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Regular readers will know that I’ve spent years pushing for cleaning the air in hospitals and schools. Every time I do so some (censored) says “but it’ll cost a lot of money.”

Well, it looks like Canada might be moving towards this in hospitals. Why?

Roughly one in ten hospital inpatients acquires an infection during their stay. A patient who would have stayed one week may stay two or three. As a result, as many as one in five hospital beds can be occupied by someone who was infected in hospital. Those blocked beds back up emergency departments and delay care for everyone else.

“Allowing 10% of our patients to get infected is unsustainable,” said Hunt. “The cost is simply too high. Billions of dollars are spent on treatment, and many billions more are lost to the inefficiency of blocked beds.”

Each new hospital bed costs about $1 million to build – and another $500K to $1 million annually to staff and operate. Protecting a bed with upper-air UV costs about $5,000 initially and a few hundred dollars a year to maintain and operate.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 Canadian hospital beds are blocked on any given day, and CHAIR believes universal airborne protection could cut that number in half. The pilot is designed to test that hypothesis with measured data.

It’s only a two hospital trial for now, but still a good thing.

But they’re not doing the right thing because they care about people dying.

They’re not doing the right thing because they don’t want people to get infections which may cripple them.

They’re not doing the right thing because they don’t want people to suffer.

Oh no. It’s because sick people are expensive and they want to save money.

This is the universal issue in the West. Nothing is done unless you can make a money argument (and often even not then.)

Let’s be clear: it was always obvious that letting people get sick was more expensive than cleaning the air. Always. Letting people get disabled by long Covid is even more expensive (though much of the West is cutting support for disabled people, to try and make this less true.)

In Ontario, where I live, the Premier decided to get rid of safe drug injection sites. People argued with him, “people will die!” Stupid. That’s OK by him. But he gets a lot of heat for packed emergency rooms and he wants lower hospital costs so he can spend government money on his cronies (I could sky write this over the provincial legislature and not be sued, because his actions prove me right.) So the correct argument was “this will cost money and piss off voters.” That he might (might) have listened to.

But the problem is that in addition to our elites being greedy, they’re also stupid. Again, not treating air in hospitals (and schools) was obviously going to be more expensive than doing so.

The other issues are perceived opportunity cost and agency problems.

Back in the 90s an important book called “Natural Capitalism” came out. It’s still worth reading. Its basic thesis (well supported) was that there were a lot of environmentally friendly things business could do that would cut costs for businesses massively.

Didn’t happen. Even when they would pitch companies with we can reduce your energy/building/whatever by 30%, most businesses wouldn’t go for it. After all executives could spend that money instead to juice quarterly returns, which would juice the stock price, which would make their stock options and grants worth more. Doesn’t matter how much you could save by making your buildings more energy efficient: that doesn’t immediately drop money into the pockets of executives.

So if you want an elite to do something, remember, the question is always “what’s in it for the elite?” No other reason has any weight at all, you might as well be trying to convince Trump that gilding is tacky.

We’re ruled (in the West) by psychopaths. Nothing that wouldn’t convince a psychopath will convince a member of the Western elites to do anything, talking about “do it because it’s good” is like trying to convince the Devil that he should promote kindness, compassion, charity and peace.

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