That is, a live virus through non-electric mail.
I’ve been asked to consider a scenario similar to the Simpsons episode where a sick line worker in Japan coughs/sneezes into a box that gets shipped to the US and thus infects the town. The person who asked me specifically mentioned “flu”, and I assume he was getting at the recent avian flu, but I guess we don’t need to be that narrow.
I’ve done searches for survival time of influenza viruses and gotten uncited answers ranging from minutes to days. I’ve also found reports such as this one (large PDF) that are too technical for me to decipher which of the presented scenarios are relevant.
The ultimate question is: Can someone cough or sneeze into a box, mail it halfway around the world, and expect to infect someone who opens it?
Thanks.
Any microbe that can transform into spores can go dormant and live for a long time. I am not having much luck coming up with a list but the most infamous is of course anthrax. I can’t comment on the viral-cloud-in-a-box possibility except to note that such viruses are usually transmitted through the air, and once they’ve been coughed into a box, they would come to rest on the insides of the box. At that point the microbes have lost their transmission vector.
You’d probably have to lick the insides of the box to have a chance of picking up anything, and even that might not work because licking is not the best way to get microbes into your respiratory system. Saliva and other defenses would probably take care of them before they got too deeply into your systems.
Just noticed another thread on the first page asking a similar question:
How Long Do Germs Survive on a Dry Surface?