Day Sixteen

Feest Isolation Days – 30 March 2020

This weekend I asked Terry to give me a basic tutorial on viruses as I had read quite a lot about them online and some of the information was contradictory or I thought just plain wrong.  He kindly wrote the following which includes a helpful account of how we deal with items that are delivered to our door.

Handing over these daily words to my dear husband means I can go out and meet my mates for a coffee, or go for a swim, or visit a National Trust property….or perhaps just make a cup of tea, sit on the garden swing and dream about these eventualities!  Have a great day.

With love,

Kathy x

Humour for the day…..

Rita, my elderly neighbour is a little hard of hearing. She chatted to me over the garden fence and said she was just back from Asda. She said she bought all the sausage rolls, Swiss rolls and chocolate mini rolls she could carry. When I asked why she said she didn’t want to be left behind.  She heard on the news that people were talking about there not being enough rolls and picnic buying!

A Virus, The Basics……

The Covid virus, like all viruses, is a complex structure. We have no idea where viruses come from.  It’s like asking where we come from. But just as we know what we are made of, we know what makes up a virus: a mix of protein, RNA, DNA , and lipids.

Viruses have no life of their own. Left alone, they don’t multiply but over time simply decompose and become harmless.  However, if they enter a living cell, their RNA, or occasionally their DNA, can take control of the cell and make it produce more virus and the cell eventually dies.  That’s when they become harmful.

Each virus has a “target cell”, a cell whose structure the virus is uniquely programmed to attach to: this may be any plant or animal cell, and viruses are responsible for a wide range of plant, animal and human diseases, including cowpox, smallpox, mumps, measles, polio, rubella, influenza and the common cold.  The target cells for the Covid virus are human upper respiratory tract cells.  Somewhat similar, but less damaging, corona viruses are responsible for some common colds.

Covid infection is spread by aerosol droplets coughed from infected people and inhaled by others. To catch it like this you probably need to be within two metres of an infected person.

In addition, when these coughed droplets land on a surface and dry, they leave an active virus. When people get them  on their hands, then touch their faces they enter through the nose, eyes and mouth and infect their upper respiratory tract.

Viruses  are usually protected and held together by a lipid fatty coat, and when this is damaged or decays the virus disintegrates and becomes inactive.  If they haven’t invaded a living cell, viruses don’t remain active for long.  In the case of the Covid virus, it probably lasts longest on hard smooth surfaces such as stainless steel, hard plastic, possibly glass. It’s thought they can remain active and therefore able to invade cells for three days or so.  That’s why it’s important to clean these surfaces.  On softer, less smooth, surfaces such as cardboard and paper the virus probably decomposes in hours, or perhaps up to a day.

Viruses are inactivated by things which damage their lipid coat – and soap is superb for this, hence the advice to wash hands thoroughly and regularly with soap, better than supposed hand disinfectants.  This link is to an excellent article on this – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/12/science-soap-kills-coronavirus-alcohol-based-disinfectants

Our practice at home Is to clean down EVERYTHING that enters the house, wearing household gloves.  A good soap and water clean should be affective, but some other cleaners, such as 10 to one diluted household bleach are very good. This latter should be left in contact with the surface for a few minutes before washing off. 

Our other strategy is to leave things in the entrance hallway for up to three days or even longer, depending on the surface, giving the virus time to decay.

And of course we wash our hands thoroughly after initially handling anything that has come into our house!