The Denver Broncos are the latest owners of a “misting booth” to disinfect players with a nontoxic spray. When players walk through the booth, resembling X-ray machines in government buildings, they get misted.
Shared on the NFL team’s Twitter page, the gut reaction was disbelief.
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist: “This is not a real public health intervention. This is coronavirus response theater.”
Annie Roth, a science journalist: “We gotta stop normalizing this. Dousing your body in disinfectants does nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19 and is bad for your health. Just social distance, wear a mask and wash your hands.”
Gabriel Roth, Slate podcaster: “This is bound to keep the virus out! As long as it never tries to hide INSIDE the human body.”
About 750 miles southwest in Las Vegas, you can observe a “opti-clean cube” at a construction site.
Using a dry mist, employees and site visitors walk into the box and get sprayed before they’re allowed on the property.
On the other side of the country in Detroit, a start-up company built a $20,000 machine that’s being installed at restaurants. The inventors want it deployed in public buses and trains.
The idea is you enter a booth while wearing a mask, your temperature is taken, and the computer tells you if your mask is fit properly. Then, you get free sanitizer and a body mist.
Who said the virus can be fought with a mister?
It’s reminiscent of someone who said that drinking bleach can kill the virus.
When will economic sectors — from professional sports teams to industry to commerce and others — recognize that disinfecting your exterior body with a spray is meaningless?
If the virus wanted to get inside, it already did that.
“To some American companies… COVID-19 is apparently a war that will be won through antimicrobial blasting, to ensure that pathogens are banished from every square inch of America’s surface area.”
– Derek Thompson, The Atlantic. July 27, 2020
Another thing: If it’s proven that these misters do work in warding off the coronavirus, then shouldn’t hospitals, healthcare clinics, school buildings, and child care centers be the first users of the technology?
If it’s effective, then why should the Denver Broncos use it and not the Denver Public School system? Money shouldn’t be an issue because companies should be willing to donate them to schools.
Unrelated to that kind of mister, here’s the official video for one of the greatest songs of the 1980s: Mr. Mister performing Broken Wings.
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