In mind of Steve’s cross-post yesterday, I thought I’d share something I presented for the people on my Facebook feed. I felt it was obvious, but when I look around my city I can tell that many people don’t share my perspective. I don’t know how useful it will be here… I think most people on this site already understand the concept… but because of the variety of “friends” from various walks of life, many of my posts on Covid-19 have been fairly apolitical. That means this is something that anyone can post and share at will, and hopefully get through to someone what basic precautions really mean – and it’s not simply standing six feet away from your friend as you all go out for coffee. Feel free to copy, excerpt or modify it without attribution; particularly on Facebook, people are more inclined to pay attention to something if they believe a friend or relative wrote it rather than simply reposted.
It’s simplistic, but too much detail risks “Too Long, Didn’t Read”.
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Here’s an easy (if somewhat disturbing) way to look at surfaces: imagine, as you go outside, that everything is coated with a thin film of feces until you wipe it off. Everything. That’s the hands and bodies of everyone you see (including friends and family), that’s every place you want to step, that’s everything you might touch. And the people, because they’ve got feces on the inside of their mouth, are breathing it out into the air, too.
If you really want to minimize your exposure, that’s how you should picture the world right now. If you have to open a door, imagine you’ve now got crap on your hand in every place there was contact…. you’d want to wash as quickly as possible, and if you had the smallest of nicks on your cuticle you still wouldn’t risk touching the door handle in the first place, due to the reasonable fear of it becoming infected. If you picked up a box of crackers or a roast from the store and it was coated in feces, you’d be absolutely certain to wipe it down or spray some magical feces-destroying substance called “Lysol” on it before putting it in your cupboard or refrigerator.
This is about as basic a lesson in dealing with contamination as I can present. If it helps any one person, I was happy to disgust the rest of you.