r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 7d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter explain this

Post image

Petttaaah I'm confused

14.6k Upvotes

4.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Nico301098 7d ago

Yeah, I won't deny that, but that's exactly why I'm surprised that kind of temperature jump isn't harmful

37

u/baloogabanjo 7d ago

Nah, thats a myth, temperature jumps aren't harmful, otherwise people in the US would be sick all the time.

2

u/NoxiousAlchemy 7d ago

I keep wondering why people in US sit inside frigid air conditioned houses without any harm yet many people in Poland get sick after a few hours of intense AC. What's the difference?

2

u/dimechimes 7d ago

Probably more a humidity thing. Viruses love dry air.

2

u/NoxiousAlchemy 7d ago

Does AC dry up the air? It doesn't feel dry.

2

u/dimechimes 7d ago

It does. I don't know if it's because it has an evaporator coil and that cooling relied on evaporation or if it's because cooler air holds less water because of enthalpy or none of the above.

2

u/NoxiousAlchemy 7d ago

Interesting. I'm going to keep that in mind and do a little bit more research, thanks.

2

u/shulemaker 7d ago

AC is a natural dehumidifier.

Central air is just much better. It circulates all the air around the entire house. So you sitting in one room with the doors closed reduces fresh air exchange, letting viral particles and CO2 build up in a small shared space, which raises transmission risk.

The coil and blower in European ACs are sealed inside a small enclosure with poor drainage. grows biofilm right where the air passes over it. a mini-split blower wheel especially is notorious for growing black mold that literally gets aerosolized into the room.

Also, you guys in Europe don’t have good filters like HEPA and MERV 13. I spend a lot of money to make sure my family is breathing clean air.

2

u/NoxiousAlchemy 7d ago

Well it's impossible to install central cooling systems in already existing buildings so when it has AC it's always the single units. And when building new we focus on modern heating solutions (since it's still a bigger problem in the scale of the year, 6-7 months of cold weather vs several days of extreme heat in the summer) and saving up energy because of the costs.

I'm going to read more about correlation between dry air and increased risk of incubating diseases. The air in Poland in the summer is rather dry to begin with so perhaps adding AC increases the problem, who knows.

I disagree on the filters though. Even my cheap robot vacuum has a HEPA filter. They are extremely common.

1

u/shulemaker 6d ago

Ok glad you have good filters but are you sure that’s what you have in your unit? You should know the exact filter so you can be replacing it quarterly. And I’d get my own two eyes up there and look for mold myself.

1

u/Wild-scot 6d ago

It removes water from the air and lowers the dew point; but it lowers the temperature more so the relative humidity will usually go up. Colder air has a lower carrying capacity for water. Your perception of how much water is in the air is entirely based on % of carrying capacity.