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Friday, March 20, 2020

How to Clean and Disinfect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Stuff

Recent research shows how long SARS-CoV-2 lasts on surfaces: "detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel".
How to Clean and Disinfect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Stuff - Wired – These are our in-depth best practices for keeping yourself (and just about everything else) clean and virus-free. “There’s something deeply unsettling about stepping out of the home-from-work boredom of self-isolation into the tense, ambient panic of grocery shopping during a pandemic. Normal is a double-sided coin now. At home things feel hyperreal, and outside they feel entirely surreal—two steps removed from the flashback scenes in a postapocalyptic movie. You may feel a tension between helping yourself and helping your community. Daily life during the novel coronavirus pandemic is all about disorienting contrasts like these. It might seem more productive to read our Coronavirus Gear and Supplies Guideand start filling your pantry with canned goods and essentials, but cleaning and sanitizing surfaces in your home can help lower the chances you or a loved one will contract Covid-19 and lower the chances you might spread it to someone else. Keeping your home (and self) sanitized helps everyone. The Centers for Disease Control recommends we all take steps to clean and sanitize high-touch surfaces in our homes. Below, we get into the weeds of how long the virus might last on surfaces, which disinfectants may kill it, and the steps you should take to keep clean…”
The Lily via Washington Post – “The grocery store is not a fun place to be right now. Inside, you’ll likely find long lines, horrendously overworked employees, and frenzied shoppers who may or may not have washed their hands. And if you came in looking for canned beans, well, there probably are none. As coronavirus spreads across the country, Americans are #panicbuying. First it was the hand sanitizer, then toilet paper, then the components to make hand sanitizer yourself. Last week, people started stockpiling food. Lines snaked around the perimeter of Cotsco and Kroger, as customers left with carts full of pasta, frozen vegetables, flour and Spam… 


 There is not a food shortage in America. The problem is that everyone anticipates a food shortage, says Goker Aydin, a professor of operations management at the John Hopkins Carey Business School — and that anticipation messes with supply chains. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, he says: People see empty shelves, freak out, and feel like they need to buy more, which means more empty shelves. Sooner or later, you’re probably going to have to brave the grocery store. To make that experience as pain-free as possible, I asked food and grocery experts for their best advice. It’s easy to get caught up in the panic, they say, emerging with large quantities of food that really isn’t that useful – In the age of coronavirus, here’s how to do the grocery store right…”
‘It Feels Like a War Zone’: Doctors and Nurses Plead for Masks on Social Media The New York Times – As supplies have dwindled, doctors and nurses have improvised ways to make their stock last. Now they’re urging leaders to help. “…Now, doctors, nurses and others are rallying on social media with the hashtag #GetMePPE, referring to personal protective equipment like masks, gowns and face shields, to put pressure on elected leaders to get them more gear to guard against infection. Some suggested that members of the public reach out to a nearby hospital if they had masks or other medical equipment to donate. Medical professionals need a large supply of the masks because they are in direct contact with infected patients and must change their masks repeatedly. The World Health Organization’s guidelines recommend that health workers use surgical masks to cover their mouths and noses, but some hospitals require masks known as N95s, which are thicker, fit more tightly around the mouth and nose, and block out much smaller particles than surgical masks do…”






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