Editor’s note: This article was written by one of our most respected readers and opinion leader, Left Coast Chuck.
I am in the at-risk group in spades. Being 80+, having a leaky heart valve, having diabetes and shortness of breath I am probably in the 99 percentile risk category.
With that cheery thought in mind, while I can certainly go into prepper mode and use my prepper food supply, as I expressed to Armin, I am concerned that this “crisis” is going to be parlayed into something more and all commodities will start to look like Russia in the 50s.
Because I am in such a high risk category, I try to take maximum precautions.
First I wear a pair of coveralls over my regular clothes. When I get home, the coveralls come off before I enter the house and go in a bag to be taken directly to the laundry area and into the washer. I also wear a baseball cap with a large brim. That goes into the bag and the washer too.
While I am out and about I wear an N95 mask. That comes off at the door and into the bag. It doesn’t go in the washing machine because I think that would totally destroy it. It does get spritzed on the outside with 75% isopropyl alcohol (IPA).
Related: How to Make Your Own Mask for a Pandemic
While at the store, I maintain my six foot distance as much as possible. While I stay away from people in front of me, just like on the highway, there are tailgaters in the stores too. Can’t do much about them, but I try.
If I use cash, the change I receive is deposited in a plastic baggy by the clerk. If I use a credit card, it goes in the baggy too. This goes in a pocket in the coveralls. Nothing I get outside goes into my regular clothes under the coveralls, including receipts.
Upon arriving home, all the groceries are off loaded to the front door.
I take my shoes off at the door and they currently get spritzed with 75% IPA. I managed to score 3 gallons of Clorox at Costco yesterday, so I am going to switch to bleach solution for sanitizing my shoes. I spritz the uppers, the welts around the soles and especially the soles. The shoes stay outside to dry out. I spritz the outside of the nitrile gloves that I wore during my expedition.
After depositing my coveralls and hat in the washer and starting a hot wash cycle, I return to the front door to start moving the groceries inside. Everything that can be spritzed with alcohol is decontaminated that way. The only items that are not, are bread items mainly because I don’t think the wrapper is impermeable enough to withstand the spritzing with alcohol. I don’t spritz meat products, as they will be cooked enough that viruses on the surface will die. In the meantime they are going in the freezer. I don’t do frozen products as I hope zero temperatures will serve the same purpose as cooking.
Related: How To Tell If Your Frozen Food Has Gone Bad
I deposit the credit card and change that I have received in the kitchen sink to be sanitized. I spray my eye glasses with an alcohol based eyeglass cleaner.
Finally, yesterday I spritzed the Costco card with alcohol. Today because I had obtained the Clorox, I soaked the cash I received back at the store in the bleach disinfecting solution, 1/2 cup of bleach to one gallon of water. Mine is just a tad stronger as the Clorox bottle is no longer a full gallon and the Clorox solution is supposed to be a bit stronger.
I thought the bleach would destroy the image on the bills or make the ink run, but neither the IPA nor the bleach disinfecting solution distorted the printing in any way.
Finally, I remove the nitrile gloves I have been wearing, give them a final rinse with the bleach disinfecting solution, and save them for use again.
When my shoes have dried from their disinfecting, they get brought indoors. My sneakers have never been this clean, apart from the day I first put them on.
The health officials in SoCal have finally gotten their act together and have decided that everybody should wear some kind of face protection while out and about. They suggest if you don’t have regular face masks, that you should wear a bandana much like the bad guys in the old Hoot Gibson westerns. So, if you happen to be in the City of Angles (Oh, Father Serra would be sorely disappointed to see it now) and spot some hombres wearing their kerchief over their mouth and nose — no, they are not protecting from CoVID19, they really are gang members. If it’s red, they are Crips and if it’s blue, they are Bloods — or is it the other way round? I never can keep it straight. And you are in bigger trouble than if you catch a dose of CoVID19.
If you are not old enough to remember Hoot Gibson, he was one of the early hero cowboys back in the days of silent movies. He used to play in the Saturday matinees and in the 50’s and 60’s on late night TV, before Jack Parr and Johnny Carson. If I recall correctly, he was a real life cowboy, who started as an extra and worked his way up to star in the movies. He actually could ride and shoot.
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Very good ideas. Some I didn’t think of… stay safe
I’ve been doing everything you mentioned,only using Lysol instead of alcohol, as I had the Lysol on hand. I don’t have the coveralls, but my laundry room is off the back door so I take off everything, and it all goes into the washer immediately with laundry disinfectant. Then I head straight to the shower. Not mentioned by you is the disinfecting of fruits and vegetables. I soak them in white vinegar solution for 5 minutes, then I also wait at least 2 days before using to kill any remaining germs.
This is a very well thought out system for going shopping! We do many of these things, but never thought about the coveralls…and we have them! I have 3 autoimmune diseases, so shopping for me is just too risky. My husband is diabetic and has high blood pressure, plus 2 recent hip replacements and he is the shopper. Like you we are quite high risk in our 70’s. We will implement your strategies immediately. Love the plastic bag for the cash and credit cards!,
Happy that I can offer some suggestions.
LCC, You dropped so many good tips that I would have to go back thru your post almost line by line to make sure I didn’t leave one out to say “THANK YOU!” for. Just one for all of them will have to do for here. ?! But the one that hit the nail on the head was what you spray the mask with, and 2nd would probably be the $ made safe. That stuff is nasty enough to need sterilized without this virus going around! I’m going to forward many of your suggestions to our kids. I’m on the light side of my 70’s here, so your tips are really appreciated! Best of luck to you and your’s! Thanks to everyone else out there too. From far east central Indiana, take care!
A suggestion for the money! My daughter is an RN and her suggestion for money or anything you don’t want to use your solution on is; deal it in a ziplock for 14 days! She told me that’s overkill on the days but it’s safe & and easy to track & rotate.
Very good suggestions & help, thanks!?
Marcus: With my cash flow, any cash I manage to get my hands on doesn’t linger 14 days. IF I have a bill for 5 days it gets the award for longevity.
COVID-19 cannot live indefinitely without an animal host. However, it can live for 15 minutes in 132 degrees F, 28 days at room temp (75 F) and at interior relative humidity. It is stored by Level-4 biolabs at -80 C (-112F) and it is just as virulent when thawed out. Do NOT wet an N-95 mask as it will reduce its effectiveness by as much as 50%. Also, when using a disinfectant, make absolutely sure that the disinfectant is applied for a minimum of 10 minutes. Also make absolutely sure that you disinfect the bottom soles of your footwear prior to bringing inside. When I go “COVID shopping”, I wear a Pioneer rain suit ($30 from Amazon), a plastic face shield and a N-95 mask, and leather work boots, all of which (except for the boots which I wipe down completely, goes into a bucket of 10% bleach solution for a minimum of 10 minutes. Remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, Inc. is a known cure should you contract COVID-19. Intravenous (IV) vitamin C in a very large dose is also reported to cure COVID-19. Oral Vitamin C will NOT work. This was reported by Dr. Cheung in Tiawan. A kilogram (2.2 lbs.) can be purchased from Amazon for $30. IV Vitamin C is also reported to cure cancer. Here’s the link for the formula: http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n07.shtml.
I checked Dennis’s references. Who know? Vitamin C cures herpes zoster; rabies, Epstein-Barr virus, influenza, chikagunya disease and the piece de resistance, CANCER!!!
I wonder why there are so many folks seeking cures to the vast variety of cancer that afflicts us when all it takes is massive (massive is undefined) doses of Vitamin C, the wonder drug.
I guess it is the pharma-medico conspiracy that keeps us plain old folks from the benefits of massive infusions of Vitamin C to keep us in medical slavery and keep the pharma-medico conspiracy raking in the dollars.
Dennis’s advice about cleaning your shoes is well taken and was a part of my original article, stating my belief that a good portion of contact with the virus is on the floor where everything that doesn’t stick to something else winds up.
I am not sure about how Dennis goes about disinfecting his wearing apparel before entering his home. He reportedly wears a face shield and an N-95 mask and a rain suit ALL OF WHICH go in a bucket of bleach solution for ten minutes. Does that include the N-95 mask which should not be moistened by anything, even though the Battelle Institute found that steaming the masks did not render them ineffective for protection against viruses and killed viruses on the mask.
As I understand the situation with remdesidivir, it shows promise of being successful against COVD. It has not been established that it effectively kills the virus. It has been given conditional approval to use in this epidemic. I think the reason the FDA gave conditional approval is to avoid lynching by an angry mob if they didn’t approve its use.
Every bureaucrat in government is mindful of adverse publicity which might adversely affect his allocation of the pork distribution come next fiscal year. As long as there are no adverse effects from the use of remdesidivir, aside from the adverse effect that it does absolutely nothing against the virus, there no publicity harm in conditionally approving its use.
And then we have good ole’ Doc Cheung somewhere on Taiwan who is convinced that massive doses of Vitamin C will cure the world of what ails it. At least when Linus Pauling was touting massive doses of Vitamin C it was only to cure the common cold and we knew who he was and what he was known for. Ole Doc Cheung for all I know is an unlicensed herbalist who had his herbalist license pulled by the Taiwanese government and his PhD is in social studies.
Before you rush out and purchase $30 worth of IV Vitamin C to dose yourself with some unknown quantity of said vitamin, I suggest you check out the references that Dennis provided for yourself. You will see it involves one anecdotal case in Puerto Rico and some other posts by the individual who wrote the paper that is referenced.
When all else fails, it cures cancer. How pathetic. The medical tripe that people convince themselves is real is truly amazing.
Good ideas but bad advice. DO NOT SPRAY OR WIPE N95 MASKS WITH ALCOHOL!!!!! Man you are putting people including yourself in danger. You’re going out there with a now ineffective mask. Horrible.
From https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/decontamination-reuse-respirators.html
Autoclave, dry heat, isopropyl alcohol, soap, dry microwave irradiation and bleach
Decontamination using an autoclave, 160°C dry heat, 70% isopropyl alcohol, microwave irradiation and soap and water caused significant filter degradation to both FFRs and particle penetration levels did not meet the levels that NIOSH would allow for approval. Decontamination with bleach caused slight degradation in filtration performance and created an odor that would not be suitable for use [2, 7].
“CDC and NIOSH do not recommend that FFRs be decontaminated and then reused as standard care. This practice would be inconsistent with their approved use, but we understand in times of crisis, this option may need to be considered when FFR shortages exist.”
If he only has ONE mask, it is likely better he do that than not wear anything. Maybe the answer for LCC is to wait 4 days between use while storing it in an open paper bag.
On the other hand the whole CDC website that CoVid provided to us is nothing but how to rejuvenate make so that they can be used over and over again.
Then we have Joe down later in this list saying that someone froze the SARS virus for 9 years and it was still viable whereas according the DC talking heads this deadly CoVD virus is supposedly dead as the proverbial doornail after hanging around for three days on cardboard.
See what I mean about not trusting a single solitary word that emanates from a politician or bureaucrat’s mouth?
It’s no good for us peons to sanitize the masks and reuse them, just like we didn’t need them in the first place, but it is okay for the industrial users to sanitize them and re-use them, unless they are splattered with blood and bodily tissues, then the CDC opines that it might be better to toss them.
I have more than one mask however, I don’t have an infinite supply and further, I expect this goat rope to extend far further than the 15th of May, so I am trying to extend the use of the masks as far as I deem practical and with close examination of the mask before each use to assure that it is still sealing air and doesn’t look all beat up and shop worn.
I intend to compare my used, resanitized mask to an unused mask tomorrow when the light is stronger so I can take it in the sun. I will use at least a 5x magnifying glass and if I can easily locate my 8x glass I will use that. I will report what I find at that time on this site.
Get a UV-C light sanitizer for the N95. Also can use on the money and other things. One of the ways they are sanitizing the N95’s for medical re-use is with UV light. The other way is with hydrogen peroxide gas. No alcohol or chlorine/chlorox
Energetic l: I ordered a UV light sanitizer. It will be here around the end of May. Also it cost $150.00 US. Not everyone who follows this list can afford to pop that much money for a device they may never use again. (HOPEFULLY NEVER AGAIN)
Kind of reminds me of a 60 Minutes segment on phony ID some years back. Morley Safer was looking at phony social security cards and CA driver’s licenses and he said that they looked pretty good to him. The jerk from the Treasury Department said, “Well, come over here to the electron microscope. . .” Sure, every mom and pop restaurant has an electron microscope to examine ID papers. Incompetent nincompoop.
Same thing with this advice from the talking heads. With so many folks out of work, how many can afford to spring the $150 for a UV light that hopefully they will never need again? Hydrogen peroxide gas? Give me a break.
I don’t know how to develop hydrogen peroxide gas, but it sounds like it requires more equipment than the average homeowner has sitting in a corner out in the garage. More useless information from folks who are supposedly expert.
Without searching the internet, does anyone have experience with developing hydrogen peroxide gas? Has my life experience a big hole in it that I don’t have the equipment and the know-how to create hydrogen peroxide gas when everybody else in the world knows how?
Please let us know what you think of the uv. Would be very interested in hearing it. Thanks.
Always loved the info here. However this post has one huge error that can cost lives. DO NOT SPRITZ OR WIPE YOUR N95 MASKS WITH ALCOHOL SOLUTION OR BAC OR ANY CHEMICAL SANITIZER. LCC, you are walking around out there with a now compromised mask. And you don’t even know it. Please, before publishing, check your info that you’re putting out there. This is serious and dangerous. Here’s the science: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/decontamination-reuse-respirators.html
We put masks out in sunlight. Have regular system for spraying mail, any packages and the contents, let them all sit out in sunlight after disinfecting with spray.
Love the plastic bag for cards and change. Will be adding that to our routine.
Very clear and a great plan that would work with many scenarios. Thanks!
Unfortunately, freezing does not kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus 🙁
Well, I guess doing all you can like Chuck does is about all you can do.You cant treat meat unless you are going to use UV light on every meat product.
Freezing DOES NOT KILL THE VIRUS! So frozen things can carry the virus on the surface!!
I have always enjoyed LC Chuck since the day I discovered this site and began my Prepper ways 4 years ago. Being 80+, a Prepper and located in SoCal, LCC brings a wealth of knowledge and wisdom; there IS a difference between the two.
I appreciate the use of alcohol to make my N95 mask reusable. Currently I have a half dozen I was fortunate enough to buy when I first started prepping. I sure wish they had the vent in them but now I am LCC-wiser. Still, when I donated 20 of them to a local large hospital early on into this COVID disaster, they were eagerly accepted and appreciated greatly. We wrote on the box how much we appreciated these heroes and signed our first names only as we do not want or need to be recognized. Currently I rotate the few we kept after letting them sit in a gallon ziplock back for 5-6 days after use and then rotate them back in. I will now spritz them with isopropyl alcohol and then rotate them back in after 72+ hours. Great idea, Chuck.
Great article…will forward to my non-prepper family to help them keep safe.
Stay healthy and well everyone!
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/decontamination-reuse-respirators.html
Always loved the info here. However this post has one huge error that can cost lives. DO NOT SPRITZ OR WIPE YOUR N95 MASKS WITH ALCOHOL SOLUTION OR BAC OR ANY CHEMICAL SANITIZER. LCC, you are walking around out there with a now compromised mask. And you don’t even know it. Please, before publishing, check your info that you’re putting out there. This is serious and dangerous. Here’s the science: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/decontamination-reuse-respirators.html
Repeating the same thing over and over again does not cure its defects. It’s like shouting. Just because you shout does not make what you are shouting any more valid than that which is stated in a normal voice. Your continued spouting of the CDC line – the folks who told us initially that masks were of no use to anyone who was not an emergency worker doesn’t make it any more valid.
Based on the way the CDC and NIH CONTINUALLY reverse themselves, I don’t believe it. 1. For CENTURIES alcohol has been used for disinfecting [e.g., before every injection you’ve ever gotten]. 2. Without anything more than eyeballing the N95 filters [I’ve used ’em for DECADES in many different construction respirators], and examined MANY while replacing ’em, it’s obvious they are NOT cotton or wool, are NON-woven, and five nines probable to be synthetic, and thus alcohol very unlikely to to degrade them.
Age-wise I’m up there just barely behind LCC and have been using alcohol for disinfecting dozens upon dozens of “things” and materials, for DECADES, with NONE being degraded by the alcohol. Therefore I think the CDC is fulluh bull MANURE regarding the no alcohol disinfection of N95 [OR SIMILAR] filter materials!!!
The Covid virus is protected by a shell of lipid (fat), therefore, the shell needs to be disintegrated to destroy the virus. (No anti-bacterials will kill Covid, because it is not alive, and it is not a bacteria.) Hence washing in hot soapy water for 20 seconds, or alcohol or bleach are needed to destroy the virus.
Way to go Chuck!!
AE: if that is correct, that the viruses are protected by a layer of fat (am I a virus in disguise? I certainly have a layer of fat) then it makes sense that a strong degreasing agent would create an adverse atmosphere for a fatty substances. IPA is a great degreaser. That’s how I have used most of the IPA I have used since I disposed of my printing company. Nobody wanted a 3/4 full can of IPA.
Gonna paint a piece of metal? Wipe it down with the IPA. paint sticks much better. Got an old refugee from the Crimean War packed with Cosmoline? IPA again.
Howdy Chuck. Back in the mid 60s I was i graphic arts and a new, young 4-color Process Cameraman, until I was replaced by computers and scanners!
Johnny: You mean replaced by computers and scammers 🙂
Johnny3: Up until the 60s the urban legend in the printing business was that Ben Franklin could walk into any print shop and know exactly what all of the equipment did and pretty much know how to operate it.
Now a days, he might still recognize the press and the paper cutter, but how to operate them would be a mystery to him. Like so many other industries, the printing business has undergone dramatic and significant changes.
Remember Rubylith? I looked for Rubylith because it is perfect for making a white light flashlight a red light flashlight for security purposes. They don’t make it any more. I haven’t checked but I wonder if masking sheets are still manufactured? I checked for red light bulbs too and didn’t find any listed. Perhaps I looked on the wrong sites. And, Kodak doesn’t even make film any more.
Okay, time for us Rip Van Winkles to sign off.
I’m curious LCC.
Aren’t you pissed off at the Chinese for deliberately launching their covid19 BIO-WEAPON upon the People of the Planet Earth and causing you all of this grief?
I know I would be, and I am!
My Wife works “on the REAL frontlines” in a grocery store! If She is attacked by the Chinese covid19 BIO-WEAPON, I will be taking my complaints, and all of her medical bills, directly to the nearest Chinese Embassy, and the Ambassador WILL respond………….OR ELSE!
“Pissed off” is not what I think of the Chinese government at this time, Ted. I am so far past pissed off at them I can’t use that kind of language on this site nor any other. I’m quite serious about this. After we get more of a handle on this virus there must be a reckoning. An accounting. Someone needs to take responsibility for this whether the virus was introduced into the environment deliberately or not. But I fear it won’t happen. It all comes down to money, power or oil in this world and the three are inextricably intertwined.
What they’ve engaged in is bio-warfare by any definition and genocide on a grand scale. Do you think the Chinese government gives a single crap about anyone in the West? I’ve said for years that the Chinese government is the enemy of the West Always has been. Always will be. A lot of good that does us now. Doesn’t it? And now they have Russia as an ally. Don’t underestimate either of them
And I don’t want to be disrespectful, Ted, but I have to play devil’s advocate. I understand your concerns regarding your wife. I also have a VERY good friend working on the “front lines”. And I worry about her EVERY day. So far, so good. She seems to remain healthy. If I lost her I don’t know what I’d do.
As I say, I’m going to play devil’s advocate and I mean no disrespect. At the end of your comment you say, ” and the Ambassador WILL respond………….OR ELSE!”
What are you going to do, Ted? Get a small band of patriots together and attack the Chinese embassy? Even if you did manage to level the embassy to the ground it wouldn’t change one blessed thing. Good luck getting the Chinese ambassador to respond. He cares as little about us as the rest of his compatriots. We, the people, can’t do anything against a foreign power on our soil barricaded in their embassy. If we try it will end badly for us and may even have diplomatic repercussions for our respective countries.
I really do know how you feel, Ted. And I shouldn’t say this on a public site but I would like nothing better than to see all of China leveled to the ground with a “scorched-earth” policy.
But we in the West are at least partially responsible. We are the ones that put so many of our corporations on Chinese soil. Did we not think that they would engage in industrial espionage and become stronger at our expense? Someone certainly dropped the ball on that one and now we have this as a result.
You could always try boycotting Walmart, nationwide. If you could get enough people together to do it I’m sure it would put a sizeable dent in the Chinese economy. 🙂
No, Ted, I am not angry with the Chinese. In my opinion, they fully intend to replace us as the world leader. They want the world to look to China when it is restored to its rightful place as the center of the world.
You have to understand a little bit about the Chinese view of things. For centuries China dominated the world that they knew about. Yes, there were hairy, smelly foreigners who traveled long distances over land to trade with them but they were always treated like subjects and in order to trade with China and all the riches it held, the hairy, smelly foreigners accepted being treated like subjects.
Chinese culture was adopted by Korea, Japan and strongly influenced the culture of all the other surrounding countries who all paid tribute to China as if it were the their overlord.
China had writing long before any western culture had it. Many ancient inventions are Chinese in origin. Gunpowder was being used in cannons in China long before the western world even knew such existed.
In the Chinese mind, China is deservedly the world leader and they will continue to strive by any means to necessary to restore China to its rightful position as the world leader with all other countries paying tribute to it.
We almost do that now with all of our consumer purchases from the cheap labor markets in China further enhanced by China’s manipulation of their money to make it cheap in world markets to give them an edge over goods made in other countries. Japan did the same thing in order to become the manufacturing giant that they did. The Chinese are merely copying the Japanese technique for gaining market dominance. We accepted the money manipulation because we wanted the Japanese and then the Chinese to be equal trading partners. The only problem with that is neither country wanted to be equal trading partners. They wanted a a sempei-kohai relationship where they were the senior partner and we were the junior partner. They still do. Japan has come to recognize in a half-hearted way that the sempei-kohai relationship doesn’t work all that well. China has yet to accept that reality.
What I really resent is that our business establishment has dropped their drawers and bent over to chase a high return this quarter and not adopted a more long range philosophy. The Clinton administration was all ready to sell the facilities that make the Port of Long Beach to a Chinese company that is a front company for the Chinese Army. The Chinese Army is the dominant military force in China. You never read about the Chinese Navy or the Chinese Air Force forcing a political change of direction. The Chinese Army has had a hand in several changes of direction since the commies took over.
Armin, you are slightly incorrect. Yes, the Chinese do blatantly conduct industrial espionage, but they coerce companies wanting to tap into the giant Chinese market to share technology with them if they want to open in China. It’s called industrial blackmail, not espionage. Sorry to split verbal hairs with you, but their is a slight difference. China looks on it as opportunism and mutual shared business benefits. You want into our markets; we want your technology. You give us your technology, you get our markets. It’s a win-win situation. Only it’s not it is a win-lose situation and managers in our country let greed for a temporary good quarter showing blind them to the long range implications of such a transaction.
While my nine long months on Taiwan certainly didn’t make me a sinologist by any means, it did teach me one truism. The Chinese generally don’t consider it immoral to cheat someone in a business deal. They consider it good business practice. They consider that it is your responsibility to make sure that you are not being cheated and if you are so stupid as to trust someone in a business dealing, then you deserve to be cheated. It is absolutely, positively CAVEAT EMPTOR ! ! ! That’s why I am never surprised when some product turns out to have some proscribed substance in it. You as the buyer are supposed to check it to make sure it is not adulterated. US. companies who buy on good faith from Chinese suppliers are fools if they do not run their own QC checks on the products when they reach these shores and dump the Chinese goods and charge the Chinese for tipping costs.
So, Armin is absolutely correct. They don’t give a tinker’s dam about what you think. You can picket out in front of the Chinese Chinese Embassy all you want, just make sure you don’t park in the staff”s parking spots. Those are reserved for protected personnel and it doesn’t matter that they park all day in a 2 hour spot. They have embassy privilege.
Thanks for clearing that up for me, Chuck. Didn’t realize. Industrial blackmail versus industrial espionage.
Got it. They are a clever lot, Chuck, as you say. I know that they invented other things besides gunpowder but I had to look it up to make sure. Their four great inventions were papermaking, the compass, gunpowder and movable type. They invented many, many other things and if any of you are interested you can look it up on Wikipedia under; List of Chinese Inventions. You may be surprised. But even in this day and age they are still a nasty lot. In 2016 the Global Slavery Index estimated that almost 4 million people were living in conditions of modern slavery in China. Including victims of human trafficking, forced labour, forced marriage, child labour, and state-imposed forced labour. I don’t like them. I don’t trust them. But I never underestimate them. There’s just too many of them. And I absolutely agree with LCC when he says, “In the Chinese mind, China is deservedly the world leader and they will continue to strive by any means necessary to restore China to its rightful position as the world leader with all other countries paying tribute to it.” China has been around since about the 21st century BCE and that gives them a certain ego? disdain? for the rest of us. The Chinese would like nothing better than to make THEIR currency the reserve currency of the world as opposed to the USD. And they’ll do anything to make that happen.
Lol this is just a way for the government to destroy this socialist nation. Kiss the economy goodbye
No sense in being pissed off at the Chinese. It hit them the same way it did everyone else. When the finally knew what they were truly dealing with, they told the world and gave our government the genome of the virus before mid January. At which time our CDC warned the world to be prepared for it. Who you need to be pissed at is our government that never prepared us for over 18 years when in 2002 they said we needed to be prepared for possible pandemics. Bush warned Obama before he took office how concerned he was about the possibility of a pandemic, even though his health people weren’t. Obama was hit with a minor one almost immediately, and after, set up a pandemic office to find out what we needed. A contract was given to a small medical supply company (more efficient and cheaper costs) to build 50,000 ventilators. In short order that company was bought out by a larger company. When they were finally asked where are our ventilators, they said they could not produce them and make a profit at that cost, but that they had a ventilator they would sell to the government but it would cost a lot more. They were told that because they bought the company they bought the original contract, but they said they needed $1.4 million to research what they could do. They got it and did nothing, eventually being bought out by another larger medical company near the end of Obama’s term. When they were asked, they said they didn’t even know about the original contract. To this day the contract has never been fulfilled, It is our bureaucratic red tape, and love of profit that is killing Americans. Like LC Chuck said, it was the CDC that was telling up in early February, we didn’t need masks, even though in 2012, it was reported by on of our government entities, that researched masks, and found that even wearing a bandanna tucked in would give at least 25% protection. It’s not China who lied to us for 3 weeks, it was the CDC who lied to us for 2 months.
My thanks go out to all the people who were and are making face masks, and more then that to all who have been wearing masks when they go out in public. The only way to stop it is to stop it from getting in your nose and mouth. 6′ social distancing does not work when no one is wearing masks when dealing with an air born virus. When you step forward in line, you are stepping into the air they have been exhaling. It’s not sneezing you have to worry about, asymptomatic virus carriers are more contagious then symptomatic carriers.
Hay all you hippies, where are your “Black Lights”? Now is the time to bring them out to disinfect all your stuff. 5 minutes under Black Light on all sides will do it on everything.
Leprechaun: Nope, not angry at the Chinese. The chicoms, yes. How long has China been on the watch list of nations that manufacture bio-terrorism weapons? 1985? Why is it, we get hit every two years by a new plague, and most seem to come from government labs in Wuhan? How many Chinese died under Mao? 89 million? More?
We’re not dealing with rational human beings, but socialist predators eager to own and control. Slavers do what they want with their property. Every experiment in social engineering by socialists results in loss of human life, sometimes in the many millions. If you think not, see what Obama said about the rise in deaths from Carter’s- and his cafe standards. “We can handle that.”
When Hitler knew the war was lost, he sent a half million SS and Gestapo into the world. Stalin took in thousands. He sent many to Mao, and without these experts, Mao would have lost China. Dems ignored it. Mao found plague labs built by Japanese but never destroyed them. China cannot afford open warfare. How much of the GNP goes to support terrorists, just like the USSR did. Why is Soros, who’s wanted in his homeland for war crimes given diplomatic immunity by the dems?
Every two years, a new plague. Obama ignored H1N1 and over 12,000 Americans died. He brought in Ebola victims twice against all medical advice.
SARS 2004
Avian 2008
Swine 2010
MERS 2012
Ebola 2014
Zika 2016
Ebola 2018
Corona 2020
Every two years. The only time it’s called a plague is when Repubs have the WH. Other than that, we agree. Most of the world is looking to force the chicoms to pay for their experiment. They were handed enough under Obama and Clinton, we could take just things here, in the US, and use it to compensate survivors and businesses.
Freezing may not kill the virus but cooking the meat certainly will unless you like raw meat. As for ice cream and frozen vegetables, well, there are some risks in life that must be accepted. One cannot eliminate all risk. Even remaining in bed can cause risk from a number of things.
Not a good time to develop a taste for steak tartare, LCC. LOL!
So true, true, true, Chuck. Unless someone has opened a container of ice cream and actually licked it I’m not too worried about ice cream. Just be more vigilant about the containers of food you pick up and make sure the seal is intact. As for frozen veggies you have to boil them anyways so not much of a concern, I would think. Stay safe, my friend.
Hi, Chuck. Very glad to see that you’re still safe and sound. Please remain so. Knock on wood. I’m still doing ok. At the beginning of this crisis I was an utter and complete fool to think that this would just be another “flash-in-the-pan”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It may sound like overkill what you’re doing but with this particular virus one can never be TOO careful. Especially with “high-risk” individuals.
By now we’re all aware that what makes THIS virus so dangerous is the long incubation period. And of course, what that means in practical terms, is that one could have contracted the virus. Be extremely contagious. Not even be aware of it and be completely asymptomatic. And be a risk for all of those around us. A veritable “typhoid Mary”.
As a very short aside apparently the cases in China keep INCREASING. This thing ain’t over by a longshot and won’t be for a while. I don’t think there’ll be a fat lady singing for this one. Trump may be just a LITTLE overly optimistic thinking that this is over.
I have a very good friend that I’ve known for most of my life. Worked at Home Depot. He had a very good job there. Been with them many years. And because of his careless personal habits they deemed him a “high-risk” individual. And let him go. Don’t know if they’ll hire him back once they get the virus a little more under control. In the meantime he has very little money coming in. Just his pension. His income, at the very least, has been halved. Still has to pay all his bills and he and his wife have a huge house to take care of. Much, much too big for the two of them.
The fallout from this virus is going to be HUGE as all the affected countries try and restart their respective economies. Our well-meaning? (what other choice did he really have?) socialist prime minister is pouring gobs of money into the economy to try and help as many people and businesses as he can so that not everything is going to go down in flames. But all those billions have to be paid back at some point. Ain’t no free ride. He’s going to increase this country’s debt by a sizable amount.
It was his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, that from the late 60’s until the early 80’s, started this country on a downward debt spiral by saddling us with a huge national debt load. Before that we were doing pretty well. God, how I love Liberals. NOT! It may be years before our economy is back to being anything resembling “normal”. We may have to get used to a new “normal”.
Up here in Canada the long-term care facilities; nursing homes/retirement homes, have been particularly hard hit. Probably by some well-meaning relatives visiting their parent or parents unaware that they were highly contagious but completely asymptomatic. An inordinate number of seniors died as a result.
The two hotspots in Canada are Ontario and Quebec. With Quebec being the “winner” with the most cases. Don’t quite know what’s wrong with the French. Whether they’re just particularly careless or they don’t care.
And because of the dangerous nature of this virus, my take on it is that it’s tailor-made for regions with a high-population density. Basically a virus very well suited to wreaking the most havoc in an urban setting. Perhaps even worse than the black death of the 14th century. That one “only” lasted from 1347 to 1351 but resulted in upwards of 200 million people dying a horrible death.
In a VERY morbid way I suppose we can take solace in the fact that if we lose control of this virus, that usually viruses of this type; flu/cold, result in the demise of approx. 3% of the world’s population. Doesn’t sound like a lot but it still translates into over 200 million people. That’s a huge amount of people that don’t need to die in this manner.
Perhaps this IS a “small” experiment in population control but I don’t know. Just a little experiment so that we don’t get too freaked out and then once our guard is down, WHAM!, hit us with the big one. Again, don’t know. But that doesn’t apply to any of the preppers on this site. We prepare for the unexpected so that we really can’t be surprised by it. Unfortunately we can never be prepared for everything. Especially hordes of starving neighbours coming en masse to “persuade” us to share our food with them if we were foolish enough to let them know of our activities.
And what our “zookeepers” seem to overlook, is that, in spite of all the people killed over the ages due to incessant wars, famine, disease and all the rest there are STILL over 7 billion of us at this moment. If you take the time to look it up a LOT of us have died over the years. Millions. Perhaps even billions. And yet we’re still here. We are VERY hard to completely kill off. We are the top predator virus on this planet. Watch out you bastards at the top. Next we’re coming for YOU!
Armin: Well, I don’t like to make comments about other country’s political leaders so I will remain silent about what I perceive as Trudeau’s shortcomings. I will let you have the complete honor, Armin.
I suspect that his money pumping doesn’t reach the magnitude of what our pols are proposing to do to the value of the dollar. I foresee a strong possibility of us having a Venezuela style meltdown especially as the strings on the loans to the airlines includes having federal bureaucrats sitting on the board of directors of those corporations that are foolish enough to accept government largesse. There are case studies on what happened to railroads when they accepted federal government money. They got strangled by governmenteese foot dragging until they went bankrupt.
The U.S. already has more debt than it can ever repay and the fools in the District of Corruption think they can continue to play the shell game forever.
My advice to everyone reading this is to play your cards very close to your chest. I am really concerned that we are gong to see an economic crash that will make the depression years of the 30s look like good times.
How many small businesses operate on a very thing budget? How many operate on the basis of the owner hoping the payroll checks will clear the bank before other check do? Even a mighty organization like McDonalds has a sizable portion of franchises. Those are individually owned and I am confident that they are not making the money that most of us think they are making. It is called cash flow. Cash flows in and roars out like a mighty flood. Between franchise fees and having to purchase everything from Mickey D Inc., while the gross dollar amount in sales might be impressive, the return on cash flow is probably mighty slim. How long do you think a franchise holder can last without the income but with continued expense. The rent on a McD’s would probably cause your heart to flutter with anxiety.
I think the “adjustment” we are going to see in the next year is going to take our breath away. Now is a very good time to get really really serious about prepping.
I hope in 18 months you all can say, “HaHa, no it didn’t you sure missed the call on that one.”
chuck:You said it. Let’s do it.
In 18 months, then what? New plague, new panic. NYC is buying bodies, and what does that mean? How many diseases can survive in that? Most go dormant till something brings them back. that’s why the clothes and bedding of smallpox and other viral sicknesses had to be burned. Not even boiling killed all the disease. Arizona stores are open and stocked, except where the termites have fed. You said it. Let’s do it. niio
It’s very rarely that I DON’T want to agree with you, Chuck, but in this instance I may be forced to. As for our “leaders”, they are what they are and complaining about them isn’t going to change anything. I know that. Just allows me to vent. Tilting at windmills. But the current prime minister’s father DID start us on this downward debt spiral. That’s a matter of record.
I’m also trying to look ahead a little bit and what I see I don’t like. I don’t know if it’s going to be a Venezuela-style meltdown because their circumstances were entirely different but I see nothing good down the road.
Most of my friends still seem to look at the world through rose-coloured glasses and seem to think that once this crisis is over that everything will go back to normal. When I try to tell them differently they just scoff at me. So I’ve given up trying to tell them otherwise. Just don’t come knocking at my door when your kids are starving. I’ve tried to warn them that down the road it could get quite ugly. Have a little extra on hand and I just get funny looks.
I hope to heck “they” don’t use this “opportunity” to usher in a cashless society. As you and many others realize on this page, most, if not all the countries of the world are using fiat currency. Not worth the paper it’s printed on. I’ve heard some say that the US debt is around 25 TRILLION! A ridiculous sum. It can never, ever be paid off. I don’t know what the Canadian debt load is but probably something similar taking into account the 10:1 population difference between the two countries. And too many people here in Canada have an income to debt ratio of approx. $1.80. Won’t take much to push THEM over the edge.
So what are all the countries going to do to try and rectify this world-wide debt problem? Are they going to do a world-wide currency reset? If it goes down like that the very rich could end up losing a sizable amount of their fortunes. They won’t like that at all. So what are the leaders of the world to do? To me they’ve painted themselves into a corner and they have very few options left to them. None of which bode well for us. We’re usually the ones that get it in the ear.
I really hate to be negative, Chuck, but I’m also trying to be realistic. I’ve said the same thing as you a few times and I completely agree with it as difficult as it is for us to do. We play our cards very, very close to our chests. VERY CLOSE! Best advice we can give to those of like mind. Because the fools don’t think much beyond their next meal or drink or toke or movie. And these will be the ones that will want to take what we have if things go badly south.
I’ve mentioned this a few times before and I also think that “somewhere” down the road there will be a very deep recession or even, as you say, Chuck, a depression that will make the Great Depression of the thirties look like a walk in the park. I HOPE it doesn’t go down like that but I fear it will. And it WILL be ugly. Can’t eat toilet paper. That’s the least of my worries. In the last Great Depression of the thirties how many were even able to afford the “luxury” of toilet paper yet they still managed to make do somehow.
Also agree with you about businesses. They may LOOK like they’re doing great but more likely than not, working on a very thin margin. They have to remain competitive to stay in business.
I really, really hope we’re both wrong about the coming “correction”. It ain’t gonna be pretty if it happens. I really don’t see how it can be avoided, Chuck. The lucky ones are those that already have a small plot of land somewhere. Already have a garden going. Some critters like chickens and such. They’re going to be the ones that will find it easier to ride out the coming shit storm. As for the rest of us. Gird your loins. Fix the security leaks in your homes. Water on hand is of number one importance. Make sure your weapons are in good working order and have plenty of ammunition on hand. The world will be a much different place in 2 to 3 years. Don’t think for the better though. Again, hope I’m wrong.
Oh, while I remember. One interesting thing that’s coming out of this current crisis is that I’m finding out who my true friends are. I’m very surprised and disappointed at some I’ve known for most of my life. They seem to have thrown me under the bus. Again, don’t come to me for help if things go badly for you. There will be some that I WILL help but not my fair-weather “friends”.
To all of you; stay safe. Be vigilant. Be prepared.
Hi, Armin,
Read your post very carefully. We live just a piece down the road. Get CBC and there seem to be quite a few parallels between what is happening here politically and in your neck of the woods. I do not know what your background is, nor Left Coast’s, but will post same question to you both- we all know from sitting at the kitchen and looking at our personal finances that the govt can’t go spending money it doesn’t have for a whole lot longer. This website has talked about how to prepare to be as self-sufficient as possible. Short of that, what could a person do to protect what little monetary assets they have? I am assuming social security will continue to come, but can a person count on a public or private pension? Is that little 401K, if you have one, safe? Is there any way that a person can protect himself monetarily? I’m not talking big bucks. Those folks will land on both feet. I foresee that at least Trump will be forced at some point to impose new taxes ala “No new taxes” Bush. And Congress is totally opposed to pulling in their belts. One politician suggested Congress take a pay cut. Hah! So, got any ideas how to cope with the inevitable other than oiling our guns and learning to can?
GovtGirl: I think we can look at Greece, Cypress, Argentina and for a really grim look, Venezuela.
I didn’t follow the Greece debacle too closely, so I can’t really comment on what happened in their country as a result of excessive spending. I am not sure what happened to Greece applies to the U.S.
Cypress did some interesting things that caught my attention. First they limited how much cash one could withdraw from a bank account. Secondly, they froze assets over a certain figure, so that the owner of the account couldn’t access it. I haven’t read if they have unfrozen those assets so I don’t know the current status of that. In essence, what that means is that if the ceiling was $50,000 U.S. dollars and you have $100,000 in a retirement account or plain old savings account, you could only access it up to $50,000. Yes, your bank balance would show that you have the 100 thou in the bank, but if you wanted to withdraw it for, say, buying a house, you couldn’t. You could only use up the the cap. I don’t remember if eventually the government confiscated everything over the cap or not.
Argentina according to a first hand account I read just cut services to the bone outside the tourist zone of Buenos Aires. The price of all goods went sky high and cash became the only medium of exchange with foreign cash preferred over Argentine cash. All services, electricity, telephone, water, garbage collection all became quite spotty. In essence, Argentina which had been a first rate country became a third rate country. We have read on this list what has happened in Venezuela, so I won’t go any further.
As I see it, this “bailout” together with our already monstrous federal debt can only have a strongly inflationary influence on prices. As prices increase we will see more people buying “stuff” rather than holding on to cash. Bank accounts will be stripped to buy “stuff”. Prices will continue to rise. In the past governments have devalued the money and issued new money. A $1,000 bill became a $100 bill in the new currency. A $100 bill a $10 bill in the new currency.
What that means is that if you have a retirement account worth $100,000, it suddenly became worth $10,000. After a certain date all the old currency was totally worthless and couldn’t be exchanged for anything. But price reductions didn’t follow the currency reduction. The item that cost $1000 still cost $1000 in new currency, so you couldn’t afford it. Theoretically inflation was controlled.
Another scenario that I can see is that all the folks who are getting a dole from the federal government, social security, federal retirement, disability payments, V.A. benefits will stop getting direct deposit transfers but will get a federal credit card and those cards will be loaded on some date that meets the convenience of the government. It is already done with the EBT card, so the system is already in place. That’s the first phase. After that phase is in and accepted, the next phase will be that currency is being phased out and all currency will be transferred to a debit card and the only thing that can be accepted for purchases is the debit card. It then becomes a very simple matter for the government to control everything. If you are a dissident, your card is suddenly blank and won’t work. If the government finds that it is spending too much on social programs, the dollar amount can be reduced each month by a small amount that the recipient probably won’t notice but if you are taking a dollar from 350,000,000 million cards, that is big bucks.
I think that is where all the governments in the world will wind up eventually. There won’t be any cash. Everything will be debit card and control will be complete.
Chuck- I would say that you’ve got to be wrong, but the blatant over-reach we have seen going back well before this shows that you may be right. I don’t want to go cashless. It’s none of the government’s business how much I have. Don’t want to be like EU where they use GoogleEarth to count your cars and tax you on your assets instead of income. I don’t see what I can do to stop that other than vote right.
My husband and I are very much at the mercy of govt as we live on social security and public pensions.
Also I think you are saying that self sufficiency is not a choice, but a necessity.
Very sobering. Very grim. And here I thought you were a fun guy.
Thank you for sharing your comment is well taken
Armin: I think your 25 trillion mark was before the 7 trillion bail-out bill that Trump was forced to sign.
Forced how, you say? Well, it was touted as the bill to restore the economy, help struggling businesses because of the shutdown; help small businesses that were significantly impacted by the shutdown; help all the folks who are losing wages because their livelihood was shut down. That was the theory. Oh, and it started out at billions, not trillions.
Of course, by the time the democratic house got finished adding their favorite pork projects, it had ballooned out. Well, the republican senators never saw a pork bill they didn’t love, so instead of slashing all the pork, they added to it and approved it. Now Trump is sitting there with this bloated bill that does very little for the folks who got screwed in the shut down but grants public radio more money than they ever dreamed of; the arts folks who thought a jar of urine with a crucifix in it was wonderful art and a whole panoply of projects not encompassed by the Constitution. The POTUS doesn’t have the power of line item veto. His only options are veto or approve. If he vetos the bill the dems scream how Trump is abandoning his constituents. He has no heart. He doesn’t understand how poor people are hurting. So his only recourse is to sign it.
If you add that 7 trillion to 25 trillion none of which we have. We don’t even have federal reserve monopoly money in that vast an amount. There isn’t even paper in that quantity.
Arrrggghhh! ! ! I really, really hope I am totally off base and completely wrong and things go happily along.
Hi Left Coast Chuck, just posed a question to Armin and would like to ask you the same- since it is a given that the Feds ran out of our money long ago and our legislators don’t know how to pull in their belts, is there any way to prepare monetarily for what is coming?
I assume the following:
1. At some point we will have stagflation.
2. Taxes have to go up, way up.
Do you expect it to be that dire that the only way to survive is to clean the guns and learn to can?
I am pretty frugal, planning to sell house within a year and can maybe find a very small place in cheaper part of country so wouldn’t have a mortgage, but I don’t think Armin might be pretty realistic. Any ideas?
You mentioned the meat going into the freezer hoping that will take care of it. It is my understanding that the virus can live indefinitely while frozen. The article I read said it was tested at 9 years. Of course, this wasn’t COVID-19 but still a SARS virus.
But at what temperature, Joe? There is frozen and there is frozen. Almost everything we come in contact with will exhibit signs of freezing at 32°F eventually, but there is always something more than 32°F until we get to absolute zero which is something like -475°F more or less. So frozen for nine years doesn’t tell us a damned thing. Besides, are we to believe that the SARS virus has such significantly longer shelf life than CoVid which is supposed to have a 3 to 5 day shelf life? Is that what we can infer from that tidbit of misinformation? Frozen for nine years and still alive and kicking but CoVid is dead as a doornail after only 5 days on a face mask. If you buy that bull pucky I would like to have a serious discussion with you about a bridge not far from me that has significant income potential.
And who published that figure? Did it emanate from some federal agency? What were they trying to prove? What was the purpose of the publication? Unfortunately, in my years of dealing with bull pucky from the federal government there are always the questions that must be answered before you can accept a federal statement that today is Friday. Why did he say that? What is his political motivation in stating that today is Friday? Do I have some independent way of verifying his statement so that it might possibly be relied upon?
Yeah, I know it sucks, but unfortunately I would trust Willy Loman the used car salesman about the mileage on the car before I would trust some federal official.
i can say this is a very good routine to do given his age and health condition…BUT…I would have to ask if he did this when either the Avian Flu, Swine Flu, SARS, MERS were out and about? How about the regular old, yearly flue season? All of which have killed tens of thousands of people when they were present, with NO Government mandates and it worked out fine.
Yes, I think the COVID-19 is a bad virus and I think it was leaked intentionally to test the outcome, by the Chinese, with possible assistance of some Americans, but I think it has been blown WAY out of proportion by the fear mongering Bolshevik “swamp monsters” in DC and their children (the Governors) on purpose for their agenda. We have gone from the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” to Land of the Forcibly Quarantined and Home of the Fearful!” Ultimately, how we live our lives is up to us and not some corrupt, leftist political party whose current agenda is to impeach an legally elected President and destroy this Republic by destroying the economy!
if you are sick…stay home! If you think you might get sick because of your health condition or weak immune system…stay home! The rest of us NEED to get back to work! I am the 71 year old Mayor of a medium size, community and I have told them all, use caution; do what you think is necessary while you go about your business. Not one reported illness, not one death in my town! 445,722 people in our county…and four deaths and they were all elderly.
Living in fear will make you a slave!
Absolutely !
Thank goodness for some common sense. I agree with you. I am much more “scared” of the panic and problems that have arisen from it than I am of the virus itself. Thank goodness we’ve been prepping for years. I see this lasting for quite sometime due to political manipulation.
To reply to the messages posted down to Mike’s post:
I went to the CDC site and indeed, they say that 70% IPA degrades the mask. What was omitted (and remember these are the folks who originally told us it wasn’t necessary to use masks, that they didn’t protect us, to the point now where we are threatened with criminal prosecution and possible jail time (and they are letting FELONS out of prison) if we appear in public, even a public park where no other people are present without some kind, any kind, of face protection.
A significant hole in that advice is no description whatsoever of the methodology used in applying the IPA. That was one reason why I went into detail in how I applied the IPA. I didn’t soak the mask in a bucket of IPA. I didn’t rub the mask with a sponge soaked in IPA. I didn’t attack the woven integrity of the mask with mechanical abrasion.
We are left in doubt as to just exactly how Battelle Institute went about applying the IPA. If they soaked the mask in a bucket of IPA, perhaps they might have damaged the fiber integrity of the mask. I doubt it, but I haven’t conducted the experiment myself, so can’t comment on that method. Certainly Battelle didn’t see fit to comment on their methodology. I don’t know if they rubbed the mask with a 4×4 gauze pad, a ScotchBrite pad from Costco, an old rage or what methodology they used. And neither do you.
I might further point out that the inspection of the mask was unaided visual inspection. Way to go with a really scientific appraisal. Not even a 5x magnifying glass to appraise the structural integrity of the mask. Just come lab assistant eyeballing the mask.
So, Covidguy. Thanks for the referral to the CDC site. I really do appreciate it. No sarcasm intended. I would just reiterate that the CDC are the folks who led us astray for so many weeks at the beginning of this goat rope. If you want to buy the government line, you most certainly are free to do so. I prefer to do my thinking based on my own hands own experience.
I would like to comment about the Battelle Institute. The U.S. government is the main financier of the Battelle Institute. Their main focus is doing work for the DoD and other government grants. They live or die on government grants. Might I be so bold as to posit that the Battelle Institute toes the government line in pronouncements to the public?
I first ran into the Battelle Institute back in the 70s when they were doing government grant work on non-destructive testing techniques on composite materials used in aircraft. There are a lot of brainy guys working there but they all live on the federal teat. You may use your own judgement on how independent they are in opposing the government line.
Now on to the other NO HUMAN CAN RUN A MILE FASTER THAN 4 MINUTES. IT IS HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE type of comment. That is: COLD DOES NOT KILL VIRUSES.
Way back in the dark ages when I was young, before electricity was discovered and we all wore skins because we hadn’t figures out how to make linen or wool into clothing, the dictum was that it was humanly impossible to run a mile faster than 4 minutes. It was like the sound barrier. Well, jeez Louise, here we are several millennia later and if you can’t run a mile faster than 4 minute in your senior year in high school there probably isn’t a track coach
in the country who would spend the money to come scout you.
So let’s move to the real problem. I am always leery of fiat statements: Cold doesn’t kill viruses.
I beg your pardon, do you mean by that statement that at absolute zero viruses are still multiplying and are infectious? Well, no, of course not. If that is your response, the that poses the question: Well exactly what temperature below freezing proves fatal to viruses? -100°F? -200°F? -400°F? Come on, you have posited an absolute and now you are backtracking. Without some scientific study to back up your statement, it is meaningless.
Do you mean at ordinary freezer temperatures? Where is the study or studies to back up your statement? Is there a time/temperature configuration to bolster your statement? And by the way, what exactly are “normal” freezer temperatures?
Someone asked in another article about how long food could remain frozen and still be good. I posted my answer based on my experience. Then I went on line to see what other folks had to say. One writer almost repeated my post verbatim. The USDA had a very nice table of time that various products could remain frozen and still be safe to eat. I can safely say from hands on experience that they are way short. They are like the dates on canned goods.
I don’t know why some of us continue to believe the pablum that the federal government under the guise of “Big Daddy Knows Best” continues to dish out just because they can control the information that is dished out. How many times do you have to be lied to before you just want to put your fingers in your ears like a three-year-old and shout “Nya Nya Nya I can’t hear you”?
So, if you mean viruses can still live at 31°F, yeah, you re probably correct. Lots of stuff can thrive quite nicely at that mellow temperature.
If you mean that viruses can thrive at temps below 0°F then I would like to see the studies that indicate they froze the little critters at 0°F and for how long and they were still wiggling around or whatever form viruses use to move around. In any event, according to the CDC, yeah, like I’m going to buy into that bull whacky, after three or so days the CoViders are dead as a doornail. So, based on that bull whacky, even according to the cold doesn’t kill theorists, after a week in the freezer the little buggers will all be dead and frozen stiff. — or does freezing somehow magically extend their lives? Inquiring minds want to know.
I heard that the covid-19 won’t die in the freezer and could last up to 7-9 years. I am erroring on the side of caution on this one. I did hear heat will kill it.
Heads up – I read on a trusted source that this virus survives in both the fridge and the freezer
City Chick: Please enlighten us about your trusted source. I would like to know the parameters that led to the conclusion that CoVid will survive in a refrigerator and/or a freezer when we are being told (whether accurately or not, I can’t venture an opinion) that merely lingering on a cardboard surface for three days is fatal to the virus.
While I readily admit that there are many anomalies in life, those two versions of the life span of this or any other virus are so diametrically opposed, I would really want to see who said it, why and how they arrived at those conclusions and who funded the research before I would gamble the health and safety of my family on it. I would rather rely on my own life experience.
For instance we have a neighbor who has volunteered to go to the store for me. While rearranging my freezer I found some elk steaks that had been in the freezer since 07. I’m pretty sure that is 2007 not 1907. The meat was dissipated and pretty dried out. However there was not a bit of indication of any kind of degradation of the meat due to pathogen activity. I gave it to the neighbor for his dogs. I’m pretty sure, and he agreed, that not only will it not harm his dogs but they will enjoy it immensely.
This flies in the face of the very impressive chart on the USDA website that indicates that meat is totally worthless after 3 or 4 months in the freezer. No indication that they actually froze the meat, took it out of the freezer, cooked it up, ate it and waited to be devastated by a horrendous case of the trots or some other disease entity. I can attest to one and all that I have eaten meat that has been in the freezer up to a year with no disastrous ill effects. Was not as good as I suspected it might have been after only a couple of days in the freezer. It seemed a little drier than I would have thought it might have been, but I suspect I am still alive as I sit here writing this.
Oh, ouch…the proof is in the thawing/cooking/eating.
I am having for dinner a pot roast using a sirloin steak dated many years ago.
I buy out-dated meats from piggly-wiggly store for about $30 now, frozen/a huge cardboard box full.
I vacuum seal and haven’t had a bad piece of meat yet/
Thank you, Jayjay. Nothing like hands on experience to validate a point. Big Daddy, the USDA says that is junk after 4 months and should be disposed of.
Your real life experience says “Wait a minute. That’s wrong. I eat frozen meat several months — years even old and it’s still good.”
So whom would you trust, JayJay or faceless, nameless, reason-less USDA?
JayJay has no reason to lie on this list. The USDA has the farm lobby to satisfy at a minimum, plus the meat packers association. How much money a year do you suppose Hormel contributes to various politicians’ campaign funds? Hormel has a vested interest in seeing lots of food processed through their plants, more than we can consume. How do we get folks to consume more meat? Well, throwing it away rather than eating it helps consumption, doesn’t it?
Enough preaching.
chuck: sing it, Rev!
How old were the mammoths exploring clubs had roasted up? While some got sick, it was much due to as I understand, people eating elephant for the first time. And, strange bacteria, but the meat was considered safe, and most not freezer burned 🙂 niio
Here is the trusted source: Federation of American Scientists. Here is the site: COVID19.fas.org. Be well! Be safe!
City Chick: Thanks for the reference. I looked at it. Looks like a lot of good, referenced reading material there. I’ll post after I have read it.
a couple things I found out , wash your vegetables and fruit in water with baking soda then rinse. the sun will also disinfect items but must be sure to rotate so all sides are exposed. Freezing does not kill it. When I bring in the groceries, if it is not frig or freezer stuff, it just sits in the foyer. the most this virus lasts is 72 hours, so after 3 or 4 days to be sure, then I get it and unpack it. whipping down surfaces of products with soap and water will also kill it. soap is your best defence. stay safe!
This just in from Yahoo news: “Preliminary results from government lab experiments show that the coronavirus does not survive long in high temperatures and high humidity, and is quickly destroyed by sunlight, providing evidence from controlled tests of what scientists believed — but had not yet proved — to be true.
A briefing on the preliminary results, marked for official use only and obtained by Yahoo News, offers hope that summertime may offer conditions less hospitable for the virus, though experts caution it will by no means eliminate, or even necessarily decrease, new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The results, however, do add an important piece of knowledge that the White House’s science advisers have been seeking as they scramble to respond to the spreading pandemic.
The study found that the risk of “transmission from surfaces outdoors is lower during daylight” and under higher temperature and humidity conditions. “Sunlight destroys the virus quickly,” reads the briefing.
While that may provide some good news about the outlook for outdoor activities, the Department of Homeland Security briefing on the results cautions that enclosed areas with low humidity, such as airplane cabins, “may require additional care to minimize risk of transmission.”
In a statement to Yahoo News, the DHS declined to answer questions about the findings and strongly cautioned against drawing any conclusions based on unpublished data.
Now I won’t make any nasty cracks about the accuracy of Yahoo News. I am sure most of you have your own opinions of the level of intelligence and news gathering capability of writers for Yahoo News, so I will let you do with this tidbit of “news” as you will.
However, I will point out that unnamed “government labs” is not the kind of resource I put a lot of faith in. “Government labs” Are they related to chocolate labs or golden labs?
That little bit of sarcasm aside, I will say that the SOTIS method of water sanitization is being successfully utilized in Africa and other third world countries with unhealthful water. The SOTIS method utilizes clear water, clear 1-liter bottles and hours of sunlight. It works best in the tropical zones in the summer time as opposed to Greenland in December. If you want more information about th SOTIS method check it out on line.
Kari: I have to disagree that soap and water are viricides. Soap unfortunately kills neither bacteria nor viruses. It merely facilitates washing them from your hands down the drain. That’s why we wash our hands, but use a viricide on other surfaces like counter tops.
If hours worried about the meat wrappers have virus on them, why not slit the wrapper to open it? Use clean tongs to take your chops out of the package and slip them into a zip lock bag. Then dispose of the meat wrappers in a trashcan setting outside.
I don’t try to save the gloves. I use them, change them and try to stay careful with them. When removed I turn them inside out and grip them in the trashcan outside.
I’m blessed in that neighbor picks up most things for us. If it isn’t a needed prescription I asked him to leave anything not refrigerated in the backseat of my truck. I’ll get them in a few days.
Actually other than a gallon of milk now and then we get little food. We were well stocked well before this mess but I Did buy a few more this in the months leading up to the virus self distancing.
A gallon of milk gets wiped down with alcohol before going in the refrigerator. Life is different.
I have no words for what I think of what this virus has done to too many people and what the shutdown is doing to everyone. I know many are getting light cases but many not old darts like me or LCC will be on dyalisis for life. Some now will be on oxygen for life. Many w ill live with damaged hearts. Some had strokes. An actor lost a leg due to the blood clots caused by problems from this virus. I think of the suffering and death because one of my jobs was death and grief counselor.
I’m honestly afraid of what is happening to our worlds economies with so much shut down time.
I do agree not selling gardening supplies is silly but I understand the other side of that is more exposure time to employees who get sick and some die.
Were old fashioned enough to garden and can. Have plenty of everything to last quite a while. Have rabbits, chickens, and ducks. Food for them for at least 6 months. If we were to run out of TP we’d survive with cut up tee shirts.
I have 3 acres, two good wells. One on power pump and one with a manual winch.
My home is a 16×56 1 bedroom 1 bathroom mobile home. Just right for 2 Great grandparents. Easy to heat and easy to care for. 4 years old. Bought a repo.
We found the things we need and had them on hand well before this recent mess started.
I felt an urgency about September to make a pantry and add to the stocked up foods and some TP. Just bought a little extra for several months. No big runs on a store.
Clergy lady,
You really set a good example for us all and I like the way you always say you did it little by little so those of us who are newer are encouraged that if we provide little by little we can be more self-sufficient too.
Thank you.
chuck: Good advise. Most don’t bother because we live in Arizona.But, we have only one sanctuary city, Tucson, which is where most cases happened (Kali has the poster children of Corona, Harry and Megan, and the queen typhoid mary, Peloi). Arizona has only a fraction of the cases that happened in your state. And, corona may have made the rounds in December. niio
Don’t forget sunshine and ultraviolet light. They are good means of decontamination also.
I have been wiping my boxed, canned and frozen items with a disinfecting wipe before I store them. I spray any boxes that are delivered with Lysol spray and leave them on the front porch until they dry. (We don’t live in a subdivision, so no thieves) Then wipe down the contents as I remove them. Wash my hands and hope for the best.
Chickiemimi: I think your practices are good sound practices for the present times. Those are rituals that I follow too for the time being. I just finished spraying my wife’s mail subscription newspaper with bleach solution. She can read it when it dries. I don’t spray the whole paper, just the outside pages. The way modern newspapers are printed it is not touched by human hands until it is handled by the post office. Everything is done by machines. The paper is loaded into the press by forklift. It comes on huge rolls. As it comes off the press it goes to the inserter/folder, then to the labeler/sorter then to the bundler where it is tied in bundles and then it may be placed by hand in sacks or that may be automated too, depending upon how automated the mailing facility is. After that it is handled in sacks until it reaches wherever in the postal system the sacks are broken down.
It is only when it is hand sorted at the local post office that hands start to touch it. If it weren’t for the fact that the insides of the paper aren’t touched, I would spray down the whole thing. After it dries it is a little crinkley, but still legible. I don’t soak it, but do make sure the entire surface is covered with the bleach solution.
The Lysol I have has bleach in it, so I guess perhaps yours does too. That is the antiseptic solution that kills the germs.
Great ideas! I too am in the “at risk group” 79 years old. Before I go to the grocery store, I make my list and write the aisle # beside the item – that way I only go down the aisles I need to. Like you say – no browsing.
I have my mask and gloves in my truck. I put them on when I get out of my truck – before I head into the store.
Take them off before I get back into my truck.
I’m in Colorado, and the grocery stores here, at least some of them have started having one-way aisles. Don’t know who thought that was a good idea, but it causes one to have to go a different way than usual.
One thing the grocery stores here did that helps some is that they have hours when they first open that are supposed to be for elderly and those at risk, Monday, Wednesday & Friday – before everybody else gets there.
Stay safe and be well everybody. We will survive this covid mess.
CO Carol: Most of the stores out here in SoCal also have senior hours, some more convenient than others. Costco has senior surf from 0800 to 0900. EMT, medical personnel and law enforcement get to go to the head of the line any time with proper ID and Costco is very good at checking ID too. They have a one-person-per-Costco card in store policy and it is strictly enforced too. I saw a couple ahead of me get turned away because wifey who obviously wore the pants in the family insisted she was going in with hubby. Costco employee was equally insistent that only one of them got to go in, so wifey drag hubby away.
Some of the hours are a little inconvenient. Winco is 0630 to 0730. Safeway is 0800 to 0900. TJ’s is 0730 to 0830.
Most of the stores are closing earlier than they formerly did to allow employees time to clean the store and restock the shelves.
The thing that irritates me the most is the goobermint decreeing that only “essential” items can be sold in general stores like WalMart. Who is the a.h. that decides what is essential and what is not? What deity conferred such wisdom on some slimy politician that he has the wisdom to know all the products that are in the marketplace that might be essential? It is that overreaching b.s. that makes me almost an anarchist.
Colorado Carol, I’ve always made my list according to aisles to make for a quick efficient trip. However our Walmart was in the middle of a store reset. So what would have been quick now takes twice as long. I still don’t know where everything is supposed to be now plus you don’t know if you aren’t just finding it or they are out of stock. The clerks are still trying to get it figured out too. Thank goodness for prep supplies.
Nearest things we could do to help the line that is be lining up out in the grocery stores and other places. I just like to share this which I feel it would be helpful to moving the line much faster, we should write a grocery list even put it on our phone of items that we are going in the store for that way it would be helpful for us not forgetting what we came in the store for also it would help us to get what we’re looking for quickly and get out the store fast so we do not to be browsing around in the store the quicker we get our items and get out the faster we will could help the line to move. I understand we wait or turn in the line to get into the store! Let’s all cooperate and tried to make it better for each other
Ched: The only change I would make is I don’t take my phone into the store. That is just another item to have to disinfect when I get home. I leave my phone and wallet in the trunk of my car. I only take my car keys, the credit card that I am going to use or the cash if I am going to use case.
The credit card and/or cash goes into a baggy in my coveralls pocket. My car keys go in my coveralls pocket too. My grocery list goes into the coveralls pocket. Anything that I am going to use in the store or while shopping is in the coveralls pocket. I leave my drivers license in my wallet in the trunk of my car.
After I am done shopping, the credit card goes back in the baggy along with any change I might receive back from the cashier. That baggy goes in my coveralls. Nothing I receive or use in the store goes anywhere but in the coveralls.
I might add that I carry towels soaked in IPA in the car and after I have loaded the groceries in the car, I wipe down my gloves and the car keys with the IPA before I get in the car.
The IPA soaked towels are carried in a plastic container that formerly carried hand wipes.
When I get home I proceed with sanitization as I outlined in my original post.
Your idea of using a grocery list while in the store is a very good one to minimize the amount of exposure time in the store. This isn’t the time for browsing to see what is new. In and out as quickly as possible. Good for you and helpful for those waiting in line for their turn. Good suggestions.
You are quite right. It safeguards our own health and more importantly the health of our loved ones.
Most people probably are not hurrying because they’re just so glad to be out and doing something normal. This is a good reminder.
Thank you for sharing Coast Chuck it’s all good tips for us to be doing, unid is not only for us is for our loved ones that living in the home too we could help keep them safe!
This is the reference that City Chick posted as supporting her statement about freezing and the CoVid virus:
“A 2010 study used two viruses that are related to the COVID-19 virus to look at the effects of temperature and humidity on viral survival. Researchers found that both lower temperatures and lower humidity helped viruses survive longer. In particular, at 4 degrees C, or 40 degrees F, and 20% relative humidity, more than two thirds of the viruses survived for 28 days. On the other end of the spectrum, at 40 degrees C, or 104 degrees F, and 80% humidity, the viruses survived for less than 6 hours.
“This suggests that coronaviruses survive better on surfaces at colder temperatures. It is also expected that the virus would survive being frozen. (LCC NOTE: No! All it suggests is that at 40°F/20% humidity 2/3 of the viruses tested survived and at 104°F/80% humidity some number of the viruses expired. It doesn’t state that they all were dead. One may infer that but inferences don’t hold water in expressing scientific data. One must be exact and precise in order to have your “data” rechecked. You need to give a detailed description of the methodology used in your experiment and you must list all the results of the tests you obtained. That, folks, is how real science is done.Sheesh, we might as well have Pence running the tests. He is supposed to be in charge. Maybe he could run a more rigorous test than these lab monkeys. end of LCC note)
“It is important to wash your hands and your produce, following sound food handling guidelines. Also, clean surfaces using approved disinfectants.”
Drafted 19 March 2020
So these “scientists” are extrapolating that because the virus survived nicely at 40°F 20% humidity, that it would survive nicely at 0°F 20% humidity.
I suppose that is the same science that gave us “masks are not necessary for the general population.”
One would think in the intervening 10 years they certainly had time to do a little further testing. Something that would prove of value to science and not just produce a worthless factoid.
I can survive fairly well, not happily perhaps, but better at 40° than I can at 0°. When I was a kid if it was 32° we couldn’t go ice skating on the lake as the ice would be too mushy and we would fall in. Dang, hate doing that in the winter.
However if it was 0° we could skate all day long even at noon time with the sun shining brightly.
Might I be so bold suggest there is a world of difference between 40°F and 0° F? Sure, if you stick your goodies in the fridge, the little nasties won’t die. They won’t thrive but they won’t all die out.
I wonder why these “scientists” didn’t test at 0°? That is the temperature recommended by most knowledgable for to keep your freezer at. Personally, if I were in charge of the test, I would conduct it at various temperatures to see just where the critters froze their little behinds off and died. That would be a valuable study. This must be K-Mart science. Even WalMart does much better than this “study”
Folks, you have to read the whole article. You can’t just skip to the bottom.
I’m going to read the rest of the articles on this site about CoVD19 and see if there is something that contradicts this “study” but this was the headlined sub article and I figured from City Chick’s positive statements about the viruses not freezing to death in the freezer that it must have the startling revelation.
Just caught part of a news broadcast from NHK. What I caught was that infected masks were supplied to pregnant women. Don’t know from whence they originated nor to what nationality they were sent, perhaps Japan. That sounds eerily like my world pox scenario. This week I turned down orders of masks for my relatives because they were manufactured in China. I did buy some that were manufactured in Salt Lake City by a medical supply company. I know, I know I am a Sinophobe. Me and Donnie, I guess.
Another headlined paragraph from the same “reliable source”:
“In general, because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient, refrigerated, or frozen temperatures.”
Left unsaid is what about the clerk who stocks the frozen products or the customer, who upon opening the reefer door, sneezes into the freezer. According to their other article the little buggers will be alive and thriving when you take the package of Birds-Eye frozen peas out of the reefer to take home.
Not to worry though, folks, you can’t catch the little buggers from packages or bags but you can’t take your bags that you have been using for the past year or so to the market . In order to protect you from CoVD you have to have new bags every time.
Does anybody wonder why I take the precautions I do. It seems to me the only thing the government can do correctly is pass appropriation bills loaded with pork for their biggest contributors after they have disrupted a burgeoning economy to the point it may be that 1935 will look like happy days.
Does anyone wonder why I think politicians and bureaucrats are a bunch of gaseous, bloviating. greedy nincompoops?
Well enough soap boxing for tonight.
chuck: Preacher, Amen! 🙂 Last December I got a letter from a friend in PA. He hadn’t written for weeks, but neither of us are into letters. He said, “I just got over this friggin nasty cold. It hung on bad.” Two hours later, I was sick. I asked for the symptoms. Like flu but not. It was making the rounds there and already in AZ. Was it corona? Same symptoms. word is floating around it was here in the US since possibly Sept. No one worried about it because it wasn’t as bad as the flu–and still isn’t, even in sanctuary cities. Stay alert, stay healthy. Looking forward to your next post! niio
Aw, c’mon, LCC, Tell us how you really feel. : )
Govtgirl: You don’t want to know how I really feel. That was the watered down version. The real version would probably get this website close down. 🙂
Left Coast Chuck-
Old Ohio saying- it is better to be pissed off than pissed on.
I don’t know – I’m prepped up for a pandemic alot worse than this variety – the “two steps and drop dead” type …
If I was living in that population concentration and under that age/health consideration – I’d be further down the road with garbing up and decontamination ..
Wouldn’t care about the looks – I’d be wearing a full view respirator – slip on poly boots – heavy duty over-glove – if not Tychem material suit at least poly clothes >>> better de-contamination
I read that freezing does not inactivate the virus.
SuzieQ: Please read my comments above. So far I have not seen any study that proves or disproves the effect of 0°F or lower temperatures on any viruses. Freezing starts at 32°F. The one test that postulates that it could be inferred that freezing didn’t kill the viruses tested at 40°F. That is approximately the temperature that most food folks recommend you keep the main compartment of your fridge. I would agree. 40°F does not kill viruses. It doesn’t even kill bacteria. It retards their development.
It doesn’t keep milk from turning sour. Cheese will eventually develop mold at that temperature. What it does is delay development of those unwanted processes.
0°F is a horse of a whole different color. Food preserved at 0° or colder doesn’t go “bad”. Eventually it suffers ice burn from internal ice bursting cellular space. Eventually the appearance and color will be altered. The nutritional value may be diminished, although I have never seen any studies on the nutritional value of, say, round steak that has been frozen at 0°F for, say, 5 years. It may or may not be that the diminishment is so de minimis as to require careful laboratory analysis to determine.
Postulating that because 2/3 of the virus were still alive after being maintained at 40°F/20% humidity it was likely that lower temperatures wouldn’t affect the viability of he virus doesn’t even qualify as pseudo-science. My guess that 0°F kills the little buggers is as valid. A guess is just that, a guess. You are free to make any guess at any temperature you would like. What is true without any experiments needed at all is that at some point before absolute zero, the viruses die. All molecular motion ceases at absolute zero. That’s why it is called that. However, none of us know that. To keep repeating that freezing doesn’t kill viruses without any scientific data to support that statement is just repeating an urban legend. Elvis Presley is really dead. He isn’t performing in a small nightclub in Del Rio Texas. Getting hit in the little finger with a .45 acp slug will not knock you to the ground.
A more meaningful experiment, one that didn’t waste taxpayer dollars would have been to determine what was the fatal temperature for 100% of the viruses at what time span. 0° at 6 hours? -10° at 4 hours? -50°at 2 minutes?
That kind of information would have been useful rather than the half-assed information that taxpayer money was wasted on.
You could wash your change and iron your paper money.
woodsrunner: The federal government takes a dim view of laundering money! No matter how many pandemic-rats do that with their money, it’s a no-no for us folks 🙂 niio
Woodsrunner: I do wash it. I wash it with bleach disinfecting solution now, 1/2 cup bleach to 1 gallon of water. Let it air dry. I don’t iron it because I don’t mind handing out wrinkled bills.
Before the Santa Barbara Biltmore Hotel was purchased by a chain hotel corporation, they used to wash and iron all their currency every night. A guest never got dirty, wrinkled money in change. It was all clean and crisp, not new, but freshly washed and ironed each evening.
Those were the glory days of the Biltmore. It was a bit stuffy but it was elegant. Gentlemen always wore a tie and jacket in the dining room. Sports jackets were suitable for breakfast and lunch, but for dinner, suits were the preferred attire. Women always wore dresses in the dining room for every meal. I spent every weekday at the Biltmore working on the depositions of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits filed as a result of the Santa Barbara Channel oil spill in 1969. I also put on weight eating lunch and dinner in the Biltmore dining room on expense account five days a week too. The oil companies picked up the tab. My recollection these many years later is that it lasted about four months.
Not worried about my shopping change. Neighbor picks up milk or something now and then for me. I send enough cash to pay and something for gas or time. He usually takes my truck to town for me so a little something for his time. Usually they need something for the grandkids they are raising. Today all I had handy was a $10. A gallon of milk and an apple pie for my husband. Neighbor bought 2 50 cent individual fruit pies for the two of us. I gave him mine. And he kept the handful of change. I’m just glad for the help.
Today I compared the N95 mask that I have worn three times and spritzed with 75% IPA with a brand new N95 mask. There are some scuff marks on the used mask consistent with handling, putting the mask on and taking it off. The underlying surface under the scuff appear intact. Other than the three places where the scuffing has taken place there is no visible difference in the material when examined under an 8x linen counter a magnifying device that used to be in every print shop in the country.
Now I will be the first to admit that a microscopic examination at a level that would reveal detail magnified perhaps 100x would be a more definitive exam than merely using an 8x lens.
It seems to me, rather than worrying about what disinfectant to use, it is more important to take care not to scuff the surface of the mask and to inspect the mask after each use and before re-donning the mask to insure that the integrity of the surface is intact. I can easily see the surface scuffing that has taken place with even my vision. I see no need to use any sort of magnifying device short of a microscope and that seems more suited to the laboratory with real scientists using real scientific methodology rather than home use.
You are certainly free to use any method you choose and follow any advice you read or hear. My only caveat is read thoroughly and listen extremely carefully. Listen for what is unsaid and look for what is unwritten. It’s just like everything else. If people talk about “a government lab” ask yourself what does that mean? Why don’t they say “om a materials testing laboratory at Battelle Institute under the direction of Dr. Vladamir Sowlosky, PhD in material sciences found that x x x”? Rather than the nebulous “a government lab”? A lab in Area 52? A lab at White Sands New Mexico? Or a couple of guys who happened to write a grant request that got funded because it was the end of the fiscal year and the agency funding the grant had money they needed to spend?
Today I compared my thrice used N95 mask and thrice sanitized with 75% isopropyl alcohol as reported earlier with a brand new N95 mask. I used an 8x linen counter. That is a magnifying glass that was formerly used in any print shop doing quality work a couple of decades ago.
On visual examination with the naked eye (well, wearing my regular glasses, so not quite naked) I noticed 3 scuffed areas that appeared to be physical abrasion due to mask handling. The were in separate areas from each other. Examining the rest of the mask and the new mask the rest of the surfaces appears identical.
It would appear from my examination that what is more important than the disinfecting solution used and the manner in which it was applied, spritzing as opposed to manual scrubbing, is to visually inspect the mask upon removing it after each use and before donning it to use it again for visual defects and to discard the mask if its integrity appears compromised.
Obviously inspection with a microscope would detect more minute defects, but in the field we have to use the best method available.
You are free to accept or reject any advice. That’s the freedom of the U.S. that we expect and should demand. I would strongly urge though to read thoroughly and listen carefully. Look for what is unstated. Listen carefully for lies that are not perjury but also are not the full truth. Too many politicians and bureaucrats are very skilled in the lawyer lie. Using very narrowly defined terms. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Not a lie if “sexual relations” is very narrowly defined. “Your president is not a crook” when a “crook” is someone who has been convicted of a crime. Not convicted, not a crook.
As I have stressed over and over again. Beware fiat statements. Freezing Does Not Kill Viruses. That’s a fiat statement. It lists no parameters. As I pointed out in an earlier post, that is blatantly untrue. At some point cold kills all. Now, it may be cold that is beyond our common ability to obtain. It may be necessary to obtain a tank of liquid nitrogen in order to kill viruses but the flat fiat statement Freezing Does Not Kill Viruses is incorrect and flat out wrong. Typing it in all caps doesn’t cure the defect. So any time you read a fiat statement, you must at a minimum question it and probably should reject it.
Don’t be mislead by vague terms such as “a government lab” What does that mean? What does the “lab” do? Is it White Sands New Mexico? Is it Area 51? Is it Lawrence Livermore Lab? Or is it a couple of guys squirreled away in their apartment in the low rent district of Philly who just happened to score a federal grant because the granting agency was at the end of the fiscal year and had money they had to spend before the fiscal year ended?
A real source would be “The materials testing laboratory of Texas Technical College under the direction of Dr. Vladimir Zolozinsky, PhD, PE, EE, XYZ, peer reviewed in Materials Testing Journal of the World Testing Federation by Dr. Johan Gutenberg and Dr, William Blakely found that . . .”
Anything short of that is just blather designed to attach some credence to that which deserves no credence.
“… I hope zero temperatures will serve the same purpose as cooking.”
I don’t think that works. Labs store virus samples in freezers to preserve them.
Very well written and lots of great tips!
LCC – Have you set up a a security drop box outside your home for packages? A nice looking box secured to the porch with a one way latch (hasp with an unlocked padlock) and a small sign telling the driver to put the packages in the box and lock it.This works for both porch pirates and pandemics. Delivered goods reduces your exposure to people and you can decontaminate at the box. Maybe add a pair of UV lights in the box with a fifteen minute twist timer switch and a drain tube if you have to wash the inside. For people with more yard or less restrictive local rules set the delivery box up near to the regular mailbox. Secure it very well into the ground so delivery drivers do not have to come up on the porch. I would like to see creative ideas and pictures for these “well designed” and “classy” package boxes posted via “AskaPrepper” as a follow-on story.