Covid-19, Your health and that of your community

Sanitiser

Alan and others

I'm about to start making sanitiser from isopropyl alcohol (99.9%) and (does not say but I guess close 100%) glycerol. I also have some Aloe Vera 99.7% gel - as maybe kinder to hands alternative to glycerol.

My bottom line is that the alcohol content is best at 70% - 80%. Some sanitisers use only 70% (as is NHS recommended). Going up is worse for hands, but also worse for viruses. I think the US FDA suggestion is that anything over 60% will kill viruses but I doubt soon enough to be great.

I'm not using H2O2 since don't have any and its only utility seems to be destroying spores of chlostridium difficile. Not a problem for us.

So: what proportion water vs glycerol, or water vs aloe vera gel is sensible for a sanitiser the right consistency?

The WHO recipe is

• Isopropyl alcohol 99.8%:7515 ml
• Hydrogen peroxide 3%: 417 ml
• Glycerol 98%: 145 ml

Water: 1923 ml

I'd translate that is:

IPA: 75%

H2O: 23.5%

Glycerol: 1.5%

(EDITED)

Any comments? Mainly the H2O / glycerol ratio will determine final viscosity and is probably quite critical, so I'd be interested in advice from people who have done this.

Quote from Shane D.

You are fear mongering. The mortality rates are all over the place, and you are taking the worse case scenario to bolster your argument. From everything I have read, this pandemic targets mostly the elderly with major underlying health issues.

The Italy secretary of state said that with the exception of only 2 of the over 3000 deaths all are older (average >80) people with preconditions. This will change for sure as younger just do survive longer...

But the younger will survive if they get the famous combination of Azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine? (Plaquenil).

But the rotary mafia (WHO) will for sure try to deviate the doctors as they still hope that a primary medicament with >1000$/dose will work too. The above 2 are cheap generics!

Quote

You are fear mongering. The mortality rates are all over the place, and you are taking the worse case scenario to bolster your argument. From everything I have read, this pandemic targets mostly the elderly with major underlying health issues. Even your Imperial College stated that "excepting those with underlying medical conditions, the new coronavirus could be less deadly than the seasonal flu to anyone under 60, and no worse than the 2017/2018 flu season for those in their 60's."

That's probably wrong. Dangerously so. More and more severe cases are being seen in relatively younger healthy people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com…s-according-new-cdc-data/

Posting wrong information hurts us all.

Wyttenbach WTF man?

In Italy there are 5,322 new cases. That's 1.27 times yesterday. The "shut down everything" tactic does not appear to be working. This is roughly the same growth rate they had before they shut down.

This is the same growth rate the U.S. is experiencing.

Quote from JedRothwell

In Italy there are 5,322 new cases. That's 1.27 times yesterday. The "shut down everything" tactic does not appear to be working. This is roughly the same growth rate they had before they shut down.

This is the same growth rate the U.S. is experiencing.

There must be a lot of questions for epidemiologists about why this is happening:

1. Italy shut the country down on March 12th, so it’s been 7 days. If the average incubation period is 5-7 days maybe we are still seeing the cases where the person contracted the virus a week ago.

2. What if people who are shut in their homes are simply infecting family members who are in those same homes? If that’s the case why did the same thing not happen when people in China were shut in their homes?

3. I’m starting to wonder what daily new cases mean for Iran and Italy. It has been stated by the former head of the U.S. FDA that Iran has all but thrown its hands up and is letting the virus course through their population. It’s a country of 80 million people. But they never had a healthcare system that could deal with a pandemic like this. Their daily new cases could be in the tens of thousands and they are simply no longer testing for it.

And I think there is concern that Italy is not far off of that. Looking at the active cases in Italy, this would likely be the time when their healthcare system becomes overwhelmed in a way that many of us fear will happen in our countries. It would be interesting to know how many tests Italy conducted today, and if that number has started to decline because of a shortage of healthcare workers. Italy’s healthcare system must be near a breaking point.

China and Italy are different in other ways. China built 16 large emergency hospitals. China screened people everywhere with forehead thermometers. The government did not require permission for it.

China did lots and lots of presumably good testing for the virus and then separated people based on results. Far as I know, Italy is simply stunned and is doing nothing of those. I am hope I'm wrong about that. Same with Iran.

Quote from JedRothwell

In Italy there are 5,322 new cases. That's 1.27 times yesterday. The "shut down everything" tactic does not appear to be working. This is roughly the same growth rate they had before they shut down.

This is the same growth rate the U.S. is experiencing.

There is an approximate 2 week delay between infections and reported cases, if tests are done only on those bad enough to need hospital, and given that test results take a while.

In addition lockdown does not much prevent household transmission so there is a time delay for full effect while households that cannot/do not self-isolate infect each other.

We need to wait another 7 days I think.

That is why urgent action matters. In two weeks you get 30X the case load, 30X the hospital load. You need control measures when your current patient load is 1/30th of what you can cope with.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

China and Italy are different in other ways. China built 16 large emergency hospitals. China screened people everywhere with forehead thermometers. The government did not require permission for it.

China did lots and lots of presumably good testing for the virus and then separated people based on results. Far as I know, Italy is simply stunned and is doing nothing of those. I am hope I'm wrong about that. Same with Iran.

There are going, eventually, to be questions asked about why these measures could not be done in democracies given lots of warning, like the UK. Unless all works out OK for UK under current "weak shutdown rather late" strategy. We will see.

China has chloroquine and favilavir available to their citizens now but Italy does not. So no new cases today in China, but hundreds more in Italy. Similarly the epidemics are now under control in S Korea and Japan which are probably making such remedies available to corona virus patients. It's not rocket science to work out as a leading biologist Prof Didier Raoult says we need screening, quarantine and treatment with antiviral to beat this one before vaccinations become availiable.

Sorry, thousands more new cases in Italy. This demonstrates that quarantine and screening tests alone are not sufficient measures to contain this epidemic. We will only stop this when Trump dispenses Bayer's donated chloroquine throughout the World. Unfortunately he will probably restrict it to 'America First' So I have asked Bayer for some for the rest of us too. Worth a try?

Quote from Dr Richard

China has chloroquine and favilavir available to their citizens now but Italy does not. So no new cases today in China, but hundreds more in Italy. Similarly the epidemics are now under control in S Korea and Japan which are probably making such remedies available to corona virus patients. It's not rocket science to work out as a leading biologist Prof Didier Raoult says we need screening, quarantine and treatment with antiviral to beat this one before vaccinations become availiable.

That is just not a rational argument.

I'm not saying such drugs are not useful. Might perhaps be useful as prophylactics. But:

China has extraordinary trace/check/isolate measues, as well as smart lockdown. Italy has none of that.

You have no info China is using them as prophylactics (needed for your argument) rather than treatment

Let us have fact-based argument?

Quote from JedRothwell

In Italy there are 5,322 new cases. That's 1.27 times yesterday. The "shut down everything" tactic does not appear to be working. This is roughly the same growth rate they had before they shut down.

Sorry Jed: You need to wait at least for 7 days until the incubation and first inflammation is over, then it should smoothly decline but only if non tested positive people stay of the old ones. Thus a quarantine is no real help without controlling all related persons.

My guess is that at least in Italy it will take 1-2 months for a decline.

two of our local restaurants have a special deal - free roll of toilet paper with each take out/pickup order over $20.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

China and Italy are different in other ways.

China is very different from Japan and Korea, but those two learned from China, implemented similar steps, and stopped the epidemic. They did not violate anyone's constitutional rights. Their governments are not autocratic. Everything they did would be allowed under EU and U.S. laws. We might have done it, but we did not.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Sorry Jed: You need to wait at least for 7 days until the incubation and first inflammation is over, then it should smoothly decline but only if non tested positive people stay of the old ones.

Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown ten days ago. It imposed other restrictions before that. The steps should be having some effect by now. But there is no change in the numbers. They have been steady since March 1.

In the U.S., today's number is 1.6. As I said, I hope that is the result of more testing, but I wouldn't know.

Quote from JedRothwell

Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown ten days ago.

No only a part of north Italy and thousand did flee to the south where it now starts too.

As said (also by Swiss authorities) it will take at least 2 weeks until numbers decline.