Quote:
Originally Posted by coffeebean
How about the pulls on the window blinds, ALL the handles and pulls on furniture and light switches? There are waaaaay too many things we humans touch on a daily basis. That is why it is so important to wash your hands frequently. It is impossible to sanitize your world.
|
I dropped out of high school at seventeen and became an Operating Room janitor, then an Operating Room scrub nurse, then a hospital surgical supervisor in Africa, where I instituted sterile techniques that lowered the surgical infection rate from 50% to 2%. So I know about sterile techniques. You are all right.
However, in practice, if you live alone and are social distancing, as I have been for two weeks, once you’ve wiped down all those surfaces in your home with alcohol or bleach solution, you run no risk in your home unless you bring in the virus from outside. How do you avoid that? You could put on disposable rubber gloves before you leave your home and remove them before you walk in your door. That’s very safe. You aren’t very likely to catch anything from cardboard boxes or paper bags. Cleaning shopping cart handles is a great idea if you aren’t wearing gloves, or even if you are. Food containers like cans and boxes are pretty safe. The worst things are handles, knobs, buttons you have to push, any public screens you have to touch, etc. For example, the touch screens in stores and gas stations. You can’t use a touch screen wearing a rubber glove! It doesn’t work. You can’t really remove a disposable glove and put it back on without contaminating yourself. I use one knuckle when possible, rather than a finger tip.
Washing your hands thoroughly after you remove your gloves when you get home is a good idea, as germs grow on your hands in a moist environment, even though they are probably not the Coronavirus. Wiping down your steering wheel and other things you touch in your vehicle isn’t a bad idea, including outside door handles.
One of the filthiest things in your life is probably your cell phone or iPad. Lots of people, both men and women, use them while sitting on the toilet! They then MAY wash their hands, but they have already spread colonies of organisms to their phones. Who washes their phones! (On purpose.) strong alcohol or bleach can damage them!
Fortunately, most of us have immune systems that can deal with this stuff. It’s the new virus that scares us. The good news is that the techniques above should keep you safe. It just takes a little care and a tiny bit of time. It also works in making you less likely to catch the flu.