Spring cleaning has taken a whole new meaning
as millions of people stay in to curb the spread
of the coronavirus and realize just how dirty
everything in their home is.
But with so much misinformation floating around
about what works and what doesn't, what can you do?
I got a little help over Skype from Mikhail Varshavski,
better known as Doctor Mike, to get the facts
about how to keep our stuff clean.
- Well, the first thing you need
to do is when you walk inside from the outdoors,
you need to disinfect your body.
It doesn't mean taking a full shower,
it means washing your hands very thoroughly,
taking your shoes off, leaving them by the door,
because that's the easiest way to bring in
those germs from the outside in.
We don't want that to happen.
How do we fight it?
Washing our hands. And then the thing
that our hands touch most,
especially nowadays, are our cellphones.
So we need to disinfect these bad boys
when we come from the outdoors as well.
Because we wash our hands, but we were just touching this,
so all the viruses, all the bacteria,
is still alive on the cellphone.
In fact, Apple just put out a great release on how to clean
your cellphones properly so you don't damage them.
- Looking at Apple's guidelines for how to clean my iPhone,
I'm 100% okay doing what I have been doing,
but probably should be doing more often,
which is using a wipe
and just gently wiping the exterior surfaces.
Now I just need to know which of these cleaning products
to actually use on other things around the house.
- If you're going to be using any kind of bleach product,
it is recommended that you do it in an open-air environment.
So either you open up a window
or you do it in a well ventilated room,
because the bleach can aerosolize and irritate your eyes.
There are products that can disinfect without bleach.
That being said, there is no miracle product
that's better than the other.
Ready the labels very carefully.
They'll tell you which one is a truly disinfecting product.
In fact, if you look on some of the products you'll see
that coronavirus is on the list of things
that these disinfectants treat
because this novel coronavirus is not
the first coronavirus we've seen.
Coronavirus is simply a strain of viruses
that cause all sorts of respiratory conditions.
I've never noticed this on products before,
so I went looking at some of the disinfecting products
that I have around my house.
And these handy wipes explicitly say
"the human coronavirus."
I've also been using these wipes on a lot
of other surfaces around my house like doorknobs,
light switches, faucets, remote controls.
- There's been a couple of research articles
that came out testing how long this virus survives
in different temperatures, humidities,
on different surfaces, even in the air.
And copper seems to be one of those surfaces
that the virus lives a very short amount of time on
when you compare it to something like plastic or steel.
Why is that problematic?
Well, the majority of our household products,
our mice, our keyboards, they're made of plastic.
So it's easy, that if your hands are dirty,
to have it live for a long period of time on these products.
- So my wipes are going to be a permanent addition
to my work-from-home setup.
Also because my coworkers like to walk on my keyboard
and interact with me at my dining table-slash-desk.
At least I don't have to worry about taking these two out
for a walk and bringing the coronavirus back in.
- There's been a lot of talk about pets being carriers
of this virus, and while we haven't seen evidence
of them truly being sickened by this virus
and then getting their owners sick,
what we have seen is pets acting like a surface contaminant.
So if your walking outside and someone asks to pet your dog,
respectfully ask them to practice proper social distancing
so that they don't leave the virus on your dog's hair,
so that when you come in and start petting it
now the virus is on your hands.
That's a strong recommendation.
Also, very simple, when you're coming
in from the outdoors, wipe your dogs' or cats' paws
so that they don't bring the virus indoors.
The virus does live a much shorter time on surfaces
in the environment where there's sun
because the sun is natures disinfectant with its UV rays.
But that being said, there's still a possibility
that someone could have sneezed,
your dog or cat could have stepped on that
and then bring it inside the house.
So practice proper social distancing.
Clean them just like you're cleaning yourself,
and you'll be able to be safe.