https://www.patreon.com/posts/co2-sensors-and-69540162
"Covid is airborne; that means you catch it by breathing air shared with an
infected person. It’s in people’s exhales. Another thing in people’s exhales is
an odorless, colorless gas called CO2. You breathe in oxygen, your body enjoys
it, then your blood carries what's left as CO2 to your lungs, and then you
breathe it out.
This is why you’ve probably seen some people carrying around little air sensors
that measure CO2 — they are keeping an eye on how full a room is getting with
people’s exhales. The higher the sensor readings, the higher of everyone’s
chance of getting infected.
Since many people spread it without knowing they have it (6 of 10 people are
asymptomatic), hardly anyone is masking, and the most infectious variant yet is
ravaging our communities, measuring CO2 is a reliable way of knowing when a
room, commuter train, or other enclosed space becomes covid-unsafe. And
personally, I don’t want to find out firsthand what the lived experience of
long covid is like.
Portable CO2 monitors are an important safety tool to be used in combination
with masking and vaccination. Until recently, they’ve been bulky, too
complicated for non-technical people to use, and too expensive. That fancy
Aranet4 you see all the covid-aware geeks using to stay safer? It’s $249.00 on
Amazon. That’s out of reach for most people, especially those being put at most
risk with this disease, like front line and service workers, and kids being
sent to maskless, unventilated classrooms.
I was lucky that a reader here recently bought me an Aranet4, but I’ve been
low-key about my use of it because I don’t think it’s fair that the people who
can’t afford one need them the most. So when I saw that a low-cost portable CO2
monitor came out a few weeks ago, the Vitalight Mini ($39), I jumped at a
chance to test and review it.
My conclusion? Get a Vitalight Mini, and get it ASAP. Inexpensive, very
portable, easy to see in the dark, and though slightly less precise than the
Aranet4 it lets you see immediate changes in CO2 — and alarms go off when
dangerous levels are hit."
Note: We bought a Vitalight Mini directly from China on eBay and we're very
happy with it.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
