Winning the Covid-19 war

[Timmo]

The cheese topping is a level of sophistication I rarely rise to. I was rather assuming Chris and Paul would probably have one stashed in a locker on their cruisers.

Family was fed on Tuna Hash only last night. Son and girlfriend are living here as refugees from London. She gets full seal of approval on the basis of her appetite for the family traditional dish.

Stay Well!

On 31 Mar 2020, at 07:34, Port-Na-Storm [via UK HBBR Forum] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thats an impressive camp kitchen you have there Tim. 

Blow torch, wow. 

G

Sent from my Xperia by Sony smartphone

---- Timmo [via UK HBBR Forum] wrote ----

Works with a camp stove, if you want the cheese topping use a blowtorch!

Tim

On 30 Mar 2020, at 18:36, Paul (admin) [via UK HBBR Forum] <<a href="x-msg://4/user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&amp;node=4031403&amp;i=0" target="_top" rel="nofollow" link="external" class="">[hidden email]> wrote:

Chris, 

Great recipe, but do you really have a grill on your boat? 

I'm jealous. 

https://youtu.be/kjrjhgRBpvM


Paul 

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NAML

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[The Q]

Well  after my last message I was sent home to isolate for 12 weeks.
Work has been proceeding on the boat slowly.

12 weeks isolation is 12 % of my remaining time at work before I hope to retire,  so it's good practice.  However on real retirement I hope to be out sailing..

I've had lots to do,  for instance today I have to:
Get some battens to cut for SWMBOs art paper storage area to get more air circulation below the paper.
Clear Ivy from the garage roof,
Mow the jungle.
Turn the wooden part of keel over so I can pour resin in to seal the keel bolt in their holes.

The dog loves me being home,  much more attention for him.

We seen a lot of strangers here,  for instance I saw someone yesterday hiding their car behind a wall on the sugar beet pan. Then taking their family for a walk to the beach.

[Chris Adeney]

Tried the Tuna Hash on my wife this weekend. Went down surprisingly well, at least she is still talking to me! Looking forward to trying it while on the on the boat perhaps with a tin of peas mixed in to it to provide some greens.
Keep well, Chris A.

[Chris Waite]

Today I received the following explanation on the Corona Virus.

It purports to come from John Hopkins Hospital and it seems to make a lot of sense to me, so I thought I'd share it with you -

DESTROYING THE VIRUS
                                     
* The virus is not a living organism; It is a protein molecule (RNA or DNA) covered by a protective layer of lipid (fat), which, when absorbed by the cells of the ocular (eyes), nasal (nose) or buccal mucosa (mouth), changes their genetic code (mutates) and converts into aggressor and multiplier cells.

* Since the virus is not a living organism, but is a protein molecule, it cannot be killed.  It has to decay on its own. The disintegration time depends on the temperature, humidity and type of material where it lies.

* The virus is very fragile; the only thing that protects it is a thin outer layer of fat and that is the reason why soap or detergent is the best weapon.  The foam CUTS THE FAT (that is why you have to scrub for 20 seconds or more, to create lots of foam).  By dissolving the fat layer, the protein molecule disperses and breaks down.

* HEAT melts fat; this is why it is necessary to use water above 25 degrees Celsius for hand washing, laundry and cleaning surfaces. In addition, hot water makes more foam, making it more effective.

* Alcohol or any mixture with alcohol over 65% DISSOLVES ALL FAT, especially the external lipid layer of the virus.

* Any solution with 1 part bleach and 5 parts water directly dissolves the protein, breaking it down from the inside.

* Oxygenated water increases the effectiveness of soap, alcohol and chlorine, because peroxide dissolves the virus protein.  However, because you have to use it in its pure form, it can damage your skin.

* NO BACTERICIDE OR ANTIBIOTIC WILL WORK because the virus is not a living organism like bacteria; antibodies cannot kill what is not alive.

* NEVER shake used or unused clothing, sheets or fabric. While it is glued to a porous surface, it is very inert and disintegrates after a period of time:

                                    -between 3 hours (fabric and porous),

                                    -4 hours (copper and wood),

                                    -24 hours (cardboard),

                                    -42 hours (metal) and

                                    -72 hours (plastic).

But if you shake it or use a feather duster, the virus molecules float in the air for up to 3 hours, and can lodge in your nose.

* The virus molecules remain very stable at colder temperatures, including air conditioning in houses and cars.  They also need moisture and darkness to stay stable. Therefore, dehumidified, dry, warm and bright environments will degrade the virus faster.

* UV LIGHT on any object that may contain the virus breaks down the protein.  Be careful, it also breaks down collagen (which is protein) in the skin.

* The virus CANNOT go through healthy skin.

* Vinegar is NOT useful because it does not break down the protective layer of fat.

* NO SPIRITS, NOR VODKA, serve. The strongest vodka is only 40% alcohol, and you need a minimum of 65%.

* LISTERINE  is 65% alcohol.

* The more confined the space, the higher the concentration of the virus there can be. The more open or naturally ventilated, the less.

* You have to wash your hands before and after touching any commonly used surfaces such as : mucosa, food, locks, knobs, switches, remotes, cell phones, watches, computers, desks etc. and don’t forget when you use the bathroom.

* You have to MOISTURIZE YOUR HANDS due to frequent washing.  Dry hands have cracks and the molecules can hide in the micro cracks. The thicker the moisturizer, the better.

* Also keep your NAILS SHORT so that the virus does not hide there.

CW

                                     

[Timmo]

Interesting and useful!

Thanks.

Tim.

[Paul H (admin)]

Thanks Chris,

That all makes sense.

Notice that copper kills the virus quickly. It's a biocide and used in anti-fouling paint.

HMS Victory's hull had copper plates nailed in place, to kill barnacles. The Admiralty knew barnacles would slow down a warship.

Also notice plastic is the worst material for a door handle.

Remember the brass/copper handles we used as a kid?

Stay well
Paul

[Timmo]

Most of our door handles are still brass! So old fashioned.

On 8 Apr 2020, at 18:28, Paul (admin) [via UK HBBR Forum] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks Chris,

That all makes sense.

Notice that copper kills the virus quickly. It's a biocide and used in anti-fouling paint.

HMS Victory's hull had copper plates nailed in place, to kill barnacles. The Admiralty knew barnacles would slow down a warship.

Also notice plastic is the worst material for a door handle.

Remember the brass/copper handles we used as a kid?

Stay well
Paul

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[Jeremy]

Just a word of caution about the reliability of that persistence information.  I went searching for papers on this a few weeks ago, and found the following (collated from four different papers):



In addition to this data, last week an article in a journal recorded that viable virions were found inside a plastic bin liner during the clean up of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, 17 days after the last infected passenger disembarked.

It seems quite possible for virions to remain viable on some non-porous surfaces for many days, perhaps a few weeks.  Whether the titre is sufficient to cause infection isn't known, but the fairly high infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 (R0 seems to be around 2.5 or so) indicates that the viral titre needed to cause disease in a patient may be low, perhaps of the order of a few hundred or thousand virions.  Given that around 3,000,000,000 SARS-CoV-2 virions would fit on the head of a pin, you can get an idea as to just how tiny an area of material contaminated with this virus, if transferred to a mucus membrane, can cause disease.

FWIW, I had 20 litres of isopropyl alcohol delivered at the end of last year, as it was on special offer (£37 for 20 litres, delivered).  I've been making up dozens of bottles of hand sanitiser and surface disinfectant, as a 70% alcohol/water mix, for our team of community volunteers who are collecting and distributing prescription medicines around the village.  Just as well, as the price of isopropyl alcohol has skyrocketed.  It was ~£1.85/litre when I bought it, it's now ~£14/litre.

[Chris Waite]

Just received this on self-isolating from Steppy-D-1, (my elder stepdaughter) -

Day 1... I can do this! Got enough food and wine for a month!

Day 2... Opening my eighth bottle of wine. I fear wine supplies may not last.

Day 3... 8 PM remove my day PJs and put on my night PJs

Day 4... Tried to make hand sanitizer – that didn’t turn out well. More like a cocktail!

Day 5... I get to take the trash out. I’m so excited I can’t decide what to wear.

Day 6... Laughing way too much at my own jokes.

Day 7... Went to a new restaurant called “the kitchen“ you gather all ingredients and make your own meal. I have no clue how this place stays in business.

Day 8... I put bottles of wine in every room today. And tonight - I’m getting all dressed up and going bar hopping.

Day 9... Isolation is hard… I swear my refrigerator just said  “what the hell do you want now? “

Day 10... I realized if you keep a glass of wine in each hand, you can’t accidentally touch your face.


Well it kept me sniggering for some minutes

And again minutes later

CW

[Chris Waite]

Copper didn't just kill barnacles on the Victory

It was used throughout the fleet and it can ruin a teredo worm's whole meal too.   That was unlike most other navies, providing another reason Britannia ruled the waves.

However I don't think I want to be painted in antifouling and I certainly don't want to be nailed over with copper.

CW

[GregHBBR]

The message is FAKE.

My wife, who is one of the 1.5 million at greatest risk has been passed this message and variants of it purporting to come from anyone from Iranian doctors on the front line to yours and US sources.

While it does include some accurate information it also contains several pieces of complete garbage.

Please do not pass it on anywhere else.

Your starting point for research on what is accurate could be:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52124740
which includes reference to it in the final item.

[Paul H (admin)]

Jeremy,

Do you think bleach solution is a virus killer? My Wife and myself have being spraying every surface that comes into the house, also door handles and car surfaces.

Stay well
Paul

[Jeremy]

Yes, very definitely, no question about it.  We used to use it to clean BSL4 labs at work (the ones used to work on stuff like Marburg and Ebola).  It's still very effective against this type of biohazard at a dilution of around 5:1 to 8:1 with water (assuming that the domestic bleach is fresh)

Main problem with hypochlorite bleach is that it damages stuff if it's too strong a solution.  OK on some hard surfaces, but not good near food or anything organic, as it's a powerful oxidant.  A better option is hypochlorous acid, but it only has a short shelf life (a matter of days, perhaps a couple of weeks) and so it isn't commercially viable as a product.  It is used a lot for food disinfection, washing and disinfecting hospital facilities, bio labs etc, but those places make it on the premises.

Making hypochlorous acid isn't hard, though, it just needs water, salt, acetic acid (as a pH regulator) and an electrolysis device.  To make pure hypochlorous acid is a PITA, as it needs a a selective ion membrane to separate out the anode and cathode in the electrolysis rig, but if just making food and skin safe disinfectant, where contamination with a bit of sodium hydroxide isn't really an issue, then there are some relatively affordable USB powered devices around.

If you search on eBay or wherever you will find a few of these devices around, but the prices are skyrocketing as the word gets out that they may be useful right now.  Sadly some may well turn out to be scams, too, and not actually work.  I've bought one of the cheaper ones to evaluate, have stripped it down to see how it works and tried to use it.  This was a major problem, as the instructions are all in Chinese, and impossible to decode.  I went back to first principles, worked out the amount of sodium chloride to use, and gave it a go.  The jury's out on the result right now.  I have some higher range free chlorine test strips on order, and hope that they will give a better indication than the reagent tests I've tried.  I believe that the thing may work OK, but it has a major flaw in that the pH rises (because of the sodium hydroxide that's a co-product of the reaction), and hypochlorous acid degrades rapidly if the pH goes above about 5 (the stuff I made had a pH of around 8).

When the stuff I've ordered arrives I plan to run a few experiments and try to work out the way to optimise both the hypochlorous acid concentration and the final pH, so that anything produced has a reasonable shelf life.  Although we have stocks of isopropyl alcohol, hypochlorous acid is useful as it can wash food, like fresh fruit and veg, that may have been handled by others.  We assume that everything from outside is potentially infective, so doesn't get into the house unless it has been disinfected (mail, parcels, shopping, milk, etc all gets disinfected before being brought in to the house).  Hypochlorous acid is just another useful adjunct to that disinfection regime, I hope.

Finally, a cheap way to make loads of bleach is to buy some pool shock.  This is usually calcium hypochlorite, and is pretty cheap.  About 16 tablespoons of calcium hypochlorite will make about 5 litres of domestic strength bleach when dissolved in water, so a 5kg tub of the stuff goes a very long way.

[Chris Adeney]

As part of my covid coping strategy I have been reading an interesting book by N.A.M. Rodger on naval history. He points out that the reason copper was so important was that a clean bottom gave an increase in speed of one knot which was significant as apparently those ships only did 5-6 knots. There was a problem when first done in that the navy did not appreciate the effects of electrolysis and the first ships literally fell apart as their ferrous fixings corroded away. This was solved by putting a sheath of paper held on with tar between the hull and copper as well as converting to non ferrous fixing.
Chris A.

[Chris Waite]

I'm glad to see that despite Greg's screeches of doom, this topic is turning into the enlightened discussion I was anticipating from the intellect of those frequenting this forum.

Greg, you're such a jolly fellow; I'm thrilled we have you policing our corner of cyberspace so assiduously.  I used the word 'purports' to come from John Hopkins Hospital, very deliberately.  I honestly do not give a rat's orifice if Mr. Hopkins handed it out of his grave on a piece of paper, or the man in the moon dropped it from the heavens.

It is a list of very reasonably argued points, starting with the proposal that viruses are not living things, which as they are the template for life begs the question "What is life?"

(Ah; The Meaning of Liff!)

I found Jeremy's refinements of the disintegration times of viruses and the chemistry of bleach of genuine interest.
 
On the other hand, the link to the BBC is so immersed in hyperwaffle, sidetracks and name dropping that even with all the avenues opened I was unable to make head nor tail of it and, the only salient fake fact it seemed to point out on a first read through was that Listerine is 65% alcohol.  I re-read everything several more times and could not even find that again.  As many of the poor folk huddled in doorways and sleeping on park benches clutch bottles of strong cider rather than mouthwash, I imagine that fact is very likely inaccurate.

Chris W

[Chris Partridge]

According to Wikipedia, which contrary to popular opinion tends to be rather accurate about this sort of thing because the manufacturers keep a close eye on what is being said about their products:
“The active ingredients listed on Listerine packaging are essential oils which are menthol (mint) 0.042%, thymol (thyme) 0.064%, methyl salicylate (wintergreen) 0.06%, and eucalyptol (eucalyptus) 0.092%.[16] In combination all have an antiseptic effect and there is some thought that methyl salicylate may have an anti inflammatory effect as well.[17] Ethanol, which is toxic to bacteria at concentrations of 40%, is present in concentrations of 21.6% in the flavored product and 26.9% in the original gold Listerine Antiseptic.[18] At this concentration, the ethanol serves to dissolve the active ingredients.[19]
The addition of the active ingredients means the ethanol is considered to be undrinkable, known as denatured alcohol, and it is therefore not regulated as an alcoholic beverage in the United States. (Specially Denatured Alcohol Formula 38-B, specified in Title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 21, Subpart D) However, consumption of mouthwash to obtain intoxication does occur, especially among alcoholics and underage drinkers.“
So it is not as strong as the average spirit from the shelf at Lidl.
But my favourite facts about Listerine come from that great book Freakonomics:
“Listerine, for instance, was invented in the nineteenth century as powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis" — a then obscure medical term for bad breath. Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one maiden asked herself. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered such a catastrophe. But Listerine changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.”

Chris Waite wrote

I'm glad to see that despite Greg's screeches of doom, this topic is turning into the enlightened discussion I was anticipating from the intellect of those frequenting this forum.

Greg, you're such a jolly fellow; I'm thrilled we have you policing our corner of cyberspace so assiduously.  I used the word 'purports' to come from John Hopkins Hospital, very deliberately.  I honestly do not give a rat's orifice if Mr. Hopkins handed it out of his grave on a piece of paper, or the man in the moon dropped it from the heavens.

It is a list of very reasonably argued points, starting with the proposal that viruses are not living things, which as they are the template for life begs the question "What is life?"

(Ah; The Meaning of Liff!)

I found Jeremy's refinements of the disintegration times of viruses and the chemistry of bleach of genuine interest.
 
On the other hand, the link to the BBC is so immersed in hyperwaffle, sidetracks and name dropping that even with all the avenues opened I was unable to make head nor tail of it and, the only salient fake fact it seemed to point out on a first read through was that Listerine is 65% alcohol.  I re-read everything several more times and could not even find that again.  As many of the poor folk huddled in doorways and sleeping on park benches clutch bottles of strong cider rather than mouthwash, I imagine that fact is very likely inaccurate.

Chris W

[Frogsider]

I would have little confidence in anything purporting to come from “John Hopkins Hospital”.  I might believe it if the source was the well-known and highly reputable Johns Hopkins University.  

[Chris Waite]

As I said Frogsider

I was much more interested in the reasonable (only "REASONABLE", folks) common sense in most of the points than the origin, though I did look up John Hopkins as the original had some apparent typos in the title and I had always thought it was actually the "John Hopkins University Hospital".  Without going into detail the link I found didn't really make that very clear.

But rolling right along; from another source I was informed that Cuddles the Corona Virus is able to survive the temperatures involved in a barbeque.  As a chunk of (Desoxy)-Ribo-Nucleic-Acid wrapped in its own lipid parcel, I would have thought it would end up cooked to perfection, but nature does have a way of producing some very resilient life forms....

And anyway, who has been taking such a beast and smearing it over their patio grill?  

"Just taking the virus out to the rotisserie dear"

CW

[LASER41420]

Hi,
Interesting viewpoint here https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/12/the-lockdown-is-not-a-way-of-beating-this-virus/ apparently the government will have to release lockdown soon so get the next round of infections going.
Steve

[Port-Na-Storm]

Way back in time, actually on April 11th but it seams a lifetime ago, CW casually threw in a reference to The Meaning of Liff.  (Ah; The Meaning of Liff!)
These things don't go unnoticed.

For those unfamiliar with this work it is a tomb written by the late Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame and John lloyd of QI and many other important cultural works such as Blackadder, Not The Nine O'Clock News and Have I got News for You.

The basic premise of the book is that there are many things in life which have no names and a vast number of place names which could be better employed.

I don't have "The Meaning of Liff" on my bookshelf but I do have "The Deeper Meaning of Liff" so from that volume I will give this example.  

There is a small hamlet in Lanarkshire called Elsrickle.  
This is described as "A bead of sweat which runs down your bottom cleavage".

I come from the beautiful Scottish Borders town of Peebles and was rather dismayed to discover it was described as "Small carefully rolled pellets of Skegness."  
If you want to know what Skegness is, you'll have to read the book.

Well what else were you going to do?