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Buy 'Microban 24 Hour' -spray disinfectant - spray your box where the mailman and you touch it...read the many directions last for along time and multiple touches, kills viruses and bacteria it says..$4 - Target, Walmart.
Collect your mail with your surgical gloves, use a letter opener and scissors for packages spray them after
with rubbing alcohol. Open things outside. Fig out a system to get mail out of the envelopes with something clean -
one handed or big tweezers?
Touch gloves at wrist, turn inside out, toss.
Oh...Envelopes in trash outside of house with a gloved hand, not picking up any lid with the gloved hand, ha.
If the mail has not been sneezed on in the mail room, ha ---the mailman could be wiping his nose and touch
everyone's mail and latches.
Look up how long this particular virus can live!
Keep sanitary wipes all over for the many things we touch! That Microban 24 can be sticky---use alcohol when you can.
90% is best.
Last edited by Miss Hepburn; 03-12-2020 at 03:45 PM..
If I really start to get scared, I'm going to wear a plastic bag over my hand when I go out to get the mail. It will be the same bag that I will use to pick up doggie poop. Get the mail and drop junk mail directly into dumpster (live in apt complex.) Put real mail inside front door into a box while plastic bag is still on my hand. Proceed to walk doggie and then use plastic bag for its usual doggie purpose. Finally take off plastic bag carefully and throw it along with doggie poop into dumpster.
I've read that you should use a cardboard box to put your mail in and keep it there for a few days. Spray it with a mixture of bleach and water if you want to. But I don't know if the bleach and water spray makes sense because it would rot the box and maybe even destroy the mail. This article says that bleach works well and that the virus can only live on cardboard for up to 24 hours. BUT this article may not be 100% correct, so it says.
They found that viable virus could be detected up to three hours later in the air, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
It's interesting - I tracked down the original paper that's led to all the news reports. It's a preprint and not easy to find online, but does indeed show survival on surfaces. However, we should note two things. 1. They used a lot of virus to innoculate a surface and 2. They used a recovery procedure that maximizes recovery from the surface - washing it with an incubation medium. How relevant these things are to real world exposure, I don't know, but all the evidence, including this article, suggests aerosols are still the principal risk.
Note that the authors did not test to see if virus could be recovered in the air around a contaminated surface, probably because prior work on SARS (a very similar virus) in their lab didn't find any risk. But that's a guess on my part. I didn't look for any publications.
And yes, I'm a virologist by training, many years ago. Did research on herpes.
It's interesting - I tracked down the original paper that's led to all the news reports. It's a preprint and not easy to find online, but does indeed show survival on surfaces. However, we should note two things. 1. They used a lot of virus to innoculate a surface and 2. They used a recovery procedure that maximizes recovery from the surface - washing it with an incubation medium. How relevant these things are to real world exposure, I don't know, but all the evidence, including this article, suggests aerosols are still the principal risk.
Note that the authors did not test to see if virus could be recovered in the air around a contaminated surface, probably because prior work on SARS (a very similar virus) in their lab didn't find any risk. But that's a guess on my part. I didn't look for any publications.
And yes, I'm a virologist by training, many years ago. Did research on herpes.
As a virologist maybe you can offer some insights. My understanding is that a significant fraction of the population is going to be infected by Covid-19, and there is no getting around it because of its transmissibility. And all we can really do now is slow the spread to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed by pneumonic patients. Is that how you see it?
As a virologist maybe you can offer some insights. My understanding is that a significant fraction of the population is going to be infected by Covid-19, and there is no getting around it because of its transmissibility. And all we can really do now is slow the spread to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed by pneumonic patients. Is that how you see it?
Exactly. The idea is that social distancing will spread the pan/epidemic over a greater period of time so that the peak of infections is less likely to overwhelm our health care system. Without precautions, even if the virus were no more morbid than seasonal flue, which is unlikely, a sharp spike in the infection incidence would overwhelm our health care system.
Seasonal flue, even the worst new strains, is manageable because there's enough reservoir of immunity in the population to slow its spread and minimize the peak. This immunity is due to vaccination, even if the vaccination is only marginally effective like in some years, and immunity cross reactivity to strains from years ago, which helps the elderly.
With this new virus, we're all naked, so to speak, and it's highly transmissible. In the worst case, this means a sharp exponential (think rocket takeoff) rise in the number of infected.
I know of younger folks who dismiss the risk since the data shows they are not much at risk of serious disease. But it's a community thing. We don't want them to be the conduit for infection to the more vulnerable.
I think the best practice is use gloves, open the box then take the item out without the gloves disposing the boxes. Sure if the package has the virus, it would be around but eventually it will die if it doesn't get on you.
That's why it's always important to wash hands after contact with any object that's been handled by others. I don't get why some people never wash hands after touching stuff or even on the computer then they reach out for hand foods like a sandwich and blame the food company for getting sick due to your own ignorance of cross contamination?
I think the best practice is use gloves, open the box then take the item out without the gloves disposing the boxes. Sure if the package has the virus, it would be around but eventually it will die if it doesn't get on you.
That's why it's always important to wash hands after contact with any object that's been handled by others. I don't get why some people never wash hands after touching stuff or even on the computer then they reach out for hand foods like a sandwich and blame the food company for getting sick due to your own ignorance of cross contamination?
This is probably the best advice ever for glove and sanitizer manufacturers.
The facts are that some pathogens are transmitted primarily by surface contact, especially pathogens that infect the GI tract. Others are transmitted mostly by aerosols - through the air if you will - such as flue or corona viruses. Yes, in theory these airborne viruses can be caught from surfaces but it's much more difficult to do, and there is no evidence yet of corona being transmitted this way.
Caution is always a good thing, as is good sanitation, including hand washing. But there's no need to overdo it, at least not yet. Follow WHO and CDC recommendations. They're not recommending the extreme steps outlined above, at least not yet. They don't call it a "best practice". Instead, they say the best practice is social distancing.
Finally, let's not confound corona risk with food poisoning from e. coli contaminated vegetables such as lettuce. The latter has little to do with hand washing, or airborne pathogens for that matter. Different kettle of fish so to speak.
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