Far-UVC could prevent future respiratory pandemics by suppressing transmission at the margin—getting the reproduction number from slightly above 1 to below 1 is the difference between a pandemic and no pandemic.

34:34were unfortunately all forced to become experts on uh back in 2020 and what this does to you know the potential factors of um virality and similar. >> Yeah. So I think actually the pandemic prevention case is by far the most exciting element here. You know, I I think when you're trying to market something to ordinary people in non-pandemic times, and you know, when I talk to people about this, I I really

34:58avoid mentioning the pandemic. Uh because yeah, people do not do not want to hear it. Um I think we're all sort of, you know, collectively traumatized and we just don't want to talk about it. Uh so we're you know, we're talking about like, oh, we're preventing colds and flu. My my honest assessment was that I'm much more uncertain about our ability to prevent you know the average cold where

35:22which is just not very contagious and probably if you're getting someone's cold it's because you spent you know an extended period of time interacting with them quite close. Can we prevent some colds in you know imunocmpromised people and in some situation? Yeah, I think so. But I'm actually much more confident that um we could decap a future respiratory pandemic like COVID 19 or worse just because you know

35:48paradoxically the more contagious something is the more surface area there is to keep it from getting as bad as it as it could get. uh in fact one of the earlier use cases for traditional Peru UVC which uses a different more dangerous wavelength as the 254 nanometer wavelength that was used to control measles and measles is just absurdly contagious. It is probably the extrema of how contagious a pathogen can even

36:22be. I think it has a reproduction number of 20. So each person who has it will on average infect 20 others and I I believe that uh CO 19 at its worst had a reproduction number of like 1 something. So, so UBC was able to successfully control measles outbreaks and I think that makes me really optimistic that a relatively low level of coverage in key areas uh transport

36:57hubs for example and other gathering places where people who aren't actually in communities together or are missing is where we can do pandemic suppression. for relatively low cost. >> Yeah. The uh myth that uh is common to epidemiologists and people who markets video games for a living is that uh the difference between uh the reproduction number it's called are not in epidemiology and the k factor in uh in

37:31marketing. But uh 1.08 08 means that something goes exponential because you know for every uh uh person that is exposed to the thing you get more than one uh people down the line and uh 0.99 fails to go exponential you you have to keep dumping in marketing budget and the viruses just don't have a marketing budget. So the uh the hope is that you know for a you know what in absolute

37:57numbers is a relatively small impairment uh in a co 19 or something uh to just get it from uh slightly above one to slightly below one is the difference between having a pandemic and not uh and uh knock and wood hopefully we will be able to avoid uh some pandemics at the margin. >> No I definitely think that's a huge benefit. I also think because it's part