OT, COVID and books

Hello,
I have posted this on another group but wanted to get opinions here as well.
Like many of us, I just cannot resist buying, and even when I do not visit bookstores right now, I am active buying on the secondary market. How do others insure that what they buy is safe and not infected. Personally, I open my used books and let them air or 4-5 days, but I am interested in what others are doing.

This was discussed 18 months ago at the beginning of the pandemic.
Exposing any surface to direct sunlight for five minutes will kill the coronavirus.
Covid is primarily spread by aerosol droplets. It is highly unlikely that any surface touched by someone who has active Covid will remain infectious for more than a few hours. The virus does not penetrate skin and must be inhaled to cause infection. Rarely, eye contact can also cause infection.
Books ordered by mail are therefore quite safe to handle.

Thank you, Do you have the link to the earlier posting?

>3 Frank_Zwolinski: Found this under the cleaning section:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/318110#7137975

Be warned however, that not all sunshine was created equal as the subsequent post suggests upgrading minutes to days when working with a Scottish sunlight.

A more detailed post by Dr. Carter and 17 months to the day, but still relevant even after the discovery of newer strains and breakthrough infections:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/317422#7087202

...some heated discussion and laughs:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/317797
(Best quote: Better a wet bed than a dry shroud.)

A book isn't going to give you Covid-19

>1 Frank_Zwolinski: Covid doesn’t transmit through surfaces, 99.9999% of infection is through breath and the water droplets etc. It was thought it might do at the start but the scientific consensus is clear now. Hence the emphasis on masks now as oppose to washing hands every 30 mins.

An example of how dire the public health communication has been. They really haven’t kept the public up to date in an honest way.

>1 Frank_Zwolinski:

Ventilation is the key. The world should be focused on improving this in buildings rather than wasting millions on disinfecting everything. I have invested in a CO2 meter as that gives a good idea of how fresh the air is inside a building. Some have great HVAC systems with fresh air being pulled in from the outside. Many don't and just recycle the air even though it may be heated or cooled. The difference in CO2 reading between the two is interesting. The higher the CO2 (from people breathing) the more the likelihood of the virus being transmitted :-(
I am slowly building a list (unfortunately quite short) of where it is safe to go! Luckily it includes one local library/coffee shop/museum complex :-)

P.S. As to incoming books - they now get always get opened immediately! I will admit to storing books for 72hrs last year for
a few months until new evidence came along.

BTW: This article is a really fascinating read:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-...

Also, I am really looking forward to seeing "The Folio Book of Covid" at some point in the future :-)

>1 Frank_Zwolinski: As wcarter replied earlier you're fine and nothing to worry about. You're more likely to get bitten by a spider or insect living in the shipping box and get an adverse reaction than contracting covid.

I understand your concern and plan to now read the information on the links given. I have a tendency to put our things aside for 24 hours, be it a bottle of Vitamins, a mug that will get washed anyhow, or books, etc.. We have an established holding area under our coffee table and another one on our 2nd floor landing. So far, no Covid and I have ordered stuff from everywhere, including going into bookstores (spent a good 2 hours in Barnes a& Noble this afternoon) with no problems, though we still mask up and use our sanitizer regularly when out and about!

As much as COVID seems to be primarily spread by breathing in the virus, I do wonder whether the additional virus that people produce when infected by the delta variant might make surfaces more dangerous and likely to cause infection. We don't lysol everything, but we do leave mail and certain other things for 24+ hours before we touch them.

Not sure why you think that people with the Delta variant product ‘additional virus’ - the only difference with this variant is that it is more easily transmissible, though via the same methods as the original strains (ie via droplet inhalation etc). Over the past 5 months tests were carried out swabbing public transport (trains/buses/tubes) in various cities in the UK & the tests found zero incidence of COVID on surfaces - if it isn’t to be found on public transport which is used by millions of people daily I think you’ll be ok with the surface of a book !

Thank you all. As an explanation, I am living with, and caring for, a transplant patient who is completely immune compromised and therefore wish to be extra careful, and since we do not now know what new variant might be coming down the pike, extra care is needed, in my opinion.

>11 antinous_in_london:

It's been reported that the delta variant seems to produce a heavier viral load than other strains of the virus. See, for example, this article in Nature (it should be free access, I think):

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01986-w

The paper to which they refer is at:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.21260122v2

It is a preprint though, so hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.

>12 Frank_Zwolinski:

The concern about contracting COVID via surface transmission was raised early in the pandemic when transmission methods were not clearly understood.

Nevertheless, you should do what makes you feel comfortable, and if that means taking extra precautions regarding surfaces, by all means do so. It can't hurt, after all!

>12 Frank_Zwolinski: Speaking as someone who is immunocompromised myself -- one of my physicians, a neuro-infectious disease specialist, estimated my personal risk at more than 8x that of the "average" immunocompromised person (although personally we're in such an infant stage in terms of our knowledge of COVID that the statement still strikes me as a bit silly) -- I completely understand your concern. I also understand the varying opinions expressed here.

I can tell you what we do in my house, which was recommended by one of my doctors and endorsed by two others. We give everything a good 9 days to sit, unless we clean it (something I'm not going to do to a book). Sunlight obviously would speed that up but I avoid exposing my books to sunlight. Some have pointed out here that the risk here is either virtually nonexistent, or some have implied impossible. It is, as best/worst, extremely low after a few hours. As has been pointed out, it does not penetrate the skin. The concern, though, is that while it might not penetrate the skin, it gets onto the skin, say a finger, then that finger finds its way to an eye, nose, mouth. Even with handwashing, many mistake hand sanitizer for soap, and most do not wash for the recommended 20 seconds, resulting in bacterial buildup in harder to reach areas such as beneath the fingernails. Others (like me) have children and children just do their own thing. A cut or other break in the skin -- often a more common issue for the immunocompromised and other chronically ill than for the population at large -- also provides a potential point of entry although there hasn't been much to show what happens if it enters the blood stream directly.

The 9 days itself is relatively, admittedly, arbitrary since it lasts on some surfaces longer than others, certain environmental conditions can kill it off much quicker, and conversely in others it has been found in live, viable form well after 9 days without a living host. But this was the recommendation of a doctor I trust, a recommendation for general household purposes. It almost always feel like overkill.

I hope that helps some.

>15 aeneax: Much of the advice seems vague/contradictory & changes regularly based on new information so I think everyone needs to asses their own approach based on their own circumstances & those around them. There is no harm at all in being what some may consider as over-cautious - You have to do what feels right for you.

Here the hand washing recommendation was for 26 seconds, public libraries quarantine returned books for only 48 hours before re-shelving them to be borrowed again & bookstores happily let people pick up & browse books without quarantining them at all (which they did originally at the start of the pandemic where people were requested to put books they had touched on trolleys which were then quarantined for a few days), so who knows what is right & what isn’t !

Hope you stay safe !

>16 antinous_in_london: I absolutely agree, particularly on individual circumstances. That's precisely why I chimed in with the advice that my doctors have given to me as a heavily immunocompromised individual, given that the poster cares for a transplant patient. I have not, for instance, given my doctor's recommendation to just anyone on the street, not even to my own siblings or parents (although they have become aware of it), because everyone's situation is different. It always seems like overkill and yet, the doctor who recommended it is one of the only doctors I have ever known to be intelligent enough to realize (actually, truly realize) that medical knowledge is incomplete, and that he does not know everything.

Hope you stay safe as well. In truth I'm probably more protected than the great majority of the world, as I've been largely confined to my house for a decade. I don't recommend the experience. Watching a good part of the world go through it has been very difficult, knowing what everyone is going through with lockdowns, remembering what those early days, months, and for me, years! were like. I'm just desperately hoping it all stops and everyone else at least can resume like as normal -- particularly my wife and kids. But in the meantime, while the rest of the world has been buying up everything in existence, I'm quite glad we haven't yet had mass shortages of books!

Thank you folks for your excellent comments!