Hand Sanitizer

If your hands are clean and your junk is clean and you have learned how not to pee on yourself do you really need to wash your hands when you are done.

Agreed.
When I see a scumbag exit the restroom without washing his hands, the scarlet letters of scumbag are immediately assigned.

I am far from being a germaphobe, it is about common decency.

To be fair gents, I was mostly joking. I tend to wash my hands before and after, then use the paper towel to grab the handle.

Fact is, we can't stop others from spreading fecal matter to the door handle, common courtesy or not, plenty of people don't do it. Accepting that reality, I want clean hands handling my handle, that's all I'm saying.

That's true, but part of that perspective is acknowledging the data. There's much we don't know about this virus yet, but we do know two things: it's equally as communicable as the flu, and it's about 20 times more likely to be fatal.

Will it become a sustained pandemic lasting almost forever like influenza, or will it taper off quickly (as it may be doing in China)? We don't know.

If it lasts, will it be seasonal like the flu, or will it continue to kill people throughout the summer season? We don't know.

Will a vaccine that is more, less, or equally as effective as the flu vaccine be developed this year? Next? Ever? We don't know.

Will we develop any effective antiviral therapeutics for this, that can lessen the severity of the bad cases? We don't know.

It's normal for people to fear what they don't know. That doesn't justify any kind of panic or overreaction, but there's no justification for an under-reaction either. We're dealing with something that could potentially - and not as an outlier possibility but actually a reasonable one - kill several times as many people as the flu does on a yearly basis. We just won't know until it's done spreading and exists everywhere in the community (which it will), and we have a year or two of data to look at.

We also do know which demographics, almost without exception, get the severe cases: older adults with preexisting health problems, particularly respiratory issues.

20x? I have not seen numbers that high reported. The reporting I have read is much lower in healthy populations. This is stats from a week ago...

 "A total of 72,314 COVID-19 cases, diagnosed through Feb 11 were used for the study. Of the 72,314 cases, 44,672 were classified as confirmed cases of COVID-19 (62%; diagnosis based on positive throat swab samples), 16,186 as suspected cases (diagnosis based on symptoms and exposures only), 10,567 as clinically diagnosed cases (from Hubei province only, diagnoses based on symptoms, including lung x-ray), and 889 as asymptomatic cases (diagnosis by positive test result but lacking typical symptoms).

Eighty-seven percent of patients were aged 30 to 79 years (38,680 cases). This age-group was the most affected by a wide margin, followed by ages 20 to 29 (3,619 cases, or 8%), those 80 and older (1,408 cases, or 3%), and 1% each in ages less than 10 and 10 to 19 years.

Of the confirmed cases, 1,023 patients—all in critical condition—died from the virus, which results in a CFR of 2.3%. The CFR jumped considerably among older patients, to 14.8% in patients 80 and older, and 8.0% in patients ages 70 to 79. Among the critically ill, the CFR was 49.0%.

A smaller study today based on 52 critically ill patients at a Wuhan hospital confirms this finding. Thirty-two of the 52 critically ill patients (61.5%) died, and older age and acute respiratory distress syndrome were correlated with mortality."


 

My wife went to our doctor yesterday. He expected we would know within two weeks if the coronavirus were to become a major issue in California. Blunders and ignorance by the government in getting proper testing kits delivered have delayed our ability to test and determine extent of numbers of carriers who don't become ill. That's the big risk. There are people who can be infected but don't become ill themselves who can infect others. Testing will determine the extent of that.

In Hazmat class this week, the instructor made a good point.

You wash your hands with warm water after the restroom for sanitary reasons, when you was hour hands for decontamination be it after shooting from lead exposure, or chemical, get the water as cold as possible to help mitigate absorption.

That makes sense.

After I go shooting, I wipe my hands on the hamburger I'm eating.

That explains it all, Ron.

I remember seeing you in the old government PSA commercials... little Ronnie was eating the paint chips with lead in them.... Now we can’t have leaded paint!

Ahhh.. the good old days of only worrying about S--- on the handle.
Like when I was growing up, worried about clap, crabs & syphilis. 
Unless you were Al Capone & didn't go to the Doc who gave you a shot of penicillin for your "Sore Throat" Doesn't compare to what you get today!

That settles it if the colder the better. I'll wash my hands in the ice machines when done working on a job. 

I can't get anything any worse than whats already there. Ice machines are nothing but low temp petri dishes. I don't get ice in a drink unless it's a machine I take care of.

here in Australia they are all stocking up on toilet paper all super markets are sold out ??