Last month, I discussed the potential engineers have to achieve post-COVID-19, high-performance health care. The pharmaceutical industry has touted high-performance IAQ long before COVID emerged. This is largely because the product going out the door of pharma production facilities has always been financially driven, and the occupants have always followed mandated restrictions (e.g., masks, hygiene criteria, etc.) the health care community has struggled to embrace and enforce. As a result, a hospital’s “products” (e.g., healthy patients leaving the building) do not match up to the pharma “product” because health care facilities are driven by public opinion, reputation, etc. Producing safe drugs for people mandates zero tolerance. In 2020, hospitals changed their modes of operation by dictating that masks be worn by everyone within such facilities, and enhanced hygiene procedures were implemented and followed. Hospitals received very little pushback because we were all experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have often asked the question, “What is more important, maintaining zero-tolerance for the health and welfare of humans going to a hospital or maintaining zero tolerance for the product pharma firms are selling to the public?”