I’ve done development on products with CO2 sensors and I’ve spent a lot of time with them on my desk right in front of me and also off to the side. Readings right in front of me are predictably higher.
You can breathe into a CO2 sensor 18 inches from your mouth and watch the values spike upward.
And, spoiler alert: if the entire area in front of you has an increased CO2 concentration, then your environment has an increased CO2 concentration. That’s the entire point.
Suffice to say I disagree strongly with both the argument that this would lead to hugely erroneous readings and also with the notion that people would panic.
I don’t think you’re reading the discussion: The CO2 thresholds that people use are based upon ambient air.
The closer the measurement to your mouth, the higher the reading will be. It should be apparent why putting the sensor directly in front of your mouth will register higher numbers than having it across the room.
CO2 does not instantly diffuse throughout a space. If it did, it would be sufficient to have only very small air leakage in a space for the CO2 to diffuse out of it very rapidly
The CO2 content is a single chemical species within a mixed gas. Any air currents will cause mixing. Otherwise it undergoes diffusion which is actually a fairly slow process, although much faster in gases than in liquids.