If you are wondering what the typical humidity is where you live, note that almost any build that is 10 deg F or more warmer than its surrounding because it is heated will have relative humidity (which is what parent means by “humidity”) well below .6.
Relative humidity is expensive to control partly because it is expensive for an automated system to measure. My guess is that on the margin, distributing fresh surgical masks to everyone entering the building would be much cheaper (and more effective) even when we adjust for the fact that an emergency ramp-up of mask production is much more expensive than normal, “peacetime” mask production. (I added “on the margin” to adjust for the fact that surgical masks are most efficiently produced in a facility that can supply many orders of magnitude of buildings.)
Measuring humidity is cheap. You only have to pay 2,86 € for the cheapest one on Amazon. Automated systems are more expensive but even a non-automated system could do the job with a bit on manual effort.
Effort-wise I think it’s less effort to do manual humidity control then to wear a surgical mask. My first experience with wearing a surgical mask for longer was to wear it 5 hours for a SlateStarCodex meetup I organized for the 8.3. Afterwards, I had a headache and didn’t wear my masks in a meeting the next day even through I’m a well-prepared rationalist who brought his masks a year in advance.
Comparing it to mask wearing however misses the point. It’s quite likely that we want to do multiple interventions to keep down infection rates.
If you are wondering what the typical humidity is where you live, note that almost any build that is 10 deg F or more warmer than its surrounding because it is heated will have relative humidity (which is what parent means by “humidity”) well below .6.
Relative humidity is expensive to control partly because it is expensive for an automated system to measure. My guess is that on the margin, distributing fresh surgical masks to everyone entering the building would be much cheaper (and more effective) even when we adjust for the fact that an emergency ramp-up of mask production is much more expensive than normal, “peacetime” mask production. (I added “on the margin” to adjust for the fact that surgical masks are most efficiently produced in a facility that can supply many orders of magnitude of buildings.)
Measuring humidity is cheap. You only have to pay 2,86 € for the cheapest one on Amazon. Automated systems are more expensive but even a non-automated system could do the job with a bit on manual effort.
Effort-wise I think it’s less effort to do manual humidity control then to wear a surgical mask. My first experience with wearing a surgical mask for longer was to wear it 5 hours for a SlateStarCodex meetup I organized for the 8.3. Afterwards, I had a headache and didn’t wear my masks in a meeting the next day even through I’m a well-prepared rationalist who brought his masks a year in advance.
Comparing it to mask wearing however misses the point. It’s quite likely that we want to do multiple interventions to keep down infection rates.