The thing everyone is scared of, E. coli, is known to those of us who know about these things as Escherichia coli. It was discovered by a chap called Dr. Escherich, and he must have family still alive. If that bug’s first name hit the papers, the whole family would probably be regarded as a disease.
The truth is that you have more E. coli in your body than there are people on the planet. All the time. Everyone. They are almost totally and absolutely harmless.
When we microbial types test, for example, water, we do not run a whole series of tests for all the nasties that could be in there. That would cost a fortune. Instead we test for E. coli even though (apart from a few variants that make up a tiny percentage of the wide range of bacteria with that name) it won’t infect anyone.
Why? Simple. E. coli only lives in guts. All animals and birds carry it. So if it is in your water supply, there is shit in your water and you are at risk of nasties. Doesn’t mean you will definitely get nasties, but if shit is getting in you really do want to fix that.
That is all. The bacterium we test for indicates someone or something has shit in your water supply. No more than that. There are dangerous variants of this bacterium but if you are not ill, you don’t have one. You do have billions of them in you, right now, and so does everyone else, and your dog and your cat and your budgie. Any animal that routinely licks its own arse has it on its tongue. Fortunately for the rising tide of claims, Jimmy Savile wasn’t physically capable of licking his own. He had people to do it for him.
It is therefore no surprise at all to find that it is on many peoples’ hands. Since I have, today, had to deal with the results of a customer using a shop toilet who managed to miss a toilet-sized hole while sitting on it, it’s probably on my hands. Since I have had to deal with many, many samples per day of pig, cow, chicken and human shit over the years, it’s probably been constantly on my hands for a very long time.
Washing is overrated. Soap is not disinfectant and water just makes the buggers grow faster. Some will grow on the chemicals in detergents. Washing reduces your chances of infection because most nasties need to arrive in a big gang to get a hold. A few Salmonella won’t infect you. A lot will. Wash most of them off and you win. E. coli is always present in vast numbers but it doesn’t really matter.
There is no way at all to reduce your chance of infection to zero. None. Wash your hands and stop worrying about it.
Okay, I have washed my hands in chemicals the general public aren’t allowed to have, and in some you are allowed to have but you’d use plastic gloves. This is because I am trained in exposure levels and times and can get away with it. This is a blog, not a teaching facility, and if I told you what I’ve done and you tried it, I’d get sued by people with no fingers.
It’s interesting to note that the Daily Death claims that the shit is on bank cards. What are you people doing with them? Look, it’s simple, you use the cards to buy toilet paper or alternative plastic scrapers. There is no need to gum up the chip on your card. The motto is ‘chip and PIN’ not ‘shit and scrape’.
It’s on the cards because it’s on the hands. The cards are irrelevant. If it’s on someone’s hands it’s on everything they touch. But it’s MOSTLY HARMLESS. E. coli is a wide range of bacteria within a species, just as chihuahuas and lopers are the same species of dog. Pit bulls are the same species as a slobbering Dalmatian. One is scary, the other is thicker than the E. coli-containing produce of its back end, and softer than it too.
The article also claims it’s on cash. Yes it is. So is cocaine and third hand smoke (I’m still adding warnings to mine). Cash picks up all sorts of things, but unlike the cocaine traces, the bacteria gradually die.
No mention is made of how they did these tests. If they looked for DNA, they would pick up dead bacteria but if they looked for live, culturable bacteria (these days I doubt it) they would only get results within a day or so of being handled by someone shitty.
It looks like both a further step towards phone-paying and then implanted chips, and also a whack in the face for the Government’s idea to issue cards to the drinking classes.
Comments are worth reading. The scared-of-dirt are out in force.
Yes, I think so too, about being another step towards eventual implanted chips becoming “necessary”. I think they milked the SHS Fraud for all it was worth, just to manufacture a class of anti-smoking hate-mongering bigots who would as a result become stubbornly stuck in their illusions, willing to uphold them no matter what and give full support to the powers that be. The eventual goal of course is to keep dragging the drones down that path with worse and bigger fears until eventually there will be no need for guns to force chip implants – the drones will be falling over one another, in line to be first on their block to receive one. They’ll be happy to line up their children for implants too, for the good of the children it will be. I don’t know how soon, maybe after the next major war or next major economic implosion, something along the line of another World War or Great Depression event – but when the time is ripe for harvesting the drones for chip implants, then the major scheduled event will be triggered in order to push everyone over the edge and accept their chips. Anyone not abiding, at that point of course, will be hunted down with force as the majority will be on the side of the powers that be, having handed over their freedom, individuality and autonomy long, long ago, when they first fell for the SHS Fraud and ate it hook, line and sinker.
Already there are many people clamouring to be first to have a new iPhone that can track them wherever they go, and first to be able to pay with their phone. All it needs is ‘they can’t steal it and you can’t lose it if it’s implanted’ and there you go.
“It’s interesting to note that the Daily Death claims that the shit is on bank cards. What are you people doing with them? “
It’s a shame the cocaine the anti-drugs people claim is also on there doesn’t act as a sterilising agent, eh..?
There might be dangerous bacteria on your money but there’s nothing to worry about. They’re too stoned to do anything.
Heh… just added this to their queue… dunno how long it takes to go up.
====
There is no safe level of exposure to Second Hand People. Second Hand People are Dangerous To Your Health. The only solution is to ban them from pubs and other public places. Once they are confined safely in their homes the world will be a safer place. – = – = – = – In addition to their filthy hands, they routinely use one of their four excretory functions (defecation, perspiration, urination, respiration) to exhale waste products into the air that the rest of us must breathe. Those excretions include formaldehyde (used to preserve corpses), acetone (nail polish remover), acetic acid, acetaldehyde, and 3,000 or more deadly VOCs (volatile organic chemicals.) – = – = – = – While Breathers cannot be totally eliminated because of protective laws, SOMEthing must be done to control them. Please join your local branch of the VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction MovemenT) at VHEMT.org and get active for the good of our children. Thank you. – = – = – MJM
You’re going to start a new scare.
I’m jealous
.
“I’m more concerned with the 4th hand smoke particles which I pick up using chip and pin after a smoker has put their card in before me. Though it’s probably cleaner than cash. I had a £10 note which said “touched by smoker” written on it the other day and had to destroy it.
- Banemall , Barnstaple, United Kingdom, “
That must have been one of your tenners, LI!
Or, perhaps, one of his readers.
Not “guilty” though: I live in a country which is fairly relaxed about smoking, and a pack retails for about £3.50.
Hey, no need to panic, just send ME your smoke polluted tenners and I will dispose of them for you FREE OF CHARGE. : )
Ignore that man. Send them to me and I’ll even refund your postage.
There are a lot more than just me doing it. A lot more.
‘Nick Wilcher, marketing manager of Radox, who funded the study…’
‘Nuff said.
Actually, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the link to proposed cards for benefit claimants; create enough public hysteria and the idea is dead in the water.
(A previous article of the sort about bacteria on coins prompted a particularly obsessive mother of my acquaintance to soak her children’s weekly pocket money in Milton).
You should have told her it’s not strong enough and she should use neat bleach.
Or alcohol.
Sodium hypochlorite (bleach) kills all bugs stone dead, according to what I have learned.
From my personal research it would seem that the children in undeveloped countries that one regularly sees on the television dying of cholera, etc, could be saved by simply treating drinking water with bleach (okay, after simple filtration of the water to remove the large bits of stuff).
I think the proportions are two drops of 5% bleach in 1 litre of water.
I have often wondered why this is not done and have come to the conclusion that it is probably too simple and too cheap for the “Aid” agencies.
Why isn’t bleach used to fix MRSA in hospitals?
Dunno about the water suggestion: it sounds good. It could be done with tablets instead of liquids to reduce overdose chances. Billions of tablets could be very cheaply produced I’d imagine.
For hospitals though I see two problems:
1) The smell (with the associated heavy amount of actual chlorine gas (?) in the air)
2) I think most of the spread of MRSA etc is through carelessness rather than through insufficient disinfection. If personnel actually changed plastic gloves 100 times a day it would probably greatly decrease. But on the other hand you’d have people dying from the inefficiency slowing the medical care and you’d be filling up the world with plastic gloves. You couldn’t just have people bleaching their hands all day without gloves either: somehow I don’t think that would leave a lot of skin!
- MJM
Bleach is 5% sodium hypochlorite.
The concentration necessary to kill bacteria would not be harmful to humans.
It could be far more dilute than Milton of which Wikipedia states: It contains 1% sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) and 16.5% sodium chloride (NaCl). 1:80 dilution is used to sterilise babies feeding utensils and a 1:20 solution is isotonic with body fluids. 1:4 dilution is used for wound management applications.
Main problem would be the damage to fabrics.
I was more thinking of it being used on floor mops and other cleansing equipment.
Any smell would be similar to that of a swimming pool. Not bad at all.
Sorry, this has got off topic. However I have long suspected the refusal to use bleach for the management of problems such as field operation water purification is that there is no lucrative patent on it for the money spinners.
I don’ think it’s really OT: after all, we’re trying to prevent Leggy from coming down with hoof ‘n mouth disease, right? (Of course we won’t mention all the years he spent “pointing” his little paintbrushes for models with his lips after using lead paint….)
How well do you think 70% rubbing alcohol works? I don’t mind the smell of that at all (as long as I don’t start thinking it’s vodka…) and I keep some in a pump spray bottle just to squirt little nicks I get or to swab down the countertop etc sometimes.
I remember reading a study that surprised me though: evidently cleaning yourself with wine ends up making the microbes grow MORE! Not enough alcohol to really zap ‘em, plus they thrive on the sugars!
- MJM
“evidently cleaning yourself with wine ends up making the microbes grow MORE”
Plus you get one really belligerent little sod come weaving towards you along the surface
Let’s face it kids sometimes drink neat domestic bleach and they survive. OK their insides are pretty clean afterwards
. I drank neat surgical spirit a year or so ago (taking what I thought was cough medicine out of the cupboard while sleepy and in the dark) I woke up pretty quick and stopped coughing too!
Tablets for water sterilisation have been around for years, I used to take them camping in the seventies in case all we could get was river water. Bung them in and half an hour later it was drinkable.
In hospitals, it’s probably health and safety preventing the use of strong disinfectants. I clean the baker’s ovens in the day job, I use water and elbow grease only. It works because the ovens are only used for cakes, no roasting, so no grease. Still, there is a gradual buildup of stuff I’d love to deal with but – no chemicals in those little ovens. None at all. But we don’t expect much bacterial growth on stainless steel at 200 deg C so there’s no problem.
Nurses don;t need gloves. They just need a lot of handwashing facilities on the ward, or portable ones. If they didn’t have to go back to one place every time they visited another patient, if they could get a quick squirt of antibacterial hand gel between beds, there’d be no problem. The NHS could afford it if they cut out all those managers.
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I remember that the last time I went to visit someone in the hospital that we DO have such things now over here right at every door. Might not be universal though.
- MJM
We have them at the doors but if you are going bed to bed, you can’t go back to the door each time. They need to be next to every bed so nurses can use them for each patient. All it would take is one layer of management exterminated and the NHS could afford gold-plated ones.
I want to see one of the marked banknotes…
Easy. Take one banknote and a pen – preferably thick felt tip.
I prefer to make it unobtrusive so it’s not noticed when the change is handed over…
OTT. Start them young, Straight from the Jesuit handbook.
‘Two Schools in San Antonio [Texas] are using electronic chips to help administrators count and track students’ whereabouts.
NBC reports that students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School are now required to wear ID cards using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology embedded with electronic chips in an effort to track daily attendance records.’
http://www.latinospost.com/articles/5498/20121015/texas-schools-using-electronic-chips-track-students.htm
LI, if you’re ever going to finish Panoptica, you’ll have to type much faster.
I’ll also have to think much darker.
Watch out for the mindless caterer; diligently washing both hands only to recontaminate by grasping the dirty taps. Not satisfied with that little load, he proceeds to take on the serious pollution from a visibly soiled communal hand towel, which was last laundered for the Coronation..
Where I work, the taps (and everything else) are always clean or at least have been for the last week or so.
Every catering facility needs a janitor with a PhD in microbiology and experience of handling pathogens. We don’t just see the dust most people don’t see, we know what it is and what’s growing in it!
If only I could get the coffee machine to produce something that doesn’t taste like the aftermath of washing the grill pan.
To be honest, it is possible to be too clean where bacteria are concerned, especially where bacteria and children are concerned. The reason is that our immune systems positively require a good deal of target practice in order to get good at killing non-self things and not going loony and attacking ourselves. The latter is what causes allergies, of which asthma is one.
One anomaly regarding asthma is this: the former East Germany had asthma levels that were a tiny fraction of the levels in the former West Germany (the re-united Germany is now all mostly like West Germany was) despite East Germany being horrendously polluted and tellingly infested with smokers. That bit about smokers was a red herring; ditto pollution. What the East Germans didn’t have was access to the array of cleaning potions and machines that the West Germans had in abundance; the Easterners were therefore living in a soup of mostly harmless and benign bacteria. This gave their immune systems a lot of completely harmless bacteria to practice on to get good at not shooting at their own side.
Irritable Bowel Disease is another auto-immune disease with a simple cure. People with Irritable Bowel Disease are more likely than not to be Jewish in genetic origin; middle easterners adapted to have super-powerful immune systems for coping with intestinal parasites. Put these folk in a Western situation without any parasites, and their immune systems take to indulging in friendly fire incidents. The cure: a very low infection of an intestinal parasite which specialises in going after a completely different species of mammal (pigs are the ones of choice here), so will not complete its life cycle in a human. This gets you a larval stage parasite wandering about in your large intestine in complete confusion; it knows it is in sort of the right place but isn’t getting the right chemical cues to develop further. What it is getting is assaulted vigorously by the person’s immune system, grateful for a real target at last; this cures the IBS whilst the hapless larva is still there.
Yet another example: children who live on farms are much less likely to suffer from allergies than their non-farming counterparts; smoke exposure is not a factor here at all.
Tobacco smoking isn’t a cause of allergies. It makes some diseases worse, but this is the hellbrew of partial combustion products, not the tobacco or the nicotine (which is actually rather healthful). Bacteria aren’t very dangerous either, unless mishandled. Stob being scared and learn to live with the harmless ones.
It’s also true that a large population of benign bacteria makes it harder for dangerous ones to get a hold.
Want to protect your children from asthma? Read this study and see if you can figure out anything that might help… (Heh, guaranteed to drive the Antis nuts!)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2222.2001.01096.x/abstract
Of course they’ll turn around and say “So you’re saying parents should blow smoke in their children’s faces?”
And you can answer: “Only if you really want to keep them from getting asthma and turn them off from the idea of smoking.”
:>
MJM
I will refuse to blow smoke in antismoker children’s faces if it’s going to benefit them in any way at all. Those genes should be deleted from the population.