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Some here may recall that I spent the last years of my career at Porton Down. Interesting place, although it does tend to induce a bit of paranoia when it comes to pathogens.
The government aren't, IMHO, doing a very good job of giving practical, everyday, advice as to how people can behave sensibly, and adjust their behaviour according to the level of risk.
When I first started work in a lab (for the UKAEA) I was given loads of training on handling radioactive compounds, mainly associated with the best way to avoid the risk of accidental contamination. The first lesson was to imagine that our hands were covered with wet blue paint (most of us have probably been there) and that anything we touched would get contaminated. It's incredibly difficult to stop touching things, especially your face (no fun having splodges of paint there, either).
The best method for me is the one that has been custom in the Middle East for centuries, the idea of having a clean hand and an unclean hand. I used to keep my clean hand tucked behind my back, as a reminder to not get it contaminated.
The same principle works for this thing when we're out and about in any environment where there could be potential contamination, keep one hand clean and one hand unclean, and never let something transfer between them, and never let the unclean hand touch your face.
The risks we face from the SARS-CoV-2 virus are manageable. There are two transmission routes, either breathing in viral particles excreted directly by an infected person (who may well be asymptomatic), or (mainly) by indirect transfer from hand to the mucus membranes in our respiratory tract (via hand to mouth, nose or eye contact). The latter is the insidious one, as the virus can probably persist on a cool, non-porous surface for several days, so everything from a fuel pump to a payment keypad (and many other things) could be pretty effective routes to transfer the infection from person to person.
The good news is that it's very easy to deactivate the virus. It has a lipid outer coat, that is near-instantly broken down by good old soap and water. It can also be deactivated quickly with a number of virucides; my favourite is a 70% isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and water mix (the water is essential - 100% alcohol is relatively ineffective).
I went shopping on Saturday, and this is how I went about reducing my risk. I took a spray bottle filled with IPA/water mix and a small microfibre cloth with me (microfibre is really good at mechanically cleaning surfaces). I wiped down all the parts of the shopping trolley that I was likely to touch with the cloth wetted with the mix. I only used my right hand to pick stuff off the shelves and I took great care to never touch my face with that hand. I tried to stay clear of others as far as I could, and used the self-service checkout, to avoid being close to a checkout operator. I wiped the touch screen and keypad with the wetted cloth before I started, and again only used my right hand to touch anything I put in my bags. I got my bank card out with my (clean) left hand and put in the (cleaned) keypad, and used my right hand to press the buttons. When I left the shop I wiped both hands with the wetted cloth to clean them, put the shopping bags in the car and drove home. When I unpacked the bags I wiped the outside of any non-porous boxes, bottles, packaging etc down with the wetted cloth, and wiped down the worktops they had been sat on.
I don't worry too much about porous stuff, as the virus most probably can't persist there for more than maybe 3 hours at the most, plus porous stuff isn't that good at transfer.
We have a strict rule that anything outside the doors of the house is assumed to be contaminated and anything inside is deemed to be safe. The post lady delivered a plastic wrapped parcel this morning (at arms length, as per the new Post Office guidance) I took it with my unclean hand and used my clean hand to wipe it down with the disinfectant mix.
It might seem OTT, but the paper published by Imperial College yesterday, the one that has informed the government action, has some clear indications of the magnitude of the challenge we face. Doing nothing results in about 510,000 people dying in the UK before the end of this year. Doing the social distancing, personal hygiene/protection, shielding the elderly and vulnerable brings this number down to about 250,000 deaths this year in the UK. Not great, but the best we can realistically do (other than pray to whatever deity you may choose to believe in).
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Locked
