Just after 9/11, some disgruntled post office worker in New Jersey USA sent a letter full of anthrax to the office I was working. Various U.S. government departments came in to distribute robust antibiotics and gave us lessons in handwashing.
This involved using hard soap, making a thick lather, pushing the lather between fingers as well as rotating around the hand and wrists. This was followed by rinsing off the lather under running water by using one hand to scrape the lather off the other hand. The idea was if you had the spores on your hands you had to get the lather to remove them sticking to your skin by rubbing them off into the lather, then washing the bugs and soap off your hands. They impressed upon us, it wasnāt a case of a gentle washing but a serious cleaning.
Of course we asked about hand sanitizer, it seemed so much easier, and they said donāt use the sanitising gel, because all it did was move around the bugs on your hands, it didnāt get them off you.
Most people seem to be wearing surgical face masks which offer the wearer ālittle protection - though they might have some value in protecting others from aerosols generated by the person wearing the mask (which is, after all, what they are designed to do).
FFP3 masks are a pain to wear for prolonged periods and still donāt really offer protection on their own (add at least gloves and eye protection).
Having just spent 11 days in Hospital in France, some nurses/auxiliaries had taken to wearing masks.
I found it quite difficult to communicate with a gaggle of ducksā¦ or people with duck like facial features (some of these masks splay out at the front giving that cartoon impression) when with less than perfect hearing and eyesight I need to see mouth movement to aid comprehension - especially in other than my mother tongue.
A guy I know works weekends at the airport helping bewildered English passengers.
A warning came round saying āNo kissing, no touching and keep a distance of at least 2 metres.ā
āSounds like marriage!ā was his response. . . . .
@Peter_Goble has it on the nail as everā¦
Modern hospitals just donāt cut it any more in the way that the old tried and trusted methods did.
I doubt it is still the case but in particular, the old TB hospital buildings were always oriented to maximise on the sun and beds were pushed out of the ward to profit from lifeās most natural disinfectant - fresh air and sun.
In my early 20ās I was an Ambulancier with the old Birmingham Fire and Ambulance Service and we used to keep a small fleet of ambulances back (usually the old ātiredā ones) as zymoās1. Any infectious patient requiring transport to hospital would be conveyed in one of these after which it would be scrupulously cleaned disinfected and the crew thereafter before the vehicle was returned to service.
I have one very fond memory of an old zymo breaking down in Edgbaston in the middle of the night requiring the attention of the Brigade to get it fixed. Another crew was sent with the next zymo in line to transfer the patient to hospital without further delay leaving me as the driver on this occasion with the broken down vehicle.
Well, the brigade break down truck arrived - imagine the scene. This truck was the size of a double decker bus plus some - big enough to pull a fully loaded fire engine water tender (and they are fooking heavy!).
The mechanic jumped out of the passenger side of monster mover - the appliance fully equipped in shiny red livery two tome horns the lot - and proceeded to get my old zymo working muttering continually under his breath about how useless us Ambulanciers are with simple things like engines.
Anyway, long story short, he manages to get it going and disappears off in to the night in a cloud of smoke - somewhere around 3am. His companion, the driver of monster red truck beckons me to hop in the passenger side of and we go off in hot pursuit - presumably back to the station.
No sooner than I had sat in the left hand seat the hooters came on - eeeee awwww eeee awww blue lights flashing making a hell of a racket at 3am with house lights going on all over the place.
Unable to contain my self any longer I shouted over the roar of the enormous engine and braying two-tone monster at the driver - ātell meā I bellowed, ādo you always switch the two-tones on when following broken down ambulances in the middle of the night?ā
No, he replied, calmly, but if you take your foot off the button on the floorā¦ (I was sitting in the commanders seat). Sure enough the hooters abated and we trundled back to the station for me to be re-united with my precious - now fixed zymo which I proceeded to disinfect ready for the next job.
Priceless - and I often wonder when I hear sirens in the middle of the night if it really is an emergency or some rookie ambulancier placing his size 9ās in the wrong floor pan area of a roaring red monster truck. 1Zymo abbreviation for Zymotic
adjective: zymotic
relating to or denoting contagious disease regarded as developing after infection, by a process analogous to fermentation.
Sounds more like French bashing than truth. There are dirty people the world around. You arenāt really suggesting that the Brits are all fastidious in their cleanliness.
The French think the Brits are dirty because of their carpets. Logically you can easily clean a tiled or wooden floor. But who knows what lurks in and under a carpet?
The French and others more used to tiles are appalled by the British way of carpeting bathroom floors. I suppose it started as showing that one was posher than people who could only afford lino.
I was amazed when friends who had had to throw out the wall to wall carpet of their bathroom after they had flooded it replaced it with yet more carpet.
Our last house in UK had fitted carpet in the kitchen of all places.
When we got round to it we replaced it with fancy Italian tiles which made much more sense.
he carpet itself had been in place for 20+ years I guess before we purchased the house and it was matted with grease, animal hairs the lot.
Not very healthy in all so best got rid of.
