A team of experts have doubled down on their warning that Thursday’s presidential town hall debate stage and hall isn’t safe from the coronavirus.
Without some safety changes, said the University of Maryland team, “we recommended foregoing future town hall debates in this election cycle.”
Thursday night, President Trump, who had COVID-19, and Joe Biden will share a town hall stage at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. They currently plan to be placed several feet apart.
However, the experts said that the two should be placed near a simple air filtering system that can capture their breath and filter it so that it doesn’t swirl around the room.
It’s a modified system of box fans that Secrets recently reported on.
“Our research identified an inexpensive solution that can protect the participants on stage and in the audience using air filtration and airflow directed in a way that efficiently captures airborne particles. Localized filtration and well controlled airflow can provide more effective protection of participants not wearing masks than a barrier,” said Donald Milton, professor at UMD’s School of Public Health, and Jelena Srebric, professor and acting associate dean for research at UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering said.
In its second letter to the commission, they said, “This system provides an alternative when performers cannot wear masks — and could be deployed in an invisible way in a debate setting.”
The commission hasn’t answered their letters.
