Posted on 03/27/2020 4:54:58 PM PDT by 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)
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
I found this article while searching for information on how long surfaces remain contagious and after how many touches (something I still can't find). Featuring our dear Dr. Fauci, the article offers a good explanation, pre-freakout, of how these viruses operate and, most importantly, why detected "remnants" of the coronavirus lasting 15+ days are hysteria not science: the DNA may survive, but not an "intact virus," because the shells will have broken down and the virus is no longer intact.
Continuing from the article:
Before you isolate yourself inside your home and scrub every surface in sight, you should know that these pathogens don’t actually last for days or weeks outside the body, as commercials for some cleaning products might suggest. That’s because cold and flu viruses, despite their ferocity inside our warm bodies, are structurally wimpy and cannot bear the harsh conditions of the dry, outside world ....
Viruses can’t multiply on their own — they must infect the cells of a living creature. Because they aren’t actually living entities, using terms like “live” or “survive” to describe viruses outside the body can cause confusion, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
“People say, ‘Well [a virus] can live on a doorknob for four days,’” Fauci said. “Well, maybe you can isolate it and grow it in culture by swabbing a doorknob, but that doesn’t mean that it’s infectable for four days.”
“Maybe you can isolate it and grow it in culture by swabbing a doorknob, but that doesn’t mean that it’s infectable for four days.”
Viruses outside the body can be better described as either infectious or identifiable — meaning the genetic material that was once inside the virus can be detected via a lab technique like polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. This is usually what advertisements for cleaning products are referring to when they say flu viruses can survive on surfaces for days on end.
Let’s say you had an influenza virus on top of a clean desk, said Dr. Paul Auwaerter, the clinical director for the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Five days later, if you take a swab, put it into a molecular machine like a PCR machine and you still find DNA remnants there, that doesn’t mean you have an intact virus,” Auwaerter said. “It just means you’ve found the DNA.”
An intact virus is necessary for an infection, but this propensity reduces over time as its capsid and viral envelope begin to degrade. Once weakened, the virus is less able to attach to cells and spread its genetic material ....
How best to protect yourself
Because flu viruses don’t often last beyond nine hours, Greatorex’s work suggests public spaces like classrooms, offices and kitchens that are not populated at night will usually free of contagious flu viruses the next morning. But for those who want to be more proactive, Auwaerter recommends sanitizing surfaces periodically with wipes or other chemicals.
“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.
Actually I realize I’m going to run out of paper towels.
Nothing to do
...but clean!
And the answer is...
Prior to this decade, only a handful of studies looked at how long flu viruses retain their infectiousness on common surfaces. A 1982 study found influenza A remained contagious up to 48 hours on hard plastic or stainless steel, while a 2008 publication found these viruses stayed infectious for up to three days on Swiss bank notes.
Influenza viruses may actually have a much shorter infectious lifespan, based on more recent work by virologist Dr. Jane Greatorex at Public Health England. In a 2011 study, her team took two strains of influenza A and analyzed how long they remained infectiousness on a variety of common surfaces. After nine hours, viable viruses were no longer found on most non-porous metal and plastic surfaces, such as aluminum and computer keyboards. On porous items, like soft toys, clothes and wooden surfaces, viable viruses disappeared after four hours.
Good stuff - and it only makes sense or we all would have been infected with Coronavirus a week after it got here, due to all of the human interaction that goes on. What the article doesn’t mention is that getting a relatively small number of virons won’t infect a healthy person - instead their immune system will detect, attack, and destroy it, making it wish it never entered that human.
https://simplegreen.com/industrial/products/d-pro-5/
1 oz per gallon, keep it in a sprayer in my bag when I go to the Y(b4 it closed) spray the benches and lockers.
Have long b4 this mess
I swim no machines (they are gross)
Thanks! That was a great find!!
Thanks for posting.
Simply put:
Persistence is not contagion.
Ask why grocery workers all along the supply chain aren’t dropping over with COVID.
Good info, thanks.
Our hands are acidic so as to kill disease germs. That is why your eye burns if you touch it with your finger.
That names me wonder if it’s not airborne.
Of interest for current epidemic ping
But...does it build up, over time?
That’s what I wonder, every time I open an Amazon box....am I getting just a few virons....ea time...and, then building up?
LOL.
My groceries today got sprayed with dilute Simple Green, rinsed well, then dried and into the fridge. This plastic wrapped/packaged stuff like a PSMO tenderloin, carnitas meat, sour cream containers, etc.
Cardboard shelf-stable stuff is sitting overnight in the garage.
Good video by a doc on cleaning your groceries:
That video is precisely what prompted my web search on persistence of the virus on surfaces. Here’s why:
When an extreme caution is mandated compliance will move to the extremes: people will either go all out or say, whatevuh, I can’t do that, so I won’t do anything since I’m getting the virus anyway.
“Fear-based” public health campaigns frequently backfire for this reason.
See: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/02/453960470/scaring-people-can-make-them-healthier-but-it-can-backfire-too “If a decision is made to use fear-based appeals, Albarracin says, there are reasons against making the messaging too extreme. It can discourage the audience, she says, setting too high a bar. And while fear-based appeals don’t usually backfire, when they do, Albarracin says it may be owing to an overly intense level of fear. ‘When the facts are too extreme in an attempt to induce fear, they are just not believable and cast doubt on the whole enterprise,’ she says.”
Not mentioned in the article is the 1980s AIDS campaigns whose message was “use condoms or die,” and subsequently led to an outlier population to engage in even riskier behavior than before because they figured that since even one encounter would kill them, they might as well just forget protection altogether.
I think the caution shown in this video is fine but the regimen is only necessary in some areas and is otherwise impossible to follow.
Then there was a German study found very high viral loads in asymptomatic carriers. Then in a Chinese assessment of clincal staff ecpisure risks, it was noted that no detectable virus in the air of 3 srperate Covid-19 patients (probably due to high filtration as virus aas found in vents, toilets and particularly PPE changing area.add that did not detect virus in hospital rooms if Covid-19 patients (probthou
FYI
Regular S Green does not kill Virus,
Great cleaner though
Only 5 D Pro does
I’m just using for surfactant effect to rinse particles from surfaces. Hand washing works the same way.
Pest guy told me the reg S G is good for those tiny seasonal ants if surfaces are wiped down on a regular basis
Good to know, I’ve seen a few scouts. Also have some of the brown gooey bait stuff in the syringe. That only works if you can find a bit of a main route.
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