COVID-19

Door handles made out of certain metals dont allow microbiological nasty to exist long , brass door knobs and handles are good in that respect but very long out of fashion nowadays.
A few years ago a buddy of mine got a job installing door handle sanitiser systems in commercial premesis , it was fitted to doors with the lever arm closing mech , a metal bar was installed with a cam so when the door closed a spray bottle vaped ethanol onto the door handle . In my local credit union they installed a dispenser right next to the door handle ,the idea being you sanitise before touching anything inside.

cyrano said:

Besides, we're also ducking problem #1: door handles. You CAN adapt the surgeon's habit, opening door handles with your elbow.

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I don't remember any handles on operating room doors, but maybe because I never used them. You scrub for 10 minutes, hold your hands up in front to you, and push through the swinging doors backwards to be gowned and gloved. You put your mask on before you scrub, though the surgeons shown scrubbing on TV don't have them on, apparently for clarity of dialogue, which is sadly lacking anyway in most shows, since the background noise or music seems to be more important.

JohnRoberts said:

I have worried about the postoffice door handle for my daily mail pick-up, like shaking hands with all the other customers. I couldn't open that door with my elbow on a bet. (washing my hands afterwards is fair practice.)

JR

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So do you open the PO door, pick up your mail, open the door to go out, take your mail home, get in your door without touching the handle (or disinfect it if you do), wash your hands, and pick up the contaminated mail with clean hands to open it?  Or maybe you open the mail before you wash your hands, letting the contents fall out onto a table untouched, throw the envelopes in the trash, then wash your hands.

Inquiring minds want to know. 

Nobody at my PO wears a mask anyway except me, so I reckon the door handle is not high on my problem list, and my mail is probably touched by many hands before I get it.

crazydoc said:

So do you open the PO door, pick up your mail, open the door to go out, take your mail home, get in your door without touching the handle (or disinfect it if you do), wash your hands, and pick up the contaminated mail with clean hands to open it?  Or maybe you open the mail before you wash your hands, letting the contents fall out onto a table untouched, throw the envelopes in the trash, then wash your hands.

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;D

Inquiring minds want to know. 

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thanks for asking

Nobody at my PO wears a mask anyway except me, so I reckon the door handle is not high on my problem list, and my mail is probably touched by many hands before I get it.

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My local mayor's executive order #1 mandating masks has apparently expired and been taken down, but the post office still has signs requesting mask wearing.

The postmaster told me she cleaned the door handles a few times a day...

This is not a real concern and I apologize to the list for wasting bandwidth.

JR 

A very insightful article:

https://www.bluezones.com/2020/06/covid-19-straight-answers-from-top-epidemiologist-who-predicted-the-pandemic/

Interview with Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, who predicted a pandemic like Covid-19 in 2017.

crazydoc said:

So do you open the PO door, pick up your mail, open the door to go out, take your mail home, get in your door without touching the handle (or disinfect it if you do), wash your hands, and pick up the contaminated mail with clean hands to open it?  Or maybe you open the mail before you wash your hands, letting the contents fall out onto a table untouched, throw the envelopes in the trash, then wash your hands.

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I actually open the "contaminated" envelopes with "dirty" hands, shake out the mail, discard of the envelopes and then proceed to wash my hands. We even disinfected all our groceries. I knew it was more voodoo than science, but it made me feel better about stuff I put in and took out of the fridge...  :

I noticed that one of my neighbors who is even older than me, spreads her mail outdoors on a table in the sunlight to decontaminate it. I guess if a bill blows away in the wind, that is god's will.  ;D

JR

PS: I am not aware of any transmission related to mail, but I will let my packages from china sit a while.

Tubetec said:

Door handles made out of certain metals dont allow microbiological nasty to exist long , brass door knobs and handles are good in that respect but very long out of fashion nowadays.

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There are a small number of hospitals, hotels and amusement parks worldwide who use copper door handles. The hospitals have had NO cases of resistant bacteria...

A few years ago a buddy of mine got a job installing door handle sanitiser systems in commercial premesis , it was fitted to doors with the lever arm closing mech , a metal bar was installed with a cam so when the door closed a spray bottle vaped ethanol onto the door handle . In my local credit union they installed a dispenser right next to the door handle ,the idea being you sanitise before touching anything inside.

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Some hospitals have electric door openers installed, to avoid touching them and spreading germs from on dept to another. It's not as expensive as it sounds, if you combine it with fire-proofing the hospital, as that needs centrally operated door closers anyways.

Still, copper door handles still are much cheaper...

cyrano said:

A very insightful article:

https://www.bluezones.com/2020/06/covid-19-straight-answers-from-top-epidemiologist-who-predicted-the-pandemic/

Interview with Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, who predicted a pandemic like Covid-19 in 2017.

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That's probably the most realistic (and scary) opinion I've seen about the pandemic. Thanks.

My takeaways are:
The shit will continue to hit the fan and will probably get worse (worldwide), no matter what we do. We were asleep at the wheel, (and now we're in a big skid with an incompetent in the driver's seat, my own opinion).

We can hope for an effective vaccine, but it will be awhile.

Eat healthy, exercise, and lose weight if you're fat (obesity a big risk factor.)

Physical distance, stay away from crowds, and outside is best. Wearing a mask can somewhat reduce your risk (but he doesn't address everyone wearing a mask.)

"The first thing I would do is identify an FDR or a Winston Churchill. Because I know that over the months ahead, we’re going to have a great deal of difficulty working through this pandemic. The darkest days are still ahead of us. And we need that moral leadership, that command leadership that doesn’t minimize what’s before us but allows everyone to see that we’re going to get through it.....

We really need to have as much information in the hands of the public. We can’t answer all the tough questions. We can’t solve all the tough problems, but we can be a partner in helping the public understand what we know and what we don’t know. I call it straight talk. Not happy talk, just straight talk. If I were czar, I would make sure that all the people that I worked with would espouse that very important goal....

I think one of the things we have to understand is we can’t just lockdown. I look at this with two guardrails. On one side is a guardrail where we are locked down for 18 months to try to get us all to a vaccine without anyone having to get infected or die. We will destroy not just the economy but society as we know that if we try to do that. The other guardrail is to just let it go and see what happens. We will see the kinds of deaths we just talked about and we will see healthcare systems that will literally implode. And not just for COVID-19 care, but for heart attack, stroke, and all other causes of disease in our communities. That’s not acceptable.....

And so we’ve got to thread the rope through the needle in the middle. The very question you asked me about, what do we recommend to our older citizens of this country — our parents, our grandparents — what do we tell them? That’s the part that we haven’t done a good job of addressing. We have to learn not only how to die with this virus, which tragically we’ve had to do, but we also have to learn how to live with it.

I read an optimistic (?) article that suggested that some people mount a stronger immune response and experience milder infections because of some years earlier exposure to a similar(?) coronavirus like infection.  Sounds like a lot a variables to weigh.

I am optimistic about the number of researchers and drug companies that are pursuing unconventional strategies (not just vaccines).

Media tends to have a "sky is falling" bias to scare us into watching, so caveat lector.

Be well, wash your hands.

JR

And eat cheese:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/05/vitamin-k-could-help-fight-coronavirus-study-suggests

Mh, cheese... 

Healthy diet always good for / against all sorts of things.
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And could also pop hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate at any time, just because we have it.

Oups, FDA just revoked emergency approval for it -- still, a good try, also psychologically, I'd think.

living sounds said:

And eat cheese:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/05/vitamin-k-could-help-fight-coronavirus-study-suggests

Mh, cheese... 

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And of course, spinach. Popeye hasn't gotten the virus yet.

Actually Vitamin D has reportedly been suggested as helpful, but sun light is always good, until it isn't.

I already shared that clinics dealing with the Spanish flu reportedly saw anecdotal benefit from moving patients outdoors into the sunlight. 
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While any number of theories are floated to explain the higher incidence of COVID infection in black community. Darker skin pigmentation can reduce natural Vitamin D uptake from sun exposure. Perhaps another factor? Or not. 

JR

'Texas reports record high number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients... Abbott said Friday that he didn't see a "real need to ratchet back the opening of businesses in the state," partly due to the number of hospital beds open, the Texas Tribune reported.'
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-reports-record-high-number-of-hospitalized-covid-19-patients/ar-BB15xcWu?ocid=bingcovid

As usual, people don't realize that what you see today may have no relation to what you see in two weeks. Hop on for the ride.

Perhaps a better topic for the COVID politics thread, the nature of a massive infection (pandemic) is that death tolls and infections will continue to rise over time (with hyperbolic news reporting every new big number milestones). Further increased testing will logically result in more confirmed cases (duh).

I am not smart enough to predict a second wave (or third) but of course we should be cautious. I will predict that we are far better prepared now to deal with any future waves, than we were.

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New study suggests steroids can significantly improve survival rate....  This is well known that steroids reduce inflammation, of course they can also have secondary effects.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

New study suggests steroids can significantly improve survival rate....  This is well known that steroids reduce inflammation, of course they can also have secondary effects.

JR

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Yes, targeting inflammation seems to work:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53061281
https://www.recoverytrial.net/files/recovery_dexamethasone_statement_160620_final.pdf

It was thought way back when that steroids might be effective in treating covid cytokine storm, which caused a lot of the serious illness and death in covid patients. There was hesitation also, as steroids are immunosuppressants, and the risk/benefit ratio was unclear. That's great that this study was done and results are positive - dexamethasone will certainly be a big help in the treatment of selected patients, mainly those with a clinical course consistent with cytokine storm.

crazydoc said:

It was thought way back when that steroids might be effective in treating covid cytokine storm, which caused a lot of the serious illness and death in covid patients. There was hesitation also, as steroids are immunosuppressants, and the risk/benefit ratio was unclear. That's great that this study was done and results are positive - dexamethasone will certainly be a big help in the treatment of selected patients, mainly those with a clinical course consistent with cytokine storm.

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Yup steroids are double edged sword... But improving survival rates for hospitalized patients is useful.

JR

I watched an outdoor press conference today where the audience were all spaced and wearing masks, but a fly landed on three of their faces in row as each touched their face to brush the fly away... tofly away to land on the next face.... 

JR