How long do cold and flu viruses stay contagious on public surfaces? (2018 article)

PBS News Hour ^ | 2018-12-17

[nicollo]

2018 Flu Season PBS article:

Tis the season for gathering with friends and family to share latkes and gingerbread, but also for those dreaded colds and bouts of the flu.

As temperatures drop, both illnesses start to tick up, as does the risk of taking you, your co-workers and loved ones down one-by-one. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate the average person gets two to three colds per year — mostly in the winter and spring. The country as a whole sees 9.3 to 49 million cases of the flu annually.

Cold and flu viruses, despite their ferocity inside our warm bodies, are structurally wimpy.

(con't)

[Bell Bouy II]

Boric Acid mixed with Chicken/berger Grease and or sugar.
Some ants like either so I plant both

They all seem to like both

[doorgunner69]

Do others at the gym object to the spray-down?

[doorgunner69]

Our hands are acidic so as to kill disease germs. That is why your eye burns if you touch it with your finger.

And here I thought it was the habaneros I had been chopping.

[Bell Bouy II]

I dont go in the “Gym” I swim so,Dont,care
Most are pigs

Like the Band aid in a locker the day b4 they closed and they one in the pool

[Missouri gal]

While this is very helpful, it doesn't answer some basic questions. One important for me is the question whether viruses are killed by saliva. This is an important issue for Catholics with regard to communion. Second, if the coronavirus doesn't survive very long, just how is it so contagious? Why is an extra decade of life roughly a ten-fold risk factor? Why are some places outside US spraying everywhere with disinfectant and we're not?

[Bell Bouy II]

Dont ues the gym, only swim

That area is filthy in good times

[reformedliberal]

...if it’s not airborne.
___________________________________

Not exactly, in that it’s not a pneumonic virus. Not a doctor, but you still need close contact and an enclosed space for human-to-human transmission through the air (as opposed to droplet transmission due to sneezing/coughing with velocity and then entering the body via mucus membranes which is aerosol transmission, as in the case of COVID 19).

BUT: viruses and bacteria are prevalent in clouds in the troposhere and that way they travel from one place to another, often long distances, before dropping down. Most of the viruses (which are fragile, remember) probably don’t retain infectiousness after a trip on the winds.

BUT: likely some can persist on migratory birds. If the birds already have an avian virus, perhaps (IDK this for sure)the viruses can combine within the duck or goose. I have heard of this as a way for an avian virus to be transmitted to swine, allowing combinations/mutations.

The point is: this probably happens all the time and always has and is one way animal viruses make the jump between species.

Maybe there are veterinarians here who can comment. This is just my uneducated WAG informed by superficial reading.

We have never lived on a safe planet. Humans have evolved alongside all these microorganisms. Microorganisms are the largest class of organisms on this planet and remember, the human body contains trillions of bacteria, most of them beneficial or benign. If you obsess on it, you’ll go crazy.

[nicollo]

While this is very helpful, it doesn't answer some basic questions.

The article is pre-ChinaFlu and so regards prevalent flus prior to this outbreak only.

That said, it answers my primary concern, how long does this thing last on surfaces? Covid 19 has the same structure as other coronaviruses, which means that its DNA is only "contagious" if intact with its lipid shell, which breaks down in hours, not days. So all these "IT LASTS 17 DAYS!!" news freakouts are simply false. The DNA remnants last, but the virus is inert.

As for communion, as a former Catholic high school teacher, which means I worked and worshipped in a petri dish, I'd just assume, for the time being, that God loves me just the same if I take communion or not.

[daniel1212]

They might be bettor being sprayed with 3% hydrogen peroxide and left to day for a few minutes (use gloves) which can inactivate the virus. They would be safer then the normal unwashed items. See this post.

[FreedomPoster]

That’s the video I linked.

[daniel1212]

Shorter version:

Because common colds are caused by a plethora of viruses, research on surface infectious rates are harder to nail down. In general, most are no longer dangerous after 24 hours, and their ability to infect dissipates faster on porous materials like facial tissues.

What’s the best surface for killing viruses? Our skin. In the cases of both flu and cold-causing viruses, infectious particles on our hands are usually gone after 20 minutes.

Between its pH and its porous nature, our body’s natural barrier to the word does a great job at killing viruses, Greatorex explained. “Our hands are quite antimicrobial themselves,” she said. “They have their own bacteria that live on them — no matter how clean you are — and they don’t actually harbour viruses that well.”

“Chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, soaps, detergents or alcohol-based gels all disrupt the capsules of the viruses, and they’re no longer capable of being infectious,” Auwaerter said. — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-long-do-cold-and-flu-viruses-stay-contagious-on-public-surfaces

And see https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext

[trebb]

Yep - being detectable and being viable are two different things...a couple weeks ago a doctor was saying that, depending on the surface, the virus could be detected for times between a couple hours and 3 days....but the longest outside parameter for even the longer one was 9 hours - and way less for the others...so for most of us, 1-2 hours would probably be the longest - and destroying the outer shell is as simple as adding a hand soap mixture into the mix...so the length of the “Happy Birthday” song would be long enough to wash your hands and know they were safe...