I’ve only seen the store brands sold as two litres; Kroger and Meijer in my nex
Norovirus can be spread by fomite contamination.
A recent case from New Zealand that’s almost certainly a fomite transmission and a nasty one at that:
- A New Zealand arrival from the US entered into hotel Quarantine July 28th.
- They tested positive July 31st and were immediately removed from the hotel into a dedicated quarantine facility.
- The hotel room they stayed in underwent hospital-grade cleaning with hydrogen peroxide vapour sanitation using a BioQuell machine.
- Several days later, a maintenance worker conducted routine maintenance on the room in full PPE in preparation for another guest to arrive.
- The maintenance worker started feeling symptoms August 11th and was tested positive August 16th.
- Genomic sequencing shows the maintenance worker’s strain matched the American hotel guest and did not match the current Auckland Americold cluster.
- CCTV footage and swipe badge data confirm that the maintenance worker and American arrival never interacted in any way.
- Thus far, nobody else in the hotel has tested positive.
Hopefully further investigation will dig up an asymptomatic carrier that was the bridge between the two but if not, it means that COVID managed to survive a hospital grade cleaning, several days of dormancy, PPE and a fomite transmission path.
Also, the Beijing Xinfadi cluster was genomically sequenced to an older European strain that’s no longer extant in Europe so the best current hypothesis is that it came in from seafood that had been sitting frozen in cold storage and infected workers at the seafood market.
That’s pretty close to impossible. Even if we don’t find a middle man there was almost undoubtedly a middle man regardless. Even in extremely supportive lab environments, the disease doesn’t last that long in surfaces. If several days of quarantining, hospital grade cleaning with PPE and a hydrogen peroxide fuming still allows spread, this would not have been the first case we’ve seen transmitted on surfaces. No way.
I admit to being closed-minded about the prospects of this particular chain of transmission being proven. For me, the account falls into both the “extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence” and “Ockham’s Razor” buckets.
Not buying into the frozen-seafood theories, either – not the Americold one in New Zealand, nor the Xinfadi cluster in Beijing.
Given a lot more evidence collected over a lot more time, and scientific consensus being achieved … I’d be forced to re-evaluate my stance. But IMHO we’re not there yet. Not that it matters what I believe.
I think there’s been a popular idea that New Zealand had gotten COVID-19 down to zero active cases nation wide for a multi-week period – and so that any recent outbreak necessarily had to be imported by travellers. I would bet that the nation instead got the number of symptomatic active cases down to near zero, but also that a few mildly-symptomatic Kiwis rode out COVID-19 infections off the medical grid (so to speak). Therefore, IMHO there was already a few COVID-19 “embers” among the populace. You don’t many to spark up a small outbreak.
I think they were using genetic markers to identify the strain–that’s how they know that this worker got it from that patient*. And they used it to track the the other cluster, and can see it’s not the strain they had before in NZ.
*(This doesn’t rule out a middle man, of course.)
I understand, yet remain skeptical.
Skeptical that the cases are related, or skeptical about surface transmission?
I see a lot of grounds for skepticism in the latter, but I don’t see any evidence to suggest NZ had smoldering cases these last 100 days, that happened to have the same genetic signature of an imported case.
Skeptical about the chain of transmission as described in Shalmanese’s first post in this thread this morning. To be fair, Shalmanese also accounted for the possibility of a middle man.
They’re doing serology testing on the other workers in the hotel now to see if they can spot an asymptomatic middle link.
After more investigation it has been identified that the maintenance worker used the same lift as the positive case soon after she had used it and this is now the main line of investigation.
That seems FAR more likely.
I wouldn’t be surprised if frozen food could carry live, infectious virus for extended periods, but I’d be really shocked if the virus survived that level of cleaning and remained infectious on surfaces.
If that is a product normally sold in cans, it appears there is currently an aluminum can shortage. Thus, beverage manufacturers are not producing some of their less popular varieties in favor of stocking the mainstays. That means I cannot find caffeine-free coke or Dr Pepper.
First I’ve heard of that problem.
Most of the hand sanitizer I find is new brands never heard of before. I’m certain they have ramped up production, as distilleries shifted their lines from beverages to sanitizer.
Given that pork plants were heavily hit by covid due to their practices, this is not a surprise.
Whole canned green beans are nearly impossible to find, but cut green beans abound.
I can’t find canned putple hull peas, but as I’ve said elsewhere, there were shortages last year due to weather, so I suspect that’s more to blame here.
Now we got a national pepperoni shortage.
Not of a mystery, though, as it’s labor-intensive and pork processors would rather put their limited staff on higher profit items.
Half the time we used toilet paper as facial tissue, old military habit that never bothered me - though we buy the great jumping jesus cases of paper products at BJ’s, typically at any time we have the remains of a flat of Puffs Plus, 2 flats of whatever brand of paper towels [though I have an order in for those reusable bamboo ones that came across my facebook feed] and at least 2 flats of Charmin for 4 people. Since going on Claritin my allergy symptoms are better under control [they moved from seasonal to all the damned time]
A friend of mine who has a CPAP swears by home distilling his own water. This is what he uses.
I have about 3 quarts in pint bottles around, I can’t find the individual packet sqabs. I use cotton patches. Shooting insulin sucks, but at least I no longer fingerstick, I use a constant sensor monitor by Freestyle and it comes with its own pair of swabs. [one to prep the new site, one to scrunge off the adhesive from the old swab.
We use washable masks, and since we restrict our leaving the house, we bought a 250 pack of nitril gloves that we use sparingly.
ROTFLMAO
I find a good quat cleaner best for surfaces, and available when alcohol or windex type grocery store surface cleaners were tough to find.
Share the recipe? I absolutely adored those but had to stop eating Archway products when they went to palm shortening.
No-ooooooooooo!
Here 'tis! I confess I have not tried it yet, but I plan to do so soon. My family loved the ones by Archway. I had to hide them, sometimes. My granddaughter called them,“flower cookies” bc of their shape. I have a flower shaped cookie cutter, so I hope to really emulate the Archway model.
Old Fashioned Molasses Cookies
- 3/4 cup shortening
- 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- granulated sugar for rolling cookies
Instructions
In a mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar with an electric mixer. Beat in egg and molasses until well blended.
In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda and spices. Stir into the creamed mixture until blended. Chill for at least an hour, or until firm.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Roll the chilled dough into small balls about 3/4-inch in diameter. Roll each in the granulated sugar, and place on the baking sheet, leaving 1-2 inches between cookies.
Bake for 8-12 minutes or until set. Cool in pan on a rack for 2 minutes, then remove to rack to cool completely.
Well, that sucks. A few weeks ago, I was missing having pizza so I bought some pepperoni, black olives and provolone cheese to eat with crackers as snacks. I should put those on my next order before it’s too late!