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.
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.
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
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
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...