Reader's response on "What we do and don’t know about the links between air pollution and coronavirus" (Final)

In the article "What we do and don’t know about the links between air pollution and coronavirus" written by Alistair Lewis, he stated on his view of how air pollution is link with coronavirus. Air pollution has increased the rate of "strokes, heart disease, respiratory illness and more" which has led to high mortality rate. Therefore, it is clear that air pollution and coronavirus are interlink. However, there are other factors as well contributing to corona virus. In highly developed places such as New York City and London where it has high influx of people due to its "extensive global travel connections", it increases the chances of "person-to-person contagion rates”. In urban areas, people also tend to take mass transport system. This means that higher chances of infectious rate. While I agree that air pollution plays a part in affecting coronavirus, Lewis did not clearly mention on the other contributing factors.

One of the factors which Lewis has failed to describe would be on population density. He mentioned on how places like New York City where it has high amount of people in that area would affect the contagious rate of coronavirus. This translates to highly populated places like New York City would surely has a higher chance of infectious rate of coronavirus. This might not be true. Fang & Wahba (2020) stated "If you look around the world, some extremely dense cities, such as Singapore, Seoul, and Shanghai, have outperformed many other less-populated places in combating the coronavirus." They also mentioned besides looking at how densely populated a country is, we also need to take into the account of the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus. This tells us otherwise, that a country being densely populated does not necessary indicate the high infectious rate of coronavirus.

Another factor mentioned was on the extensive global travel connections. In the early December 2019, the coronavirus was first discovered. Measures such as travel bans had not been implemented on countries yet. As the coronavirus started to spread globally worldwide and developed into more serious cases, only then travel bans was implemented. During that period where travel bans had not been implemented yet, people were still able to travel in and out of the country without any restrictions. In the article "Coronavirus Travel Restrictions, Across the Globe"(2020), it stated "On March 19, the State Department issued a Level 4 “do not travel” advisory, recommending that United States citizens avoid any global travel." The travel ban was only implemented on March 19. Unconsciously, people had been spreading the virus to one another. This has led to an increase in contagious rate among people when they had interacted with each other.

The last factor which Lewis failed to elaborate would be individual decision makings. A lot of measures have been taken on tackling the issue of coronavirus. For instance, it is best advisable to wear a mask outside and to stay at home if not required to go out. However, some individuals are still not following the basic procedure like wearing masks when they are outside. According to Karson (2020), it was stated that "55% of Americans who left their home in the last week said they wore a face mask or face covering, while 45% said they did not." This statistic tells us that almost half of the people are not adhering to the standard procedure of wearing a mask outside. Also, Pereira (2020) stated that "people blatantly defying social distancing and face-covering rules". These people are not aware of the importance of measures taken implemented.

In conclusion, these factors could have been elaborated by Lewis. Every factor plays a significant part in affecting coronavirus. 

 

References

Lewis, A. (2020, May 13). What we do and don't know about the links between air pollution and coronavirus. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-the-links-between-air-pollution-and-coronavirus-137746

Fang, W., & Wahba, S. (2020, April 20). Urban density is not an enemy in the coronavirus fight: evidence from china. The World bank. https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/urban-density-not-enemy-coronavirus-fight-evidence-china

Salcedo, A., & Yar, S., & Cherlus, G. (2020, July 16). Coronavirus travel restrictions, across the globe. Nytimes. https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-travel-restrictions.html

Karson, K. (2020, April 10). More than half of Americans wear masks as coronavirus's new normal takes hold: POLL. abcNEWS. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/half-americans-wear-masks-coronavirus-normal-takes-hold/story?id=70073942

Pereira, I. (2020, May 30). Why people are flouting coronavirus social distancing precautions that we know save lives. abcNEWS. https://abcnews.go.com/US/people-flouting-coronavirus-social-distancing-precautions-save-lives/story?id=70880349


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