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Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

Keeping things clean costs pennies and even if the reduction in the odds of transmitting covid aren't very high, it certainly helps with lots of other diseases, and for the vast majority of us avoiding the common cold or the flu is just as valuable as avoiding covid. A new ventilation system for a plane is many orders of magnitude more expensive and the amount of benefit it would provide is still questionable.

Reallocating such a measly sum to other areas is very unlikely to make a measurable difference. Infinitesimal costs can be justified by even very minor benefit.

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There is such a thing as minimum wage. Flipping burgers, serving coffee or using a wipe all cost the same minimum wage. And that adds up fast...

How long does it take a team to wipe down a plane? 6 people 20 minutes maybe? That's $14.50 at federal minimum wage. There are 16 million flights per year when there isn't a pandemic reducing air travel, over 6 months that would be about 8 million. That would be 115 Million in labor for the worst case scenario max. There are about 30,000 airliners in the world, so the ventilation systems would have to cost $3800 or less to be cheaper than minimum wage labor. Realistically, such a ventilation system for an airliner is probably going to be more like $50,000; which would mean the units wouldn't break even until 2026.

By saying "break even" you are assuming that the ventilation system and the wiping down are equally effective -- so the question is which is cheaper?

That is not the case. It depends on their effectiveness. If wiping down reduces risk 4% but better ventilation reduces risk 70%, the calculation of "breaking even" is very different. We don't know these exact numbers for covid, but as best as we can tell the risk reduction of this kind of surface cleaning is pretty minimal.

It's hygiene theater.

Hiring someone to pray for health on the plane would be cheaper than actual effective measures too -- hey you could probably hire just one person nationally to pray for health on ALL planes, a bargain! 'at what point will actual effective measures "break even" with hiring someone to pray' is a ridiculous question.

Fine, by that metric, the ventillation would have to be 12 times more effective than wiping down to have the same cost/benefit ratio. So if the wiping is 8.4% or more effective than it will always be the cheaper alternative; and even if wiping is less effective than that, odds are the ventilation system is going to be far less than 100% effective.

And again, wiping surfaces does more than fight covid. The flu, the common cold, and countless more diseases are very effectively countered by washing down surfaces. If you make federal minimum wage and you miss work for 2 days because of the flu, that's $120 in lost earnings. The average person flying probably makes significantly more than that. Even if wiping down your seat only reduces the odds of getting the flu by 0.15% you're still coming out ahead at minimum wage; if you make $100k/yr it need only be 0.02% effective.

Also it's worth noting that contact with contaminated surfaces is still believed to be a major means of transmission of the disease. It is airborne transmission of covid which is still being debated though there seems to be mounting evidence in support of it as an additional transmission pathway.

NYC is spending $500M/year to clean rail and buses in an effort to combat COVID (https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/0...). It's not nearly as cheap as you would think.

Keep in mind that whatever the MTA does, you could probably do equivalently in a sane, rational world for 1/10th the price.

8 million people live in NYC, and between them and visitors from the surrounding metropolitan area a comparable number of people utilize the public transit system regularly. $500M/yr is 17 cents per person per day. I can think of less useful things I would pay 17 cents for.

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