Archive: Opinions

As our days of social isolation turn into weeks many people are becoming bored, and not following the steps recommended by the CDC and our local health department such as social distancing and hand washing.  We all yearn for normal life to resume.  Some folks are joking on social media that the year 2020 has not at all met expectations, and they are demanding a refund.

I think it is easy to understand social distancing.  COVID-19 is transmitted by little droplets expelled from sneezes or coughs, or heavy breathing -- I won't even think about asking what's causing that!  But hand washing?  With soap and water?  How could such a commonplace thing as bar soap or liquid soap make as big a difference as health officials claim it does? 

I didn't get it until about a week ago when I saw this "How soap kills the coronavirus" video (below).  The answer is so simple I instantly understood it.   You know that oil repels water, right?  And so does fat.  Simply stated, the coronavirus is protected by a bubble of fat.  Take away the fat and the virus just washes away.

And why is soap recommended over hand sanitizer?  After all, hand sanitizer comes in bottles (we love stuff that comes in bottles! -- and if it has 60% or more alcohol it works against COVID-19.  But experts say that when you wash your hands with soap, and some experts are saying soap is more 'badass' against the coronavirus, you are not only getting the virus off your hands, but also rendering them harmless and flushing them down the drain.


This is so easy to understand that it motivates hand washing with soap, especially after touching packaging you picked up at the store, but also just periodically doing it.  Because we know why, we're more apt to do it.  We now not only know that it is stupid not to wash our hands properly with soap, but we know why it is stupid.



For me, this video was way more effective than melodramatic attempts in the past to get people to stop smoking or stop using drugs. Remember that ad showing an egg with the slogan, "This is your brain" and then the guy cracked the egg and put it in a hot frying pan, exclaiming, "This is your brain on drugs.  Any questions?"

Because the "How soap kills the coronavirus" video (still below) doesn't hype the issue.  It clearly illustrates why soap works.  No hype.  No omlet.  As  Sergeant Friday famously intoned in his trademark monotone, "Just the facts, Ma'am."  And by the way I had a fried egg for breakfast this morning with no hallucinations, and it didn't mellow me out.  So no actual bad association there.

Of course knowing why it is bad hasn't stopped smokers from continuing to use tobacco, even with all the disgusting graphic pictures of smoke-scarred lungs.  Some folks have an "it can't happen to me" or "the pleasure is worth dying early" attitude.  And those folks seem immune to arguments that their smoke makes other people sick as well.  Refusing to do something as simple as hand washing right now could kill people, most likely people you know and/or care about.


I like it better than the CDC's own video that explains why you should "wet, lather, scrub, rince, and dry" to correctly wash your hands, because that simple illustration in the video (not above) is worth a thousand words, so to speak.  Take away that circle of fat and the virus spills out and away.

CNN reported Wednesday that COVID-19 deaths in the United States are likely to exceed 100,000, and could go as high as 2.2 million if people don't follow the guidelines for hygiene and social distancing.  A White House model suggested that 2,000 people could die from the virus each day by the middle of this month.  New York State has the most cases of COVID-19 in the whole country, with almost four times the number of cases at more than 83,000 than the next closest state (New Jersey).  Most of those cases are downstate, with the highest number -- more than 43,000 -- in New York City.  By Wednesday there had been almost 2,000 deaths in New York State.

While the number of confirmed cases in Tompkins County has risen, including a few patients needing hospitalization, there have been no deaths here.  If washing our hands and keeping our distance is all it takes to keep that wonderful zero deaths number, how is it not worth doing?

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