Wellness

[Deree]

If the virus is viable on cloth for 2 days I wonder why it is viable for a week on a surgical mask.  Seems to me they're both soft material.

[mjmm]

Best thing to do is wash hands don't touch face.

[sfnative]

Tuberculosis is on the rise worldwide.  Its origin is not from a virus, but from a bacteria.  The tuberculosis bacterium is particularly nasty, because it has a waxy coating, allowing it to exist on surfaces for days and weeks.

This waxy coating is far, far more tough than the coating of CoVid19.  Read on.

Once past the early '80s in San Francisco, when the AIDs epidemic was in full swing and I was just about complete with student nursing, the City & County of San Francisco in concert with the Pathology Department at the University of California San Francisco, up on the hill, pooled their resources to work on and complete a study in what was then the center of social life for the at-risk population (Polk Street and environs).

They had a 2-pronged approach:

1.  Restaurants & Bars:  Take bar ware, table settings, which included stainless, and full place setting; samples of anything behind the counter and in the kitchen.

2.  Sidewalks & Alleys:  There were lots of alleys, where garbage and human waste abounded.  Streets offered up lots of sputum, gum, tossed food waste, paper waste, etc.

All of the above were placed in sterile "evidence" type bags and brought to 3 large laboratories, where samples were swabbed, then "plated" on different types of "dishes."  You might be familiar with an agar dish to grow bacteria.  There are also other types of growth media, as well.

The most startling result found was relevant to bar ware.  In the early 80s, it was still the practice to hand wash all customer used glassware in warm/hot soapy water.  Then the glassware was rinsed in cold water, turned up-side-down on towels and hand dried.

What the researchers found was that on a number of glasses, they were able to grow tuberculin bacteria from swabs taken on site from bars on Polk Street!  That darn waxy exterior of the tuberculosis bacteria allowed it to live, even through the soapy warm/hot water hand wash and rinse, plus the hand dry by the bartender.  This means that the surfactant value of washing in soapy water was for naught on those glasses where the TB remained viable.

This is a very important lesson to be learned and not just for TB, which has been with us since ancient times - and THAT'S why it's been with us for eons.