As I lay here in my little isolation room on the wing of the house, I have the French doors open even though it’s 40° outside. The heat is off, and I am under a down comforter, and it is very pleasant to have fresh air.
The main reason to do this is just to air the room out since I’m going to be back here for days sweating and being all covid-y, but I did wonder if breathing in a lot of fresh air instead of my own recirculated, dank viral air might have some measured health benefit.
It’s very hard to Google, because everybody wants to talk about fresh air preventing Covid, rather than after the fact. Sunlight! I found something for sunlight, but unfortunately, there isn’t much direct sunlight this time of year.
I don’t think so… it’s not like fresh air and inside air have different oxygen content or anything like that. I guess if it’s particularly badly ventilated, you might have some extra CO2 or VOC in there, but I sort of doubt it.
Fresh air doesn’t prevent COVID, it’s rather that even a slight breeze outdoor is an absolutely staggering amount of airflow versus what an indoor HVAC system can do. So the airborne viruses are diluted and blown away much more readily and much further than indoors.
I’ve also wondered about this. If you’re contagious, you’re expelling lots of virus into the air. Any virus that you breathe back in would be more virus that your body would need to fight. But maybe it’s such a small amount of virus that it’s essentially insignificant compared to the amount that is active in your body already.
If there are other people in the house, then it’s probably worth it to isolate the air in your room from the rest of the house. The less virus that floats around the rest of the house, the less chance that someone else will catch it.
Oh, my sympathies to you as well. This morning (day 4) was my worst so far, but at least we’re moving along.
Yeah, after further thought, I think that there are billions of virus particles in my body, and re-breathing a few isn’t going to do anything. But I also agree that getting some of them out of the house would probably be very helpful.
I’m sorry the plague got you, Maserschmidt. I’ve just barely got over it, and it sucks. Today I get the treat of masking up and going out to the grocery store, and it’ll take all the energy I can muster for the day.
Thank you for the kind words. I’m really glad to hear that you’re through at least the main part of it, and working your way toward overall recovery. But yeah, putting on a mask and going out shopping feels like a day’s work to me.
My great-uncle (who I never met) had TB and went to Arizona for his health. From London, rich people with TB went to Switzerland, Upper-middle class people went to Scotland.
I’ve never read why, but I suggest two reasons: (1) Sulfuric and Nitric acid, from coal heating, are even more dangerous to people with reduced lung function (also the cause of ‘acid rain’). (2) Dry air or cold air may be beneficial.
At a treatment center, TB patients would have been “aired”, but again I don’t know if the effect of that was to expose them to air, or just to get them out of a closed coal-heated area.