Quote:
Originally Posted by Diverdave
San Francisco has a MUCH bigger issue. It has been shown that Coronavirus is transferred through human waste and their city is awash in it.from their massive homeless population. They have a staff of folks who.clean it daily, but it is still a massive problem just from the smell. It would be practically impossible to effectively sanitise sidewalks and streets, so the virus could linger for a day or two. Yikes!
|
It has not been shown that Coronavirus is transferred through human waste. Your statement as if it were a fact, is a misunderstanding of the established studies. For feces to be infectious requires two things.
1. That there are intact viruses in the feces.
2. That there are sufficient numbers of intact viruses to transmit disease [infectious dose].
It has been shown that stool can be PCR positive for Covid. That is not the same as intact virus. The PCR test looks for pieces of the virus. Thus if a virus were in your throat and you swallowed it and that virus were destroyed by travel through the GI system, the virus itself is "dead" but the PCR could still be positive. In fact that is what may be happening.
HERE is a review in Nature, one of the leading science journals. Included is this important information
Quote:
|
Infectious virus was readily isolated from throat- and lung-derived samples, but not from stool samples, in spite of high virus RNA concentration.
|
As to #2 [no pun opportunity should be missed] The quantity of virus needed has not been fully established. It is known that some viruses only require a small number of particles to sicken a person while others require a large quantity. Thus even if there are some "live" intact virus in the feces it would need to be shown that the exposure is greater than the threshold for infection.
This is not to say that feces could not be an alternative agent of transmission. Just that your claim is inaccurate.