the change long-term. They will be hired once the dust settles and budgets return.
  • Personal bankruptcy lawyers. Those who will go bankrupt also spend their stimulus checks quickly. Once the government hand-outs run out, their newly improved lifestyles will turn to bankruptcy just as quickly.
Similar Articles

27 July 2020: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-death-of-the-city-coronavirus-towns-cities-retail-transport-pollution-economic-crisis/

My Personal Adjustment

As a student entering a Master’s in Engineering: Energy, I am reconsidering my class selections within the program and leaning more toward building design classes and efficiency (to include air flow) than I was before. I have begun following architects as potential employers.

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Trapped-Air Transmission Theory

I describe an aggressive focus on outdoors and ventilation. There has yet to be a single confirmed super-spread event associated with only outdoor activity despite countless indoors. Outdoors are great! Gather outdoors! If you must be indoors with others, ventilate. Open the windows and turn on a fan.
I am essentially agreeing with aerosol transmission here and saying aerosols can account for the whole pandemic without droplets. Droplets, despite fanatical media backing, have yet to be shown conclusively to be a COVID-19 spread vector and certainly not the primary vector.
Propositions
  • The virus spreads almost exclusively by aerosols.
  • The aerosols must be trapped indoors to concentrate enough to infect.
  • There is an extremely strong correlation between infectious dose and severity of the resulting infection.
Aerosol Transmission Versus Droplet Transmission

These terms sound technical. They are a little technical. I was not familiar with them prior to the pandemic. However, they are not difficult to understand and the terms are critical to understanding the transmission debate. We should be educating ourselves and understand the basic terminology.

Aerosols = micro-droplets = airborne transmission. Travel a long way in the air and can concentrate indoors. Primary prevention measures are fresh air and ventilation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_transmission

Droplets. Larger, fall from the air within about 2 meters unless propelled. Can be mitigated by physical distance and masks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_droplet

Sources Addressing Aerosol Spread

They refer to it as “enclosed space” transmission also.

March 2020: https://www.pall.com/en/aerospace/commercial-fixed-wing/how-cabin-air-systems-work.html This is an excellent description of aircraft cabin air circulation.

3 April: Viral load, infectious dose, and severity discussion: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238819-does-a-high-viral-load-or-infectious-dose-make-covid-19-worse/

1 Jun: Talks about K value of the virus and super spreading: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/k-number-what-is-coronavirus-metric-crucial-lockdown-eases

29 June: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/air-conditioning-may-be-factor-in-covid-19-spread-in-the-south/

6 July: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa939/5867798, signed by 239 scientists from around the world. My #1 favorite. These people are heroes.

8 July: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200708/air-conditioning-may-be-spreading-covid

July: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

16 July, start at position ~49:00 with the super spreader question and listen about 10 minutes, two questions answered: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-16 If you prefer to read it, go to position 0:51:00 in the transcript and read to 0:53:00: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/ep._16_transcript.pdf

30 July: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/ This is a long article unifying many of the well-known aspects of the virus into a clear image of the virus that clearly contrasts with the mainstream prevention advice.

17 August: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/ventilatie-in-het-klaslokaal-op-orde-iedere-school-zou-een-co2-meter-moeten-hebben/ In Dutch. Talks about using CO2 meters to measure the buildup of exhaled breath.

25 August 2020: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3223 Their science is aerosol spread. Good, thank you, it’s obvious. They make an attempt to justify the complete bullshit (sorry, but that’s what it’s come to) droplet theory holdout by saying that it’s old entrenched science. Nah, it’s government-influenced convenient fear tactics to advance government control. Keep fighting the good fight.

31 August: https://www.dearchitect.nl/stedenbouw/blog/2020/08/hoogbouw-na-corona-101251735 (translates well to English) Dutch architecture magazine talking about high-rise buildings post-pandemic.

December: World Health Organization! These posts are dated July, but the WHO didn’t link from their front page until ~December. The WHO still focuses on creepy dystopia “solutions” but at least somebody there is making noise about fresh air and ventilation.

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-ventilation-and-air-conditioning

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-ventilation-and-air-conditioning-in-public-spaces-and-buildings

Seeking Challenges
  • Confirmed outdoor transmission absent of indoor possibility. This is difficult as most outdoor gatherings have an indoor component as well, but not impossible . The list of indoor transmission events is long and clear and they include whole buildings independent of physical distance. If the virus were spreading outdoors, there ought to be at least one purely outdoor event  to point to … ? Anybody?
  • Confirmed droplet transmission that cannot be explained by aerosol transmission. Difficult, nearly impossible, but would be a compelling challenge.

I personally believe my theory: Anthropogenic Coronavirus Theory, is correct, and EBSRS-CoV-3 (commonly known as SARS-CoV-2), that causes COVID-19, was born indoors. Because of that, I believe:

Summary: Trapped-Air Aerosol Spread Versus General Aerosol Spread

“Trapped-air” aerosol spread is a sub-category of the more general aerosol spread. The additional identifying property of trapped-air aerosol spread is that the aerosols must be trapped in an enclosed space and concentrated without being neutralized over time to transmit a virus.

Classifying the Evidence, Key Statements
  • Evidence for aerosols cannot be explained by droplet spread.
  • Evidence for aerosol transmission does not exclude the possibility of droplet spread.
  • Evidence for droplet spread could almost always be explained by aerosol spread.
  • Aerosol spread prevents us from excluding droplets.
  • To conclusively exclude droplet transmission would require attempting to transmit from close range while blocking aerosols. Even with willing participants this would be difficult. I believe the best way to test droplets would be to host an outdoor sports event with willing participants and random seating, then control the attendees in quarantine for 14 days after the event to determine the spread during the event in an outdoor setting.
  • The best evidence for droplet exclusion as a vector is the ineffectiveness of masks in Hong Kong, but this is admittedly inconclusive and has been largely ignored thus far.
COVID-19 Transmission Strengths

The virus’ transmission strength is that it is light and floats on the air. Aerosols. Yes. We know this. It is highly transmissible and it is airborne.

The virus spreads with enormous viral load in the spreader, filling up an enclosed space thoroughly from wall-to-wall, corner-to-corner, in a room or building as the spreader simply breathes and everybody breathing in the space is infected. The virus gradually concentrates in a room, floating on the air in tiny particles. Once the virus concentration reaches a critical infectious dose threshold, it infects everybody in the space regardless of proximity to the spreader because of dispersion and gradual increase of concentration!

Even physical distancing is not the answer!

COVID-19 Achilles Heel

The virus has an Achilles heel. The virus needs something very specific that we have the power to take away:

The virus’ weakness is that it is domestic. It is an indoor virus. It needs to be trapped indoors and concentrated to spread. It is a tiny fragile RNA virus. The virus needs its friends. The virus army needs strength in numbers. The virus’ weakness is that its infectious dose threshold is high and only can reach the infectious dose threshold indoors with efficiently trapped air and time.

Some Evidence by Correlation: Known Spread Vectors Are Indoors
  • Nursing homes
  • Meat packing facilities (workers are close to one-another in refrigerated space)
  • Cruise ships
  • Hospitals to health care workers. (hospitals have compartmentalized and filtered ventilation, but not as good as an outdoor breeze)
  • Prisons
  • Call centers
  • Restaurants
  • Large housing complexes in high-density cities – spreading in hallways and through walls??
  • Entire cities with public transit and skyscrapers.
  • Young people crowding beaches are probably also hanging out indoors after a long day in the sun. Duh. You can show pictures of them outdoors but there is an indoor component as well.
  • The major proven spreaders are indoors, not outdoors.

EBSRS-CoV-3 / COVID-19 is domestic! It was born in air-conditioned space. It spreads in air-conditioned space. It lives in air-conditioned space.

We could not spread this thing faster if we tried. The virus knows us better than we know ourselves. We concentrate exhaled breath around us on purpose for efficiency in air conditioning and COVID-19 loves it!

The Solution

Be outside. If not, open the windows. Divide and conquer. Send COVID-19 outside to die. Release the virus pressure switch. Spread the enemy’s troops far from their logistical lifeline, which is concentrated exhaled breath. Go to the beach! Go to parks! Sit on an outdoor patio! A simple light breeze is your friend and protector!

Double protect. Turn on a fan. Disperse the virus army.

Triple protect. Let in as much UV sunlight as possible. Neutralize the virus army over time.

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Lab Leak or Bio-Weapon?

Bio-Weapon?

Update 8 Feb 2021. Binary poison by antibody-dependent enhancement? (ADE) Genetic immune boost (all of the “vaccines” are RNA-based, which is genetic) can be tailored to make a person’s immune system repel a virus or let it in. If you know the immune boost genetic code, you can tailor a virus that is lethal to specific injections. This would explain the motive for pushing the genetic immune boost so hard, or at least muddy the waters of motive. If you release a virus that justifies genetic injections, the long-term bio-war implications of people opening their bodies to RNA are immense.

Motive? While I believe the CCP would do this if they thought it was in their best interest – including to their own people – I do not believe Xi Jinping reached the conclusion in mid-2019 that their best course of action was to gamble and release a virus that threatens the very core of cities, of which China has the most in the world.

Previous Natural Occurrences? A bio-weapon virus would more likely be completely new. It doesn’t explain the previous related novel coronaviruses, one of which started in the Middle East (MERS). Maybe you’ll say of course they would release a natural virus in order to prevent suspicion – OK they take that measure to prevent suspicion, but choose to release it in the same city as the lab? Does not line up.

Accidental Leak from the Wuhan Virus Lab?

The director of the Wuhan lab herself considered this possibility, so it is absolutely reasonable to consider. China did not really conduct an investigation. It is indeed an enormous coincidence that the lab is in Wuhan and everything lines up that it could have leaked. It would not be the first lab leak in history. However, I personally believe in this case it is still more likely it happened naturally like the other two coronavirus epidemics.

The Wuhan Virology Lab, even if just a coincidence, is part of the coronavirus story, see below:

Osterholm asked directly about it by Joe Rogan, click here.

What a BSL-4 lab is, Wuhan is only one in China

1977 Russian flu very likely accidental release from Soviet lab, see Chapter 10 of this book, Deadliest Enemy

1977 Russian flu, see Wikipedia article

1978 Smallpox Outbreak in UK from lab leak

1989 Reston, Virginia laboratory monkey Ebola scare book

2015, Wuhan Virology Lab inaugurated

2017 SARS Virus in Bats by Wuhan Virology Lab Director Zhengli Shi and others

Current: Wuhan Virology Lab Website

Current: Zhengli Shi is the lab director

3 Feb 2020 paper (quickly) says bat origin, lab director Zhengli Shi one of authors

2020, according to this article we are taking the lab director’s word that the virus doesn’t match anything her lab studied. Case closed? Really? This is why people continue to believe it was the lab. We know lab releases have happened before. We know China lies and covers up when necessary.

This is a much better explanation, which, after several months now, I have yet to hear a good challenge.

The CCP knew the lab was going to be a PR nightmare and so probably delayed informing the world about the virus even more than they otherwise would have. The existence of the lab certainly influenced the CCP reaction.

With the amount of asymptomatic spread before being noticed, I am not even convinced 100% it actually started in Wuhan. Wuhan very possibly was just the first place it concentrated enough for the CCP to react.

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All, Comfort and Convenience Plagues

Anthropogenic Coronaviruses: A Unified Novel Coronavirus Origin Theory

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A theory is a question and I invite you to ask the question with me. If there is a clear reason why this cannot be true, or some part can’t be true, let me know and I will adjust. Send me your source please. I have been adjusting since the beginning based on the best sources I can find and I publish my current understanding for the purpose of being challenged. Thank you.

Being that this is a proposal of a twenty-plus-year phenomenon, it helps to review some medium-term urbanization and disease history for perspective.

Seeking Challenges
  • Where has there been a major increase in human contact with living, breathing animals indoors? This would be the strongest possible challenge, especially if the animals were the ones most commonly identified as the culprit, bats or camels.
  • The strongest challenge I have received is a description of unregulated industrial-scale animal food processing having increased in the same newly-modern countries where I am blaming human indoor economy. Valid challenge, but the animals are not live, indoor, or near the same scale as the humans working indoors.
  • Another challenge has been the description of mutation through hybridization between human / non-human animal viruses. Okay, this is the currently accepted explanation, but what about mutation between viruses carried by two different humans? We have a new trend and humans are the ones newly living in the conditions where the virus spreads most on a massive scale: indoor, living, breathing humans.
Summary

Coronaviruses are spreading asymptomatically among a hugely-increased population of indoor humans, developing and evolving unnoticed for years, then chance mutations are causing outbreaks. SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012, and COVID-19 – all three related coronaviruses – are connected by the same progenitor: many many indoor humans sharing “exhaled breath sewage.”

Coronaviruses have passed among humans and various non-human animals for millennia. When coronaviruses caused illness, it was mostly mild illness, little more than an inconvenience to the hosts. The relationship was mostly commensalistic – that is until humans brought the coronaviruses indoors. The coronavirus population exploded in the fertile environment of air-conditioned urban centers and it was the historically well-cultivated commensalistic relationship with humans that enabled coronaviruses to be the first evolutionary beneficiaries of the new scale of man-made air-tight-indoor-air environment. The abrupt explosion of indoor space enabled by indoor economy – especially in high-density tropical areas – propelled life on its natural evolutionary path toward new disease-causing coronaviruses. “Viral gravity” is evolutionary gravity. Three new coronaviruses have emerged in under two decades, and indoor exhaled breath sharing is not just one primary spread vector. Indoor exhaled breath sharing is the evolutionary mechanism. Large-scale indoor exhaled breath sharing is the primordial soup, the origin, the creator, the genesis. Novel coronaviruses are the very first sprouts of new life in the Anthropocene.

Assumptions

Some of the following assumptions are difficult to quantify, but I believe so extreme as to be self-evident. Even if some specific assumptions are imperfect, the trend is clear.

  • Three novel viruses in under twenty years is extremely abrupt by an evolutionary time period standard. It represents a new trend and requires something common to the three for explanation that is new.
  • The number of humans spending time indoors has increased abruptly in the last three to five decades. The increase has been coincident with the emergence of new respiratory viruses. Increased number of humans indoors has led in time the emergence of the new viruses sufficiently to indicate it is a cause of virus evolution.
  • Guangdong Province, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Wuhan, China all use a lot of air conditioning, in contrast to how they interacted before recent development.
  • Being relatively new, many of the origin cities’ buildings are built “air-tight” for central air conditioning instead of retro-fitted. Their buildings are not drafty or leaky.
  • Evolutionary genetics has shown that zoonotic transmission is involved in virus evolution. However, this has not been definitively proven to be the final mutation into a disease-causing agent.
  • Are coronaviruses known to evolve quickly? I believe they are. If they do evolve quickly, it would explain why coronaviruses are the first to take evolutionary advantage of the new collective virus reservoir of the human indoor economy.
  • Evolutionary science can be subjective / statistical. Evolution relies on chance and succeeds with large numbers of chances for low-probability events to occur. A “macro-view” is more effective at identifying an evolutionary cause by identifying a large number of chances for a low-probability event to occur than is a “micro-view,” which attempts to find the actual single event itself. The critical “single evolutionary event” in these cases almost always occurred “somewhere in the world, anytime, anyplace” – and at least a month in the past with no trained observer present.
  • Everything the virus does is consistent with thriving indoors. Our indoor economy has domesticated a virus like an invisible indoor pet that has now grown so numerous that is has turned against us and begun to make us sick.
  • We will never find a “patient zero” for a virus that seems to float on the wind, but the virus exists, and the answer can be the clearly-observable shift in the wind itself.
The Theory: “Anthropogenic Coronavirus Evolution Theory”

In the early 21st century, a new type of virus emerged causing three distinct outbreaks between 2002 and 2020. Coronaviruses, which had passed among humans and non-human animals since the beginning of time, found new fertile development ground in urban skyscrapers built air-tight with central air conditioning that allowed exhaled breath sharing to go mainstream within humanity. Human indoor economy led to a new way of sharing “exhaled breath sewage,” which in turn led to new virus evolution.

Zoonotic leap among humans, bats, camels, palm civets, raccoon dogs, ferret badgers, pangolins, and domestic cats in markets and other various locations of human / non-human animal interaction was originally theorized as the primary evolutionary requirement and origin of the viruses. Matching the virus to infected animals along with genetic markers suggested that animals were the primary reservoir. However, it was later determined that human breath sharing on a large scale in dense, newly-developed, warm-weather cities with skyscrapers built air-tight for central air conditioning was the primary reservoir and original source for all affected species in these outbreaks. Humans indoors first developed viruses with mostly asymptomatic spread hyper-enabled by large air-tight buildings. Humans passed viruses to animals, some of whom got sick, but not until humans got sick did humans finally look in the animals, find matching viruses, and point to the animals as the source.

However, as the novel coronaviruses repeatedly appeared and developed into a trend, humans noticed that the small change in human-animal live indoor contact was insufficient to explain multiple similar occurrences of indoor live human respiratory viruses. Zoonotic transmission therefore lost favor as an explanation for evolutionary development of novel coronaviruses.

The Virus Reservoir and Evolutionary Mutation

The fact that the three new viruses are all suspected to have an excellent ability to circulate among humans without causing disease indicates that asymptomatic spread among indoor humans is the reservoir. The evolutionary mutation is that the virus mutates from a benign virus to a disease-causing virus. The new scale of the indoor humans reservoir is providing the large number of chance events required for evolution.

We have three new viruses. The viruses are related. There has to be a new type of reservoir to explain it. The animals have not changed a lot. The human coronavirus reservoir has changed a lot! The critical mutations are among millions of human-human transfers and multiplication.

Naming Note
  • The alternate names for the viruses of “EBSRS-CoV-1,” “EBSRS-CoV-2,” and “EBSRS-CoV-3” are used to illustrate the point and unify the viruses. The names refer to SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 respectively.
2019: Exhaled Breath Sewage Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 3
  • AKA EBSRS-CoV-3 (formerly SARS-CoV-2)
  • First identified in Wuhan, China.
  • Wuhan China lies near 31 degrees north latitude and has more than 3.5 months per year with average daily high temperature above 27°C.
  • Wuhan China ballooned in population from 3.5 million in 1990 to over 8 million in 2020, massive new urbanization and indoor economy.
  • EBSRS-CoV-3 is known to transmit well through aerosols asymptomatically among humans, consistent with many transmission events for evolutionary purposes, especially in enclosed rooms.
  • Zoonotic transmission not yet conclusively verified despite global effort.
  • Cruise ships are a known vector, with their closed ventilation systems.
  • There are wet markets in Wuhan, but the virus seemed to “spread everywhere quickly out of nowhere,” with no clear connection to animal contact.
2012: Exhaled Breath Sewage Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
  • AKA EBSRS-CoV-2 (formerly MERS-CoV)
  • First identified in Saudi Arabia. Later determined that it possibly circulated in Jordan as well. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/about/index.html
  • Saudi Arabia is a petro-state (cheap energy for air conditioning) that has experienced a population explosion since 1980. Now 80% of its inhabitants live in 10 major urban centers, mostly in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, well within the tropics.
  • Qatar was another potential origin, a very hot petro-state country.
  • EBSRS-CoV-2 is also thought to pass asymptomatically among humans.
  • Known to infect camels and bats. Transmission from camels to humans has been observed, but no “patient zero” identified in relation to camel contact.
2002: Exhaled Breath Sewage Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 1
  • AKA EBSRS-CoV-1 (formerly SARS-CoV-1)
  • Outbreak started in Guangdong Province, China.
  • Guangdong Province lies in latitude very near the Tropic of Cancer.
  • Just north of Hong Kong, Guangdong Province is home to two of the top four Chinese cities by GDP. Guangdong Province’s GDP is larger than Spain’s GDP, and would be the 13th country in the world by GDP. Lots of humans working indoors. Indoor economy.
  • This first outbreak appears to have been more closely and reliably connected to markets and wild animals than the later two outbreaks. However, the origin is inconclusive due to CCP blocking of WHO officials for several weeks or months after the emergence of the outbreak.

Question: were the first cases in “air conditioning months” in all three outbreaks?

Question: does polluted air contribute?

Exhaled Breath Sewage Coronavirus Evolution Theory Explains the Following Better than the Zoonotic Transmission Theory
  • Why both EBSRS-CoV 2 and 3 spread so well asymptomatically among humans. Asymptomatic spread was required for virus evolution months or even years prior to identification as a disease-causing agent. People often reference the idea that a disease spreads more successfully with a low mortality rate because the host is alive to spread. Asymptomatic spread is zero mortality, which is commensalistic, which is the ideal relationship for evolving.
  • Why all three of the viruses originated in relatively warm, newly-developed cities with exploding indoor economy partially enabled by air conditioning.
  • Why three new respiratory diseases have emerged in just 20 years coincident with urban population explosion in warm regions with air-tight buildings and air conditioning.
  • Why the three new coronaviruses, that supposedly came from zoonotic transmission from different animals, are so closely related to each other. We have a very specific trend, there is probably a very specific, related cause.
  • Why EBSRS-CoV-3, the most transmissible of the three new viruses, is so mild. It gradually increased in severity as it evolved quickly until concentrating in a large city, Wuhan, China, which may or may not have been the true origin.
  • This theory is not completely at odds with zoonotic leap being an evolutionary aid to the virus development.
  • Maybe there are multiple, even hundreds, thousands, or millions of significant virus mutation events. Maybe the world has been widely infected with a mostly benign, asymptomatic form of the virus that teeters on the edge of a disease-causing mutation that occurs relatively often. Maybe any pandemic involving a brand new virus acts differently from a long-time established, maturely evolved virus. Maybe a new virus relies more on mutation and evolution continuously and therefore acts differently in predictable as well as inherently unpredictable ways. We are not dealing with a turtle virus, established in its ways after having survived millions of years of evolutionary change with its simple “head in the shell” trick. We are dealing with a young rabbit being chased by a puppy darting in every direction not knowing where to go and therefore going everywhere changing frantically at every random turn.
  • Maybe the vitamin D deficiency correlation with COVID-19 fatality does not mean vitamin D deficiency is a comorbidity but rather a second, related symptom that is correlated with being indoors and having been exposed to a higher infectious dose of the virus.
Zoonotic Transmission Virus Evolution Theory Explains the Following Better

Update: somebody help out here because trying to describe zoonotic transmission evolution theory makes it a joke. It is absolutely laughable we humans are trying to point to animals as a source.

But I will try, here we go:

  • The zoonotic transmission theory says that a virus circulates among an animal population as a reservoir until it mutates by chance and gains the ability to infect humans. Once it infects humans, it causes disease.

Or

  • Two similar viruses, one human and one non-human animal, infect the same cell in a host, hybridize by replicating together, and henceforth infect humans causing disease.

And…

It makes perfect sense so far, but I’m at a loss attempting to seriously continue:

  • Human-animal contact has increased on an unprecedented scale along with mass global urbanization. The viruses have started in poor countries with under-regulated food processing industries. The new scale of these markets yields enough increased zoonotic transfer to produce three new viruses in 20 years.
  • OK, but live human-animal contact? Indoors?
  • Are there new indoor markets? Why airborne? Why the seemingly lightest fastest aerosol-borne viruses possible?
  • Humans have gotten sick with a virus that spreads primarily indoors. If we want to say this came from animals, we need to see live camels and live bats breathing indoors, enclosed with humans. This virus did not crawl from dead bat meat into somebody’s mouth and then suddenly in just a few virus generations spread tiny virus wings and infect the world of humans, airborne, indoors all at once. Did flying fish get stranded on land, sprout lungs in a generation, and lo! mammals? No. Did some ancient monkey-sailors get caught at sea, sprout a blowhole on top of their head and start swimming, lo! whales? No. We need an intermediate environment. Unless you can show me some large-scale enclosed indoor breathing animal markets, you’re debunked. I can show you plenty of indoor breathing human virus markets: they are called cubicles, call centers, housing complexes, public transit, skyscrapers – modern human cities and also clearly recognizable as Every. Single. Confirmed. Serious. COVID-19 outbreak.
    • Note: Don’t suddenly tell me hoards of people are hanging out in bat caves. Show me a modern widespread market-driven caveman-bat-batman movement of at least 10 million people and we’ll talk. It still would not explain the camels anyway. Does the Arabian Peninsula have tons of closed-air camel garages for the wealthy now? They have never heard of Ferrari’s? The camel shit is whisked off the floor by robots or what? Would the camels even put up with that? Would humans hang out for hours in such a garage? I’m not buying it.
  • The only reason wet markets and China’s under-regulated food processing industry exist at the scale at which these species transfers are more likely is the world’s mass urbanization.
  • Genetic history marker studies? Do the zoonotic transmission claims based on genetics hold up to the scrutiny that they have been influenced by pervasive confirmation bias from the beginning? We lack conclusive cause-effect evidence to support critical genetic assumptions.
  • Hybridization by a single host being infected with two coronavirsuses, which hybridize as they multiply together within the cells? Okay, but three times in 20 years? Roll snake eyes three times in a row, go. I’ll be checking your dice.
  • Does zoonotic leap novel coronavirus evolution stand up against the idea that it still could play a secondary role in the evolutionary process? Does zoonotic leap fit in as only 10% of the process instead of 90%? I think it fits just fine in 10% of the solution, second-place to the obvious.
  • The supporting evidence for the zoonotic transmission origin theory is scant relative to the monumental efforts at collecting it. I feel justified being unsatisfied.
  • This theory appears to be an outdated assumption that has survived only by momentum of past convention. “Of course, humans get new viruses from animals,” – that is until they give new viruses to animals.
  • Observed recent changes in human-animal contact is not new enough or extreme enough to explain a major new evolutionary trend of three new viruses. This is especially true with respect to indoor human-animal contact. It is more especially true also when compared with the recent explosion in indoor human-human breath sharing contact.
Confirmation Bias Toward Zoonotic Transfer Evolution
  • There is a strong – bordering on fanatically blinding – confirmation bias for the zoonotic leap virus evolution theory among the scientific community. A single piece of evidence for zoonotic transmission or discovery of similar virus in non-human animals is often regarded as the “case closed smoking gun.” This prevents further research and discovery of the true cause.
  • There is a natural aversion to identify humans as a “virus reservoir.”
  • “Viruses are nature. Viruses have to come from nature. We are not nature, we are people!” Recognize that? Pretty familiar. That is people being ridiculous.
  • It is so widely ingrained into our psyche that, “If a virus were there, we would be sick,” that we ignore asymptomatic spread as the potential evolutionary origin of new viruses.
  • No definitive patient zero has been identified in any of the three new coronavirus outbreaks. Connection to markets and animals was inevitable due to the strength of the confirmation bias.
Humans Indoors as a Spread Vector Versus Humans Indoors as the Evolutionary Mechanism
  • “Transmission vector” has been poorly separated from “evolutionary cause.” Air-tight buildings as a new transmission vector could indeed easily explain why zoonotic-leap-generated respiratory viruses are now suddenly a worse problem. Air-tight buildings would spread new zoonotic leap viruses fast. True. Of course. However, this easy explanation prevents people from recognizing that asymptomatic transmission is essentially equal to an evolutionary cause. Asymptomatic transmission can enable evolution, not just virus spread after evolution.
  • If indoor exhaled breath sewage evolution theory is correct, one might expect COVID-19 to be seasonal and peak in the summer. However, this confuses spread vector with evolutionary mechanism. Still, if air conditioning is enabling evolution, opening the windows should be moved up the list of COVID-19 prevention measures.
If True, Exhaled Breath Sewage Evolution Theory Would Suggest
  • That though reducing contact with animals might possibly slow evolution, new coronavirus respiratory viruses will continue to emerge with or without animal contact as long as humans spend a lot of time in buildings breathing each other’s exhaled breath sewage.
  • The global response to COVID-19 will (eventually!) include sanitation of indoor air. Sanitizing indoor air will not only slow the spread of COVID-19, it will slow the development of future respiratory viruses.
  • Sanitation of indoor air should be the primary prevention measure against COVID-19 because it would also eliminate the evolutionary source of new disease-causing coronaviruses.
Air Conditioning Versus Heating – What’s the Difference?

Long story short, I cannot make an argument that there is a big difference between air conditioning and heating. Both air conditioning and heating lead to people spending time indoors sharing exhaled breath. The only difference with air conditioning is the recent increase in human-hours spent breathing indoors as a result of increased population in places that use air conditioning. Air conditioning enables large indoor economy.

  • baseboard heat would not sanitize air
  • The origin cities may not be rich enough for widespread air conditioning and I do not have that data to support.
  • Is this valid: When a building is heated, heating sanitizes the air from viruses much better than cooling the air does? In a heater, the temperature spikes up in the furnace heat exchanger above where viral RNA survives well – what about baseboard heating though? In an air conditioner, the temperature spikes down when cooled, failing to break down viral RNA. Therefore, heated air-tight buildings do not act as a collective virus reservoir like air-conditioned buildings do. Is this true? Is this true enough? Questions on this one: types of heating, types of air re-circulation, actual amount of AC in origin cities, difficult to get this data. Is air conditioning simply providing the sheer indoor human numbers required and is independent of the type of indoor climate control?
  • Too many details to make a separation between air conditioning and heating. Thanks to all the people who challenged me on this. This theory stands without it and is stronger without the weak link, which was never necessary.
Some Optimism – An Existing Prevention Measure Becomes the Solution
  • Can entire cities open the windows in the summer and “sweat the curve flat”? This confuses evolutionary origin with spread vector, but still connected.
  • A global standard of indoor air sanitation could completely eliminate the evolutionary virus reservoir “primordial soup” and stop the recent trend (three in just two decades) of novel coronaviruses. An air sanitation standard would certainly benefit in the fight against COVID-19.
  • N95 air conditioner filters anybody?

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All, Comfort and Convenience Plagues

Disease History, Urbanization, and Coronavirus Origination Theory

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This post is the notes for the theory. For the anthropogenic coronaviruses origin theory, click here.

A Brief Recent History of Humans Sharing Fluids, Disease Prevention and Urbanization

Cities have always been harbingers of disease. Bubonic Plague flowed from relatively urban China to relatively rural Europe. Smallpox flowed from urbanized European settlers to rural American natives. Most of the worst diseases require sharing of fluids to develop and spread – but we figured that out so we prevented sharing fluids – except exhaled breath. Result: We now share a lot more exhaled breath than ever before, and I mean A LOT, for the first time in history.

1 AD: total world population 300 million

1000 AD: total world population 310 million

1347-1351: Black Death reaches Europe from Asia via Crimea on rat fleas on the silk road.

1492: Europe discovers the Americas – along with smallpox

1500: total world population 500 million

1796: Smallpox vaccine demonstrated. Cities grow.

1800: total world population 978 million

1850: John Snow connected Cholera to sewage. Humans stop drinking sewage. Cities grow.

1850: World urban population still under 1 billion.

1881: Carlos Finlay identifies mosquitoes as a disease vector. Cities grow.

1914: first home with air conditioning. Windows closed all summer.

1928: Penicillin isolated as the first antibiotic. Cities grow.

1928: World urban population still under 1 billion.

1950: World urban population reaches ~1 billion

1970s: energy crisis. Buildings tighten-up for efficiency. Exhaled breath trapped inside on a global scale.

1976: Legionella bacteria identified as a human pathogen after an outbreak. Click here for outbreak description. Later linked in some cases to water-cooled air conditioner cooling towers. ***Interesting, but mostly unrelated to novel coronaviruses: 1. not novel, 2. not viruses, 3. Not even human to human transmissible.

1978: smallpox eradicated by global vaccination campaign. Cities grow.

1980: World urban population 1.74 billion

1981: HIV discovered, a sexually-transmitted virus

1990: World urban population 2.27 billion

2000: World urban population 2.85 billion

2003: SARS-CoV-1 emerges, a new virus that infects the lungs and causes respiratory disease.

2010: World urban population 3.57 billion

2012: MERS-CoV emerges, another lung virus causing respiratory disease

2019: SARS-CoV-2 emerges, human lungs again, third time now.

2019: World urban population 4.27 billion

Exhaled Breath Sharing, a New Breeding Ground

The three most recent viruses to develop that infect humans have been respiratory viruses. ALL THREE. The three new viruses in just the last 20 years are lung viruses.

The story is simple. Humans figure out how to sanitize drinking water, avoid mosquitoes, kill bacteria, and vaccinate, but it enables us to breathe so much of each other’s exhaled air that viruses have found a new “primordial soup” in which to breed and evolve.

New respiratory viruses will continue to develop until we let the air out, open the windows, go outside, breathe fresh air.

Bats and camels may have coronaviruses and pass to humans sometimes, yes, but does it make the news when animals catch respiratory viruses from humans? Hell no, not until they can write the news. Are bats and camels gathering in artificial air-tight spaces by the billions? No again. Who is? Humans are. I believe the transmission goes both ways, but the primary virus development is the other way around. HUMANS are developing lung viruses with billions of us indoors breathing each other’s exhaled air, then bats and camels catch them from us.

The terms “exhaled breath sewage,” “exhaled breath sanitation,” “building ventilation factor,” etc. may be the buzz phrases of our generation.

In our minds, viruses must come from the wild. They must come from fetid bat caves and mangy camel hair. Most disease still does, but the newest breeding ground, the newest “virus wild” is the ocean of air among the concrete jungles and towering steel / glass aquariums into which humans exhale and trap 6 liters per minute of living breath each. Air is a fluid. We share the fluid, much more than any other animal. Like any shared fluid, it can make us sick.

Humans domesticate cows, cows become the second species by biomass living on Earth (second only to humans). Humans domesticate coronaviruses, coronaviruses run amok.

The Solution … ?

  • Update building codes to require massive ventilation, filtering, and sanitation of the indoor air – WORLDWIDE.
  • Ventilate public transit.
  • End air conditioning.
  • Everybody physical distance. Worldwide. All the time. Forever.

Really? What do we do?

Maybe the old Miasma theory has come true, we humans have made it so.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL?end=2019&start=1960&view=chart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population

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