far uvc light and the transition to endemic covid
its like the flu—except its killing 6x as many people; is up to 20x more transmissible; mutates faster; and appears to be leaving nearly 20% of its victims with longterm, often life-altering health conditions. so you know, time to move on, right?
10/09 edit: the news is starting to spread. see this piece published in the atlantic a week after mine.
criteria for endemicity vary, but none of them seem to account for proportional impact of a disease relative to a pre-pandemic state. even if we get used to our new microscopic neighbors, biologically-speaking, human life just is worse than it was before 2020 (ceteris paribus). we’re supposed to mark the transition to endemicity by degree of disruption to normal life and the predictability of disease, death, and debilitation. barring disruptive new variants or surges, we seem to be close to achieving the latter. the real controversy is over the degree disruption to normal life that we can and should accept as our new status quo. this is what makes the transition out of the pandemic such irresistible dining room fodder (“careful, careful”). new normals hardly ever arrive gracefully at our tables; they storm the door with fierce and familiar negotiation of human values.
just so, defiance and resignation seem to have won the day. the cautious have been crowded out. even if pre-pandemic forms of life have in fact become more risky, adaptation has arisen alongside a general (if unwarranted) consensus over the predictability of risk. more than actual threat, we fear uncertainty. so sure, call it endemic. just don’t call it a comeback. indoor life simply will not be the same again.
except—it doesn’t have to be that way. we could cheaply, effectively, and inconspicuously kill coronaviruses and other airborne pathogens with radiation from indoor lighting. far uvc light is safe for humans but fatal to most viruses. it is invisible, emitted from lights that look familiar, and far more effective than hepa-grade air filtration at purifying contaminated indoor spaces. (which is of course not to say that the two cannot sensibly be combined).
pathogenic uvc light tech have been around for a while, but many consumer of the consumer products make false or misleading claims (e.g. “epa-certified” when the in fact epa does no such thing), or can be actively dangerous under prolonged exposure. These generic uv lights emit longer-wavelength portions of the uv spectrum that can be harmful to eye or skin tissue. what makes filtered, commercial-grade far-uvc different is its emission of light at a sweet-spot on the uvc spectrum—222nm—such that it is is long enough to penetrate virus cells but not long enough to (deeply) penetrate human tissue with the carcinogenic or damaging effects of its longer-wavelength neighbors: uva, uvb, and unfiltered uvc. (who said techy light talk couldn’t be sexy?)
commercial applications of far-uvc light are slowly getting off the ground. production capacity has ramped up to make pricing less outlandish and distribution more of a global possibility. in spite of this availability, several barriers to adoption remain. sheer disbelief may be one of the biggest. the efficacy of far-uvc is so staggering that most people simply balk when they first hear about it. it doesn’t help that there’s no really good way to demonstrate the effects in real time. we can’t see the light (the blue glow on some uv lights is visible light added by manufacturers so we can see when the light is on). nor can we see its effects. the salesperson eager to save the world may as well be peddling a fiction. trotting out the theory and empirical evidence gets us some of the way past this skepticism, but for those whose minds require more literal demonstration we need richer media. we could start with fun little videos like these, where bacteria explode under a microscope just seconds after being doused by our heroic high-energy photon friends. (come for the microbe mutilation; stay for titles like “we filmed tardigrade sex!”). but much more education and word-spreading is required before even discussion can enter the mainstream.
another other barrier to adoption is concern for safety. the savvy sourcer of light will no doubt discover in her diligence that regulations governing the commercial use of far uvc have conspicuously begun to change such that prolonged exposure to 220-230nm uvc is no longer considered unsafe for humans. dismissing the suspicion this may arouse by pointing out the fact that regulators can sometimes be wrong is not difficult per se, but it is an extra step.
the final barrier is of course, the cost and difficulty of installation. fortunately, when you compare the energy savings per unit of filtered air for far uvc vs. hvac and other pumped air re-circulation methods, the business case for far uvc is really not hard to make. add in the cost savings to employers from sick days and the revenue recovery for businesses who have lost indoor foot traffic and the maths take care of themselves.
as we understandably insist on returning to maskless indoor congregation, how can we make far-uvc a reality within every building where this will occur? this is not investment advice, nor am i an investor, but surely there is opportunity for private capital here. to maximize impact though, we need to point the cannon of public finance at subsidizing, scaling, and deploying this solution. we should compel our delegates in congress to use the power of the purse (our power) to plow tens of billions of dollars into making our air safe to breathe again over the next ten years. how do we get there?
we can start by speaking to our architects, lighting designers, contractors, and facilities teams. we can blanket our commercial corridors with qr codes and fliers, stapling things on telephone poles or passing out pamphlets on the street. we can call our state representatives—not bothering with the federal ones just yet; there’s no point until we have sufficient local momentum. most importantly, we can talk to our friends, family, and neighbors. with the right bits of chatter now, far-uvc may just become the most-discussed interior upgrade of the decade: “oh we can have the party at Margaret’s house; she just had far-uvc put in” or “let’s have the reception at the vibiana; they just upgraded the light.”
regardless of the approach we take, we should not fall for the cowardice parodied in the snl sketch above—too “careful” and insecure for hard talk. hundreds of thousand of national deaths and disabilities a year is too many—to say nothing of all the other airborne disease we are now poised to prevent at planetary scale. it is possible to be compassionate and convicted at the same time. to negotiate a better future, we have to be.