The COVID-19 Lesson: We first learned to survive in cold regions by wearing furs. Then we learned to heat air and retain it in buildings. Now we learn to always add water to heated air to prevent aerosol viral epidemics.

Humidity in heated air

Pandemic of fall 2020 coincides with <40% RH indoors.

Garden of Eden, where our lungs evolved, had no air as dry as Indoors of Winnipeg.

The tipi had fire heat, lowering relative humidity -- all inside inhaled dry smallpox aerosols.
Did high initial exposure, before immunity could develop, enable virulent smallpox epidemics?

Are viral pandemics the failure of public health and architecture to ensure >40% relative humidity?

On this page:



Jan 14, 2022

SALT AND STEAM? Fifty years ago, inhaling steam and gargling salt water was common for viral chest colds and sore throats here during winter's extreme low relative humidity indoors. Perhaps the hydration helped maintain an intact mucous film guarding human cells from virus contact? Perhaps the salts destroyed viruses and microbes in the exhaled aerosols thus limiting contagion to other people?

UV RADIATION: Mass transport and barracking of WWI soldiers amplified the rate of contagion of the 1918 Pandemic that ravaged both human and swine populations. Today, mass mingling of strangers together within big box stores has a similar effect. But now fan exhaust conveys aerosolized virus exhalations of the mammals in both big box stores and big hog barns, continuously through the night when the suns sterilizing ultraviolet radiation is absent. COVID-19 virus aerosols are thus carried on the night air expelled from modern buildings and drawn into other buildings including homes. This modern mode of contagion could be prevented by requiring UV radiation of air both recirculated and expelled via fans from all human and swine buildings.


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Dec 23, 2021:

In general, the pattern worldwide of COVID-19 epidemic following four weeks of low indoor relative humidity, has repeated for a second year in northern countries.

But, other factors coinciding with the low indoor humidity periods of the year here include:

UV: Fewer hours per day of virus-inactivating ultraviolet radiation from sunshine, and lower UV intensity due to low in sky.

POLLUTION: Greater air pollution from diesel exhaust and other burning for heat -- because tiny air pollutants are absorbed into blood in lungs and associated with impairment of immune response -- the Po Valley of Italy early COVID-19 epidemic is attributed to air pollution by some aerosol scientists https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-07-covid-0438

To Mayors of major Canadian cities

Dec 23, 2021:

Mayors are empowered to enact local min %RH bylaws (or talk to big box store owners), to supplement orders and vaccine advice from provincial chief medical officers.

From Aerosol and Air Quality Research journal https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0302
and further articles peer reviewed at https://aaqr.org

I suggest of mayors:
Advising indoor air >40% Relative Humidity is more responsible than issuing no advice and allowing very low indoor RH in cold winter.

Advising adding humidity after heating elements is better than humidifying prior to heating… because extreme drying of virus laden air can concentrate salts within droplets destroying viruses, and because extreme wetting of air such as through a water mist could cause tiny suspended aerosols to gain water become heavy and precipitate.

Advising wearing mitts when touching common hand rails in buses etc, is better than issuing no advice to discourage bare hands picking up viruses. (Public would learn that the outside of mitts gloves are contaminated/dirty and to not touch mitts to noses.)

Advising ill persons to wear a loose-bottom cloth mask allowing easy inhalation, and to direct cough droplets downwards against shirt instead of up inside tight masks and around eyes and outwards into room, (such as the niqab which my wild guess imagines was invented centuries ago to protect children from mothers' coughs?)

(I am vaccinated.)


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27 Nov / 24 Dec 2020 Letter to Editors

To:
All Canada Health Ministers, Premiers, PM
First Nations chiefs groups in Canada
Medical research institutions U Manitoba
School Public Health U Alberta, Infectious Diseases SAIL U Dalhousie
Agriculture, Biosystems Eng research faculty U Manitoba
Editors of many major newspapers in Manitoba

Might Humidity Cure COVID-19 Epidemic?

Aerosol and Air Quality Research Journal (aaqr.org) has published a discussion of the role of relative humidity in the airborne transmission of COVID-19. Aerosol scientists concluded that if the relative humidity is below 40%, the virus-laden small droplets exhaled from infected adult lungs will endure as small aerosols suspended in air, infecting others wherever the air circulates.

But if the relative humidity is increased above 40%, the exhaled droplets will pick up more moisture from the wetter air, increase in size and fall from the air. This is similar to how dust particles in the atmosphere attract moisture from humid air to form clouds and then a cleansing rain.

Published in July 2020, this aerosol research seems to not yet have been communicated to our public health officers, as they do not yet suggest >40% RH to prevent enduring contagious aerosols of COVID-19.

World epidemiology appears to validate this. All warm small islands and humid coasts have less epidemic contagion (are never <40% RH). Yet all regions where air within buildings is now heated now have epidemics (often <40% RH indoors) -- due to warm air being able to hold more water vapor than can cold air, and thus air becomes relatively drier when it is heated.

Aerosol scientists also advise to wear masks to increase the humidity that exhaled virus-laden droplets first encounter under the mask, and to halt the velocity of exhaled air.

I suggest, during viral epidemics:

The lesson from COVID-19:
We first learned to survive in cold regions by wearing furs. Then we learned to heat air and retain it in buildings. Now we learn to always add water to heated air to prevent aerosol viral epidemics.

Viral Aerosols Sanitation Research:
Similar to perfecting pasteurization to sanitize milk of tuberculosis, I suggest we optimize humidification to sanitize indoor air of viral aerosols:

Challenge:
Let's use humidity, masks and mitts to tame the epidemic ourselves, months before vaccines arrive.

I have supplied air humidifiers into my mother's seniors home.

Grant Rigby
M.Sc.Food, farmer. www.grantrigby.ca


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4 Jan 2021 (to all of the above)

Humidity Regulations to End COVID-19 Epidemic

Please be informed, and act promptly to limit enduring COVID-19 viral aerosols, via employing aerosol science. www.aaqr.org

License stores, restaurants, offices, factories and transport for operation during viral epidemics only if >45% Relative Humidity inside, (plus masks, mitts, distancing, sanitation, etc)

As Manitoba again tries to open up for business, we might add this condition of >45% RH for every operation. This would ensure that the risk of suspended aerosols of viral COVID-19 accumulating inside buildings, due to dry air, which caused the unexpected epidemic this fall with hundreds of earlier than necessary deaths, is not repeated.

A false assumption has clouded perceptions of the cause for the fall restart of the pandemic in the northern hemisphere. It is the general belief that viruses such as influenza become epidemic in late fall because people are inside more when the weather gets cold. But most Winnipeg people are also inside buildings during the summer. Never is it the case that most of the population is outside -- indeed maybe less than 5% are ever all outside at the same time? Thus it must be something else that changes every fall ... and the obvious factor, validated by aerosol scientists, is the change to extremely low humidity indoors whenever cold outside.

In dry mid-continental North American Prairies, the extreme low indoor humidity occurs earlier than in humid oceanic Vancouver Island, Newfoundland, Great Britain, Japan for example. Our fall spike in hospitalizations occurred earlier from contagion via suspended COVID-19 aerosols in the dry air of public places. This is simply because our outside air was dryer and colder needing more heat to be added, resulting in lower indoor relative humidity here, typically most days below the critical 40% RH level. Aerosol scientists report that virus-containing aerosols remain light and thus suspended, because cannot grow in mass via attracting water from air that is too dry. Air laden with dry infectious aerosols, due to dry indoor air, was inhaled deep into lungs causing rapid severe disease in many, commencing earlier here in mid September.

Building codes and Bylaws to require minimum 45% relative humidity inside.

It is wrong to blame the public for the fall epidemic based on the assumption they must have misbehaved / not adhered to guidelines and rules this fall, when in fact the major change has been the decline in the humidity quality of the air inside buildings that are owned/managed by businesses, churches, communities, and especially within seniors homes, where not regulated at a minimum 40% relative humidity. Public officials should consider attributing blame to those who chose to save cost by not humidifying indoor air.

We have known for generations that dry indoor air is hazardous regarding influenza and other lung ailments, yet building codes do not require owner/operators to protect the public from hazardous low relative humidity below 40% RH. Governments have failed to use retail licensing bylaws to protect the public from hazardous very dry indoor air.

Businesses have the opportunity to protect customers and workers from elevated risk of COVID-19 viral aerosols, via merely ensuring the relative humidity inside is of a moderate minimum >40% RH. Every business can find a way to boil a kettle of steam within 2 hours of a public order to humidify NOW.

If minimum 40% RH is not required of retailers prior to being allowed to reopen, there shall predictably be significant contagion from the suspended COVID-19 aerosols accumulated in stores by each afternoon, for example in the big box sporting goods stores where fearless persons gather, misguided by their government into believing their cloth masks both retain and exclude viral aerosols, when in fact all common masks fail that task.

Mandate minimum 45% Relative Humidity in all Seniors Homes.

Also from the aerosol scientists, we are informed that young children emit far fewer aerosols of any kind due to less developed lungs. The corollary of that observation, is that old lungs might emit far greater concentrations of aerosols due to more collapsed bronchial tubules and other impacts of a lifetime of dust and disease. It is possible that the high contagion within seniors homes is due to:

  1. A very high emission of aerosols laden with particles of COVID-19 virus due to the infected lungs being old lungs.
  2. Dry air below 40% relative humidity allowing for endurance of suspended viral aerosols and thus conveyance throughout the building.

Entrance of COVID-19 into seniors care buildings could easily come from a passer-by on the sidewalk on a bone dry September afternoon through an open window (intended to 'ventilate' the building as though that is always a good thing), or easily as aerosols contained within the dry air of a food delivery truck that backs up to the sealed dock before opening its doors, or unknowingly from a caregiver. Then, because the air within the building is not regulated to be safely >40% relative humidity, the aerosols containing COVID-19 circulate to the room of a vulnerable elderly person who gets infected, builds up high infection levels, respires high levels of circulating COVID-19 aerosols such that even healthy young workers inhale a dose of aerosols sufficient for disease initiation.

Warn the public: "Avoid entering buildings having dry air below 40% relative humidity."

Any building of <40% relative humidity is potentially dangerous to be inside, due to possibly high concentrations of suspended COVID-19 aerosols.

If government fails to protect the public, via simple words! … then maybe the free press can communicate critical aerosol science to the public?

Grant Rigby
(food science educated)


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5-24 Nov 2020

Advert in: Boissevain Recorder (put free into all mailboxes in Souris, Hartney, Deloraine, Medora, Melita, Goodlands, Waskada, Napinka, Lauder, Carroll, Elgin), Killarney Guide, Baldur-Glenboro Gazette, Cartwright S Man Review, Carman Standard, Winkler Morden Voice, Neepawa Banner, Rivers Banner, Steinbach The Carillon, Dauphin Russell Roblin Swan River The Pas Parkland Shopper. Dec 2020 placed into Morris Emerson SE Journal, Treherne Somerset TheTimes, Beausejour Lac du Bonnet Clipper, Shoal Lake Birtle Hamiota Crossroads, and Jan 2021 placed into Flin Flon Reminder, Thompson Citizen, Virden EmpireAdvance, with the message "Boil a kettle of steam before humans enter."

Nov 1 letter and this advert are sent by email and paper letter to all governing PC party MLA's in Manitoba, who could each communicate this virus aerosol science to the Health Minister (who may be shielded by staff from all non-medical science originating solutions at this time of pandemic emergency).

>40% Humidity
drops Covids?

"If the relative humidity of indoor air
is below 40%, the particles emitted
by infected people absorb less water,
remain lighter, fly further through the
room and are more likely to be inhaled
by healthy people. Dry air also makes
the mucous membranes in our noses
dry and more permeable to viruses."

https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0302

COVID-19 contagion is lower
in the world's humid regions.

So, I wrote Health Ministers/Officers:
"Via licensing, require all public
places be > 50% RH. Suggest water
on low simmer to humidify until con-
densation on windows, and isolate
forced air heat to basements to re-
duce aerosols circulation in homes."

Discussion: www.GrantRigby.ca


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1 Nov 2020

To:
Agrometeorology, Food Science, Dean and Research, Agriculture Food, U. Manitoba
Biosystems Engineering, University Manitoba
Rady Faculty Health Sciences, Research, Internal Medicine, UM
Doctors Manitoba, College of Physicians & Surgeons, Medical Service Foundation
Manitoba Medical Officers of Health, Shared Health Manitoba, Minister of Health
Saskatchewan Health
Infectious Diseases, U Alberta
Public Health Agency Canada

COVID-19 aerosols science suggests: High humidity indoors, Kids can sing, Spit niqabs. And Mitts-on.

"Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 spreads more indoors at low humidity".
Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 20: 1856-1861. Ahlawat, A., Wiedensohler, A. and Mishra, S.K. (2020).
https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2020.06.0302 or https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0302 or https://www.svlw.ch/images/literatur/500%20Fachartikel/530_Luftfeuchte_Viren/
Leibniz_Institut_aaqr-20-06-covid-0302.pdf
"Humidity affects both the evaporation kinematics and particle growth. In dry indoor places i.e., less humidity (< 40% RH), the chances of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 are higher than that of humid places (i.e., > 90% RH). Based on earlier studies, a relative humidity of 40-60% was found to be optimal for human health in indoor places. Thus, it is extremely important to set a minimum relative humidity standard for indoor environments such as hospitals, offices and public transports for minimization of airborne spread of SARS-CoV-2."

A cursory search via scholar.google.com via keywords "humidity aerosols coronavirus COVID-19", does not find research negating the conclusions of this article. Although survival of COVID-19 in large water droplets is reported under high humidity conditions, that is irrelevant if our greatest objective now is to prevent the creation and endurance of infectious tiny aerosols conveying COVID-19.

THEREFORE, SUGGEST CONSIDER:
Via licensing, require all public places to maintain relative humidity above 50%, or if not measured then be high enough to visibly condense on cold windows.
  - include all work places, stores, restaurants, pubs, gyms, schools, hotels, apartment buildings, etc.
  - cardio exercising gyms, singing churches, political debating halls, alcohol pubs, street fights, to be above 80% relative humidity ?
  - humidity monitoring alarms, installed in driest corner and reporting to a central monitoring agency, could enable viral-pandemic-licensed operations.

Encourage all workers to pro-actively humidify their personal work spaces.

Suggest all persons avoid entering any building having low relative humidity, or indeed being downwind of others outdoors in low humidity afternoons.

Suggest in homes:
  - put a large pot of water on low simmer on the stove, to humidify the home until condensation forms on windows, every day this winter.
  - isolate forced air circulation to within basements, and rely on conduction through floor to heat upper floors, to reduce circulation of aerosols.

(Heating cold outside air lowers its "relative humidity", because warmer air can hold more water vapor than can cooler air. Thus when cool air is heated, the water saturation level in it becomes lower relative to the maximum water it could hold, so its "relative humidity" declines.)

OBSERVATIONS:
Newfoundland, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, SE Asia and central Africa are generally more humid regions, and have low COVID-19 contagion.

Navajo nation, Argentina, Iran and mid-continental peoples are often dry regions, and have high COVID-19 contagion.

Northern hemisphere peoples, with low relative humidity inside many heated buildings this cool October, all have high contagion.

Southern Saskatchewan with Regina, now has a lower active COVID-19 infection rate than northern Sask with Saskatoon. The north would have had greater cold and thus a greater temperature differential between the heated indoors and the dry early October outside air, and thus the relative humidity indoors would have dropped lower in the north, heightening the risk of enduring COVID-19 aerosols inside heated buildings.


PANDEMIC CONTROL - HYPOTHESIS:

If it is only the aerosolized COVID-19 virus that is of major epidemiological concern,

due to only that form of transmission delivering a dosage high enough into deep lungs for serious disease initiation in most persons,

then preventing viral aerosols from occurring or enduring might be a pragmatic objective,

achievable, as proposed by Ahlawat, Wiedensohler, and Mishra, (2020), via maintaining a high relative humidity ?


COVID-19 PANDEMIC RESEARCH - BROADENING OF SCOPE:
The world has known since August, that ensuring adequate relative humidity would limit COVID-19 contagion, yet that knowledge has not yet been communicated to our public health authorities, nor to our public.

Medical students, and thus our public health officers, may not be educated in air humidity thermodynamics, nor perhaps in aerosols and meteorology. I therefore suggest we must broaden the sources of advice provided to public health authorities.

Within University of Manitoba, I suggest the opportunity for broadening that advice can be found within Agricultural and Food Sciences. Whereas the Faculty of Medicine has competency in human diseases after occurrence, and prevention via immunization only, Agriculture and Food has competency in the prevention of disease occurrence in plants and animals, and prevention of food-borne human diseases. Traditionally focused on bacterial and fungal pathogens, Agriculture and Food has competency to easily broaden its expertise into the prevention of viral transmissions, for the protection of human animals. For example, just as "low water activity" is used to control pathogens in food, and low relative humidity of air to prevent grain spoilage, so might "high relative humidity" become better understood to prevent viral aerosols.

"Low Exhaled Breath Droplet Formation May Explain Why Children are Poor SARS-CoV-2 Transmitters."
Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 20: 1513-1515. Riediker, M. and Morawska, L. (2020).
https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2020.06.0304 or at
https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0304
"A characteristic of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the few cases of severely affected children. They not only rarely get symptoms but also seem to be poor transmitters. We propose that this may be explained by the mechanism of breath droplet formation, which occur during the re-opening of collapsed terminal bronchioles. Children's lungs are still developing. Compared to adults they have few alveoli and terminal bronchioles, thus less sites of aerosol formation where virus-loaded lung lining liquid can get airborne. In addition, children have a lower respiratory minute volume and tend to have a lower viral load. These points, together with the fact that asymptomatic carriers release less aerosols than symptomatic carriers support the idea that children are indeed poor transmitters of the COVID-19 virus."

THEREFORE, SUGGEST CONSIDER:
Keep daycares and early elementary schools open ?

Allow young children to yell and sing ?

Somehow discourage yelling, huffing and puffing, exhale singing, by adults in crowds ?

If male vocal cords are worse than female for aerosol creation, and if older lungs with collapsed terminal bronchioles are worse than younger, then consider a discriminatory whisper order for old men !?


CONSIDER: Niqab lower face covering, loose hanging long cloth, as an alternative to tight chin masks ?
Loose bottom cloth masks, hanging down to the collar bone, but fitted close to the nose contour, could be suggested to the public as an option to ensure that respiratory droplets are directed downwards, yet inhalation is unimpeded.
This would minimize exhalation, within a tight chin fitted mask, being forced upwards around the eyes, fogging glasses, and spreading further than if all exhalation was directed downwards.
(I wonder if an original purpose, centuries ago, in some middle eastern societies, for the loose hanging cloth niqab, might have been to protect children from mothers' respiratory illnesses - just a wild guess?)


CONSIDER: Campaign: "Put the 'Mitts-On' for this Covid fight."
All could be required to wear loose gloves or mitts whenever touching public-owned surfaces, and advised to easily remove them before touching hands to one's own face. This would be an easy habit for all to learn. In many common situations, this is likely more effective, than the implicit recommendation of public health officers to not wear any hand coverings and instead touch common surfaces with bare hands, and all are expected to wash their hands. (Public health officers were likely thinking only of tight medical gloves when as a group they decided to advise the public to practice no protection via hand coverings.) But where can the public wash their hands after grabbing a handle in a city bus? Better to advise the simple physical barrier of an ordinary loose mitt to keep the hand clean.

Perhaps the natural biofilm of bacteria living on natural materials for mitts such as cotton or leather might also inactivate viruses? (Virus might attach to and attempt to infect whatever living cell it contacts ... and then micro insects and microorganisms would eventually consume the viruses as a food source within the living ecology).

Grant Rigby M.Sc.Food (long time ago)


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Advert in Killarney Guide Sept 11, 2020:

>40% Humidity drops Covids?

"If the relative humidity of indoor air is below 40%, the particles emitted by infected people absorb less water, remain lighter, fly further through the room and are more likely to be inhaled by healthy people. Dry air also makes the mucous membranes in our noses dry and more permeable to viruses."
https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0302

So, I have written Health Ministers:
"Order schools and retailers be >40% RH 24hrs/day. Encourage teachers and all workers to personally add humidity to their classrooms and work spaces, such as via binging personal humidifiers to work (even an old crock pot on simmer might suffice)... There appears to be less COVID-19 contagion in the world's humid communities."
www.GrantRigby.ca

Keep our noses wet?


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8 Sept 2020
To: Manitoba Ministers of Education and Health, and to all school superintendents.
Man Chambers Commerce, Retail Council, Business Council Manitoba, Economic Dev Wpg, Economic Dev Office GovMB,
BrandonMayor, ReginaMayor, SaskatoonCouncil, WinnipegMayorDepMayors
Canada's PM, Premiers, Health and Finance Ministers, First Nations

COVID-19 Germany India research: "Recommend >40% relative humidity in public buildings"

... therefore, I suggest our governments

Order all schools and retailers be >40% relative humidity 24hrs/day.

And encourage teachers, and all workers everywhere, to personally add humidity to their classrooms and work spaces, such as via binging personal humidifiers to work (even an old crock pot on simmer might suffice).

... based on research article:

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 spreads more indoors at low humidity.
Indian-German research team recommends at least 40 percent humidity in public buildings
https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-06-covid-0302

My observation: There appears to be less COVID-19 contagion in humid regions of the world, such as central Africa and SE Asia, yet more contagion where climate is dry or European influences have influenced urban design (eg. low humidity heated buildings).


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24 July 2020

COVID-19: "Pandemic Immune Retailer". Gas nozzels doorknobs share virus. Spit masks on city buses. Biological control in the wilds.

Touching of common surfaces by the public is the obvious viral contagion risk that has yet to be reduced - indeed it is ignored at gas service stations.

It is at gas stations where we are most vulnerable to imported COVID-19 from other regions, and then its untraceable fast spread in the community. Most persons I have observed at gas stations continue to grasp the gas nozzel with bare hands -- which is of the same consequence as would be shaking hands with strangers - nasal droplets on hands are deposited onto surfaces that are promptly touched by strangers who then touch their faces.

COVID-19 infected visitors from other provinces must first stop to fuel-up at gas stations, depositing virus particles there before getting to self-isolation destinations.

Motorcycle bikers out for pleasure excursion are also probable COVID spreaders between communities, unless they can also be compelled to never touch gas nozzels or door handles. Many confident persons, especially proud strong men, do not wish to show weakness via fearing the disease, so they recklessly touch all common surfaces with their bare hands, and never wash their hands immediately afterwards. The recommendations from chief public health officers are essentially ignored by nearly everyone as gas stations.

SUGGESTION:
Send to all retail gas stations a sticker sign with the message:
"Government of Manitoba expects all persons to avoid risk of contaminating the gas nozzle handle, by grasping it with a paper towel, and depositing the towel in the waste bin."

Manitoba Liquor Marts are exemplary of no-contact retail. All other should be advised to attempt to do similar, and those who have protocols in place will be allowed to remain open if COVID-19 increased in Manitoba and restrictions need to be again implemented.

Simply providing tissue paper for public use at every doorknob and door handle would reduce/eliminate risk of contact contagion from touching common surfaces. This is how we can build a "pandemic immune economy"
Industry would soon develop economical disposable hand towels of the ideal shape for convenient grasping of gas nozzels and door handles.

SUGGESTION:
Immediately develop criteria for retailers and service providers to earn "Pandemic Immune Retailer Certification", such as no-contact entry, merchandise selection, payment and exit, as well as virus-cleansed air. Retailers with such certification would be assured of continuity of operations should constraints again be implemented. Many would welcome and rise to that challenge.

SUGGESTION:
On city buses, require wearing at least a loose mask to catch spit from coughs, redirecting the cough airflow downwards close to ones' own body. Supply free face coverings during the first few weeks to all riders, as it is essential for the bus service to regain public confidence, or be discontinued.
On city buses, require wearing a hand covering when grabbing hand rails, to avoid depositing or picking up COVID-19 virus particles onto one's own hands. Supply free paper tissue for that purpose.

BIOLOGICAL COVID -19 CONTROL IN THE WILD
Note that COVID-19 is known to not endure at high infectious levels within wild ecology, such as on living biofilms of harmless bacteria. But that natural world is unfamiliar to the health officers with whom the worlds governments have entrusted decision-making, who universally advise frequent hand washing and sterilization as the only option for control. Because those officials have all been trained within medical institutions where sterility is the objective, their public suggestions never suggest a biological viral control option. But for the many ordinary situations in which the world's populations conduct daily existence, where hand washing after touching a common surface is not possible, the sterility of a hospital environment will never be achievable. So what i personally do, if unavoidably touching a common surface, is to immediately rub my hands on a living grass lawn to inoculate the biofilm on my hands with harmless bacteria --- to possibly inactivate pathogenic viruses which will attempt to attach to bacteria landed upon in the living biofilm, while other microorganisms and insects will consume the viral particles as a food source via digestion. A dusting with living soil be a similar alternative wherever hand washing is not available. This is how peoples of real world many of us work, such as horticultural workers, where hand washing is impossible, can achieve protection by preventing COVID-19 from ever enduring on our living biofilm coated hands and thus never surviving to subsequently get onto our faces or into our families back at home.

If your public health officers cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that wild biology might be an alternative protective mechanism wherever hand washing or sanitary wiping is not possible or not affordable, perhaps then others who have ecological biology awareness, such as within the Environment Dept, could provide public comment, such as via recommendations for COVID-19 viral control when hiking in wilderness areas.

Look closely into the world's epidemiology -- there is likely evidence that cultures which live within wild ecology (usually derogatorily called 'primitive'), where hand washing is rare, are not experiencing the rampant COVID-19 viral contagion seen in those cultures which are not immersed within wild ecology. It has been within the wealthy cities where wild ecology is most suppressed, where every door handle is of polished metal that does not allow wild ecology to thrive in living biofilms, yet on which COVID-19 virus will persist due to absence of wild bacterial biofilm - it is there, in those communities in the world where people think it is safe to touch polished metal door knobs in the false perception such publicly-shared contact surfaces being relatively sanitary of bacteria are also safely free of virus -- it is in those affluent communities that COVID-19 has been unexpectedly devastatingly contagious. The first victim in China was an ophthalmologist - one of the cleanest professions! - e should have been the last person in China to catch this viral disease, if the well-intentioned "be clean" dogma from public health officials was applicable for all of the world! Similar at the dentist's convention in BC - again one of the cleanest of professions, meeting in a modern spacious facility with lots of polished metal handrails - that COVID-19 found it easy to be contagious. Yet it might be less contagious among the ranchers of the world when they gather at primitive wooden auction marts, or among the bull riders at the rodeos (until they wash up and go to the bars and grab the polished metal door knobs on which they share virus with strangers, same as shaking hands with every and all strangers who has grabbed the same door handle that day.).

Wealthy Asia cities with wide usage of polished metal door handles same as here, have constrained the contagion only via ruthless denial of personal freedoms and totalitarian surveillance, at a level our libertarian etc traditions cannot allow. Testing, tracking and contact tracing can never succeed as well here. And our laws protect objection, and we remain openly vulnerable to deliberate terrorism attack should any rogue, or drug addicted, person decide to willfully spread the contagion.
One of our best remaining policy tools is via the licensing of retailers:
-- merely require retailers to enable entry and purchase via no hands contact, and viral-cleaned air to breath indoors (e.g. UV irradiate the air);

---and of highest immediate priority, mandate BY THIS MONDAY JULY 27 NOON! EVERYWHERE IN CANADA! that all gas stations provide disposable paper for every customer to use for touching the fuel nozzle.


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COVID-19 Virus - Biology to Prevent, Laws to Work, Pandemic-Immune-Economy

3 May 2020
To: Manitoba Premier, and the groups e consults:
  Man Chambers Commerce, Retail Council, Business Council Manitoba, Economic Dev Wpg
  Economic Dev Office, GovMB, MinHealth
To: Sask Premier, MinHealth
To: BrandonMayor, ReginaMayor, SaskatoonCouncil, WinnipegMayorDepMayors
To: Canada's Premiers, DPM, PM, Health, Finance, Justice Ministers

Pandemic-Immune-Economy

Door handles risk contaminating hands with COVID-19 virus from all prior persons hands.
  - So remove all public door handles and doorknobs.

Retail check-out conveyors and handling by clerks, risk prior shoppers viruses contaminating groceries.
  - So require shoppers to hold items to barcode scanners.

Public transit enables viral contagion.
  - So require loose mitts to keep hands clean, and masks or face shields to contain coughs.

Eliminating the obvious COVID-19 contagion risks, would CHEAPLY create a Pandemic-Immune-Economy.

"Manitoba's Pandemic and Economic Roadmap for Recovery" https://www.gov.mb.ca/COVID19/restoring/phase-one.html
- does not (yet) eliminate all obvious contagion risks.

Our culture is underpinned by some libertarian elements, tolerant of individual dissent, idiocy, ignorance and recklessness. We cannot suppress deviants nor quarantine or isolate innocent persons to the extent that Chinese/E.Asian culture can, so cannot expect the same success against COVID-19 and will thus likely never eradicate it in N.America, but might be able to coexist similar to coexisting with rabies. We must therefore be more rigorous within areas of government jurisdictions, such as absolute disallowance of any touch contact during retail commerce, achievable via retail licensing regulation.

We could also optimize use of living biological biofilms to quickly digest viruses, wherever continuous sanitation of contact surfaces to medical and food standards is not possible. Unpainted wooden handrails on which biology teeming with life can establish, might be smarter than polished metal handrails, in public parks for example.

Grant Rigby
M.Sc. Food Science
biological homestead grain farm and winery
Upper Pembina, Earth     204-534-7843


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27 April 2020
To: Manitoba Premier, and the groups e consults:
  Man Chambers Commerce, Retail Council, Business Council Manitoba, Economic Dev Wpg
  Economic Dev Office, GovMB, MinHealth
To: Sask Premier, MinHealth
To: BrandonMayor, ReginaMayor, SaskatoonCouncil, WinnipegMayorDepMayors
To: Canada's Premiers, DPM, PM, Health, Finance, Justice Ministers

COVID-19 eradication infrastructure: Add "forearmdles" or remove handles. "Wear mitts law". New health care tax. Not more roads.

1. Immediately enforce mischief/ negligence/ assault/ terrorism laws by requiring covering ones' hand whenever grabbing an existing public doorknob, handle or handrail.

2. Change handles to "forearmdles:
  - on the news recently was shown an attachment onto the handle of a grocery store food display cooler, allowing the shopper to use forearm to open the cooler door (Denmark?).
To prevent:
  - virus which may be on the shopper's hand from contaminating the cooler door handle for the next person;
  - virus which may be on the cooler door handle from a prior person's hand or coughing spit, from contaminating the shopper's hand.

3. Eventually remove all public grab/twist doorknobs, handles and handrails, to eliminate future similar viral epidemic risks in Canada.


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25 April 2020
To: Canada's Health and Finance Ministers, Premiers, DPM, PM, Mayors Brandon Winnipeg

COVID-19 Infrastructure investment to end pandemic risks: Public doorknobs and handrails removal.
Not more empty highways. Not old crowded public transit. Consider advanced vehicles.

Our governments are considering massive "infrastructure investments" to attempt to re-ignite the economy.

This last gasp of public funding will be our last opportunity to prevent imminent economic collapse into a dark depression, our last opportunity to rectify all of the public infrastructure errors that have enabled virus particles to endure and contaminate our hands which we then touch to our faces for infection.

Infrastructure investment should serve to defeat the fears public health agencies have honestly instilled in us - the fear of using our hands for the economy, the fear of being close to others in the economy.

Assume
  - that humanity might fail to find a vaccine,
  - that testing to identify all infected may never be possible,
  - that forced isolation will not endure as acceptable infringement of liberties,
  - that terrorism shall return, possibly triggered by anger from climate change caused famines, using virus as the weapon of fear.

Suggestion:
Remove every doorknob, handle and railing that the public might touch:
- such as by changing all door hinges so that one's foot or knee can kick open every door.

- No public place, no public transit, no retail store, should be allowed to require the public to touch any common surface with their hands.

Consider advanced people transit:
- example: perhaps personal electric vehicles, coordinating into a unified train when on transit right-of-ways, then dispersing as clean emission cars that can drive inside retail malls, to retain physical isolation yet full commercial interaction and clean mobility freedom.

Infrastructure investment should ensure COVID-19 can be eradicated from Canada, and similar viruses never again become epidemic.

Hand washing vs Hand covering?
Yes everyone inside medical institutions and seniors homes needs to keep washing hands. Theirs is a unique peculiar world, foreign from nature, that enables extreme bacterial sanitation. Medical officers who advise us to simply wash our hands, were melded there.

The rest of us must continually interact in a wide economy within nature, where there will never be hand washing stations on both sides of grasping a door knob, so we must find other ways to firstly prevent the virus particle from ever getting onto our hands
  - such as laws to prohibit constructing any new common touch surfaces,
  - such as laws requiring shielding hands whenever grabbing existing common surfaces, eg. mandating mitts-on for public door knobs.


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24 April 2020
To: Canada's Health and Justice Ministers, Premiers, DPM, PM, Brandon and Winnipeg mayors

COVID-19 re-opening error: Mitts-on for doorknobs omitted. Pandemic preventable via mitts, spit masks, biofilm ecology.

Suggestions:

Mandate wearing a loose mitt, by all who touch a public surface, with a carrying bag to contain the mitts.

Mandate spit-catching-masks for all within 2 meters, especially within public transit and when working close together.

If hand coverings are loose, such as typical mitts or loose gloves, then it is easy to remove them without touching the virus-contaminated outside surface with bare fingers, and that prevents the virus from ever getting onto our hands. After grabbing a public door knob, the loose mitt can be dropped off the hand into a bag to prevent the outside surface of the mitt from touching anything else.

Indeed, (hypothesis) if the mitts or loose gloves are of biological material such as leather, cotton, wool, hemp, paper, then a bacterial etc biofilm will live on the surface and the virus will likely attach to it and the biofilm ecology digest the virus. (Whereas on polished steel or hard plastic doorknobs there is negligible living biofilm to inactivate viruses -- our modern sanitary surfaces thus enable sub-life particles such as viruses to endure!)

Although there is negligible spitting when a person is only breathing without talking or coughing, it is unpredictable when a person might be required to cough or shout, thus a spit-catching or downward-spit-deflecting cloth/mask/shield is necessary to prevent direct contagion via spit.

Hypothesis:
If, on March 13 my letter in WpgFreePress had called for us all to wear "loose mitts" instead of "any gloves",

and if our governments then soon required all to use a hand covering when touching a public surface such as doorknob, handle or rail,

then the most probable route of contagion via touching common public surfaces would have been prevented, many fewer infected, fewer died, and thousands of businesses need not have been shut down.

To attempt now to recover our economy, while still eradicating the virus, it is wise to prohibit bare hands touching common public surfaces.


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COVID-19
Assault Law. Mitts and niqabs. Work Safe Certified. Grocery Safety. Advise humidity, wet noses, nasal salt? Biofilms vs aseptic re virus endurance?

18 April 2020
To: Canada and Provinces Ministers of Justice, Health, Premiers, DPM, PM
20 April
To: Manitoba Shared Health, Saskatchewan Health COVID-19, Ontario Dep Chief Medical Officer
22 April
To: Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, Retail Council MB, Business Council of Manitoba, Economic Development Office, Economic Development Winnipeg

COVID-19 Laws:
  ASSAULT = Spitting talk (so wear niqab, mask, or say only "hi" "no" "yes").
  TERRORISM = Touching door knobs (so wear loose mitts).
  SOLD IF TOUCHED (Spoiled Merchandise)

For safely re-opening much of the economy, and for preventing future waves of the epidemic, three existing laws could merely be clarified/enforced.

I suggest the following be enforced only during the designated time and region of a viral epidemic, and only for extraordinary diseases of much greater lethality than normal influenza:

ASSAULT (or NEGLIGENCE?, or MISCHIEF?):
It is already illegal to spit onto other persons.
- Uttering more than the one-syllable soft non-spitting words "Hi", "No", "Yes", in close proximity within 2 meters, constitutes "spitting", because it risks causing foreseeable harm.

- Coughing can be unpredictable and uncontrollable, thus being within 2 meters minimum distance, if mouth is towards another person, constitutes risk of possible "spitting".

- So, wearing a cloth over the mouth (such as the lower face covering loose-bottom niqab), or any mask or face shield, intended to catch or deflect downwards any spit droplets when talking within 2 meters of another, would be evidence of intention to prevent assault.

TERRORISM (or NEGLIGENCE? or MISCHIEF?):
It is already illegal to place a potentially lethal contaminant onto a public surface.
- Given that all persons have reason now to presume that one's own bare hands might carry a lethal infectious contaminant, terror is brought upon the public if anyone's bare hands touch any surface that others might touch.

- Further, in touching a possibly contaminated public surface with our bare hands, and subsequently touching our faces or a surface within our cars or back within our homes before hand washing with soap is possible, we are aware that we might be causing infection of our family thus terrorizing them.

- So, putting on a loose mitt, to cover one's bare hand when touching a common public door knob, door handle or railing, would be evidence of intention to prevent terrorism.

- The outside of loose hand coverings such as mitts, easily removed without contaminating bare fingers with virus possibly on the mitt after touching a public surface, would typically never be touched to one's own face, and then the mitts typically safely placed inside a bag.

CONTRACT OF SALE:
It is established within the civil law of contract that if goods are damaged during inspection, by the carelessness of the potential purchaser, then the goods have been spoiled and are deemed sold, or of reduced value requiring compensation.

- Our hands, whether bare or covered, might now reasonably carry a lethal virus that contaminates merchandise if touched.
- The seller would no longer have confidence that the merchandise is safe to be sold, after someone has touched it, for the 4 days typically required for the virus to inactivate.

- Touched merchandise would thus be deemed sold to the careless person who touched it, or compensation must be paid as necessary to clean the merchandise, unless the merchandise is typically sanitized between customer inspections:

-- thus grocery and pharmacy items touched would be deemed purchased if touched, as those items cannot be sanitized and would come into contact with another purchaser;

-- thus expensive durable items such as automobiles and houses would not be deemed damaged if touched during inspection, because it is expected the dealer shall sanitize or 4 days time elapse before selling to another;

-- thus intermediary goods such as clothing which might be tried-on for fit, yet which cannot be sanitized, however which should be date-labelled and hung in the back room for 4 days after trying-on, could be compensated at eg 10% of its value if touched or otherwise according to retailer's policy.

- Some retailers might instead choose to equip every shopper with fresh disposable hand coverings and mouth spit catchers upon entry to the store, to prevent spoilage of goods from virus contamination.


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11 April, 2020
To: Canada's Labour and Health Ministers

"COVID-19 Work Safe License" to Re-Open. eg Faces shields, Cough sound surveillance, No doorknobs, No health compromised, Gloves, Humidity.

Any business that has been "Certified COVID-19 Work Safe and Customer Safe,

following inspection by a government authorized/regulated certification services body,

would be eligible to receive a free license to operate during COVID-19 epidemics.

Barbershop example:
pre-booked appointments only,
excludes any person with cardiovascular, lung or other ailment condition associated with COVID-19 vulnerability,
ten minute time spacing between appointments, no waiting room,
access direct from car parking, with two meter distancing from any other person,
automatic door opening - no doorknobs or handles or hand rails,
public health agency monitoring by video, sound, data (via smart phone etc technology),
customer identity (to enable tracking if exposed), forehead temperature, continuous monitoring for coughing sounds,
fresh disposable gloves on customer,
fresh disposable (take home) mouth and nose cloth mask on customer, to protect barber,
full face shield on barber, to protect customer and barber,
plastic sheet chair and customer covering,
full wash-down of chair and floor between customers,
relative humidity min 60%
etc.....such that customer and barber would always be confident that no COVID-19 virus particles could contaminate either person.

Any business, whether deemed essential or not, would be legally allowed to continue to operate if Certified COVID-19 Work Safe and Customer Safe.

There are many already established certification entities serving business, who could easily rapidly add this certification onto their offerings.


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9 April 2020
Advert in Killarney Guide

COVID-19 SAFETY

Shopper, worker, to wear niqab, loose cloth spit catcher.

Merchandise touched must be bought.

No check-out conveyor or counter.

Shopper scans items directly into a second cart.

Retail clerk prohibited from touching items, currency.

Handled squeegee to destroy virus, wearing loose

nitrile gloves, eye shield, cough guard, mosquito net.

Steam clean grocery carts.

Doorknobs and handrails removed.

High humidity mandated in all indoors.

Northern -make gloves, niqabs: 3/person/day.

Develop clothing expertise to work thru pandemics.

RV's motor homes for isolation.

HYPOTHESES:

Bacterial biofilms hold/inactivate/digest viruses?

Advise KCl and NaCl nutrition? Fe (hemoglobin)?

Send nasal salt sprayer to every household?

Remove allergy drying meds from retail sale?

Inoculate public with harmless sniffles virus?

Advise sleeping on side to keep one lung higher?

Drown the COVID-19 bottom lung with alcohol, salt?


www.GrantRigby.ca

Letters to Canada's health ministers and Man retail co-ops

- Sask Health, NfldLab Health, BoundaryCoop have read.

Retailers who provide safety will thrive!


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4 April 2020
To: Canada and Provinces Ministers of Health

COVID-19: Prohibit grocery   clerks touching groceries. Nasal salt sprays to all households. Remove retailer doorknobs.

Salts, chlorine anions, cations, in nose?
  Nasal salt sprays have been reported to prevent infection by the cold virus, so might prevent COVID-19 infection?
  - If valid, then...
MAKE NASAL SALT SPRAYING GADGETS AND MAIL TO EVERY HOUSEHOLD.

Retail Regulations:
  - PROHIBIT RETAIL CLERKS FROM TOUCHING MERCHANDISE.
  - PROHIBIT RETAIL CLERKS FROM TOUCHING CURRENCY.
  - INACTIVATE RETAIL COUNTER CONVEYORS, BLOCK-OFF RETAIL COUNTERS.
  - REMOVE HANDLES AND DOORKNOBS FROM GAS STATIONS.

Discussion in my following correspondence to several Co-op groceries:


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3 April 2020
To: Several retail cooperatives in Manitoba

COVID-19 on Co-op grocery conveyors, clerks hands, onto every item, to every household

In rural towns, it is the Co-op retail stores that will be the primary sites for COVID-19 contagion, unless ....

SUGGESTIONS:
- Presume that every person is a carrier of COVID-19, on hands and in tiny spit from talking.

- Therefore, prohibit checkout clerk from touching any item that a shopper has touched.
- Therefore, prohibit checkout clerk from touching any currency.

- disable the checkout counter conveyor belt, and shield-off the entire counter, or cover it with boxes of items for sale, so shopper cannot place any item on it.

- require shopper to hold each item up to the scanner for reading the bar code.

- provide shopper with a second grocery cart placed backwards in the checkout aisle, into which the shopper places each item after scanning.

- accept payment via debit card.

- payment via cash bills or coins is to be placed by shopper onto the only counter spot accessible, visually agreed between shopper and clerk as to the amount, and then scraped via tool into a bucket (as it is all contaminated and thus hazardous). No cash change is to be provided so the till is never opened, but rather a credit for the change is made to the member's account.
- change owed to non-members is either donated to local food bank, or a new membership account is initiated verbally using name, address, email or post mail address

- shopper then takes the second grocery cart out to own vehicle to unload items.

- using a long handled tool such as a car window squeegee, to minimize risk, staff sanitize the shoppers' side of the shield, the touch pads and currency placement spot as necessary, to ensure the next shopper's items are not contaminated by the preceding shopper.

- grocery cart handle is sanitized by staff after each use, or maybe covered with disposable paper sleeve.

- staff doing sanitation to wear at least safety glasses to shield eyes, with mosquito net over head to shoulders, as they will often be accidentally close to shoppers, and friendly chatter will occur exposing staff to risk of contagious spit droplets, and mosquitoes would induce face touching. Best gloves for sanitizing would be the loose semi-rigid heavy green nitrile gloves commonly used for handling pesticides, as they do not puncture or tear, and especially they are easily removed by dropping loosely off the hands, keeping the inside clean and thus the hands clean. Whereas tight-fitting gloves risk hand contamination every time one struggles to remove them by grabbing with the other bare hand fingers.

Only investment required is safety wear and squeegees and sanitizer buckets for the cart and checkout sanitizing staff. Bags and bagging staff are not required.

COVID on Co-op door handles infects community

SUGGESTION:   The outside door into all gas stores should remain wide open, or hands-free operated doors via electronic sensor, so the community does not infect itself with COVID-19 via touching their cooperative's door handle.

I noticed at Melita Coop gas station several days ago that staff diligently sanitized the door handle with alcohol/ammonia after every customer who touched it.
  - but that is dangerous for staff - may inadvertently touch the handle directly, or the wipe becomes dry and picks up active virus that then gets on hands etc

But I have not seen cleaning of the door handle at Killarney Coop gas station, where several of the public grab the handle with bare hand to open the door to get inside to pay.
  - After the first person having COVID touches it, all who follow will contaminate their hands and most will touch their face and then touch the handle into their own home and then also into own bathroom, before being able to soap/wash if off their hands.
  - Then the family will touch those door handles.
  - Then a family member will have serious illness from a contagion that nobody else should be near them when ill to avoid catching/spreading
  -- the responsible elderly will try to get to a rural area to live or die alone, as there is no treatment given the ventilators usually do not halt dying, to spare risking younger medical staff.

This is the failure of the simplistic public health instruction, that we should all merely wash our hands frequently -- because frequent washing is not possible. Co-op gas stations do not offer handwashing both inside after opening the door, and outside after opening the door.

Yes, leaving the door open, will make it chilly some days inside the gas station,
and yes there would be dust on the merchandize.
  - Most of the items for sale in gas stations are non-essentials which are contrary to public nutrition, which ought not be sold by coops in the first place, such as all of the high sugar content snack bars and candies -- so put these in the back and don't order any more, or allow the junk to sell down without risking staff exposure to virus by cleaning stock.
  - Yet some items are beneficial foods and should remain on open display and restocked, such as potato chips, dried meat, nutrition bars, eggs, milk, bagged produce, frozen dinners etc, as an essential service.
  - Find a safe way to re-offer take-out coffee service - as essential service for the addicted who get headaches during withdrawal
    - maybe staff could deliver ordered real foods items to the car, carried out in a tub from which the customer picks, paid in advance via debit only

Or change to only pay-at-the pump, no cash -- with full service so the public does not touch the gas nozzle handle, but public must insert or tap their own payment card to protect staff from contacting COVID from the card.

As is, coop staff seem to not be adequately protected.
  - Too many customers are inside the service station
    - the shelving with junk items interferes with 2 meter distancing - so get rid of most of it, if the public must go inside.

  - Staff walk from behind the safe counter, pass close beside the public when heading outside to serve fuel
    - maybe segregate staff - some stay outside all of the time, if the public must be allowed inside
    - outside staff could rest / warm-up in personal cars outside.

  - Cash transactions mean staff much touch COVID-19 on coins, and then give those coins to others in the public
    - could post a sign:
"no change provided -- change will be credited to member's account for payout annually".

 - Staff have no face guards to prevent them from touching their own faces
    - especially during mosquito season -- maybe a bug netting head covering would prevent both COVID-19 and west nile virus.

Bathroom doors also a problem - public must not touch the door handles! I have seen the men's room door left wide open at a truck stop.


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3 April 2020
To: all Ministers Health and Indigenous

COVID-19 Avoidance Hypotheses

ALLERGIES GOOD?
  Hay fever etc allergies cause the nose to be constantly runny. Those persons who endure runny mucous wet noses and teary eyes, might have the benefit of protection from viral infections, because the virus particles would be continually flushed out and never contact human cells.

If so, then the converse of having dry nasal passages as a result of some components in anti-allergy medications, would allow heightened susceptibility because the human cells would be more exposed to contact. Indeed, taking any typical cold and flu medication might render one of increased vulnerability to COVID-19 infection?
    - If valid, then
LIMIT SOME ALLERGY MEDICATIONS VIA PRESCRIPTION REQUIRED?
Prohibit pseudoephedrine etc.

COMMON HEAD COLD GOOD?
  Runny nose from the cold virus might impede infection by the COVID-19 virus?
    - If valid, then an extreme measure would be to
INOCULATE THE PUBLIC WITH A NASAL VIRUS? (annoying yet not lethal)

HUMIDITY GOOD?
  So far, the COVI-19 pandemic has advanced most in northern regions that have been creating low relative humidity indoors due to heating the air during winter.
  High relative humidity in homes was advised, last fall, by some chief public health officer, as being a very effective defense against influenza, especially if the flu shot fail to target the year's flu strain -- advising to elevate RH in our dry indoor winter homes. Perhaps reasonable to assume that high RH would also help guard against coronavirus -- Dry noses might have more exposed cells for viral infection, than would noses with a constantly moving film of water.
    - If valid, then
MANDATE ALL HABITATIONS TO HAVE HIGH RELATIVE HUMIDITY?

SALTS GOOD?
  Might be a benefit to having high salt content in the water film in the nose -- some salts might have lethality against viruses, such as maybe the chlorine anion? If sea salt is optimum, then epidemiology would reveal lower COVID-19 in ocean workers.
    - If valid, then
ADVISE SALT NUTRITION - potassium chloride with sodium chloride for K:Na balance ?

BIOFILMS GOOD?
The first cities suffering greatly the pandemic have been generally prosperous societies, with much modern sanitation limiting the wild microflora that in nature had covered everything in the wild. Recent studies on the survival of COVID-19 on surfaces revealed that it survived longer on smooth stainless steel and plastics. And, no public health officer warns against touching biological surfaces such as the grass on which spit droplets would have also fallen. Does this mean that the virus might be more rapidly inactivated on surfaces which are teaming with diverse microbial flora, than on sterile surfaces?

It seems likely that any virus particle would attempt to attach/penetrate into any living cell onto which it landed, but only succeed in converting that cell to virus reproduction if the genetic code it inserted successfully dove-tails with the RNA/DNA of the host cell. Thus if a spit containing human-specific virus physically lands on a biofilm scum of living micro-organisms, the virus particles might adhere to the microbes and all eventually be deactivated.

Animals and insects eat viruses and microorganisms comprising the biofilms on the larger plant and animal foods we can see. Most eaten viruses are likely inactivated by HCl acid in the stomach for digestion into component nutrients. In the microbial world there are likely hungry microbes similarly living via consuming virus as their food source.

Might this mean that our vulnerability to COVID-19 pandemic, in our modern world especially, results from the manufactured smooth surfaces that are designed to be inhospitable to biofilms of teeming microbial diversity? The polished stainless steel door knob has no microflora on it to inactivate the virus placed on it via human spit, resulting in the virus enduring as infectious for the next human who touches the door knob and then touches h's nose.

Watch the world epidemiology to discern where the pandemic has been slower. (Indeed it might already reveal a conclusion.)

  - If human populations living in conditions where there are no commonly touched surfaces which are void of biofilms, where there are no polished door knobs, handrails, smooth countertops on which we know COVID-19 has long life....... if such communities, of equivalent social distancing as populations in the 'modern' world, do not have equivalent rates of high contagion as happening in wealthy Milan and NewYork with their polished surfaces devoid of life, then perhaps it is the absence of living microbial biofilm on common-touched surfaces that has created the pandemic pathway ?
    - If valid, then
ORDER REMOVAL OF DOOR KNOBS AND HANDRAILS FROM PUBLIC PLACES?
  to eliminate the risk of COVID-19 being transmitted via common hand-touched surfaces.

SIDE SLEEPING GOOD?
  If COVID-19 infected, sleeping on ones side might keep the top lung clear of the virus, due to gravity draining heavy phlegm down the lower side of the trachea.
  - so why are patients on respirators all lying flat on their backs?
Maybe sleep lying down on one side, or on a 45 degree slope, during the illness, to allow longer functional breathing via the top lung to gain time enabling an antibody response to the virus, before asphyxiation from loss of both lungs.
    - If valid, then
ADVISE SLEEPING ON ONE SIDE?

ONE LUNG DROWNING TREATMENT?
  Perhaps deliberate drowning of the lower side lung, with solutions antagonistic to the virus, such as with chlorine salts or alcohols etc, inducing cough reflex or inverting the patient to un-drown the treated lung (probably a standard treatment I have never heard about)


OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY ORDERS:
  Same as steel-toed boots, hardhats, safety glasses, etc have been deemed essential for worker safety against know hazards.

-RETAIL CLERKS TO WEAR CLEAR SHIELDS OVER EYES, MOSQUITO NETTING OVER HEAD
    -for protection from virus in cough droplets, and to prevent touching face with hands.

-CLERKS PROHIBITED FROM TOUCHING SHOPPERS' CHOSEN MERCHANDISE
    - Shoppers to hold items up to the barcode scanner.

-CLOTH NIQABS, SCARF BANDANAS OVER THE MOUTH, TO CATCH COUGHING SPIT -- MANDATORY IN PUBLIC
  - perhaps this is why the niqab was invented, to prevent viral epidemics?
    - as the mayor of Los Angeles has now ordered its 4 million citizens!



(On April 3, the US Centers for Disease Control advised wearing cloth mouth/nose coverings "to help people who may have the virus but do not know it from transmitting it to others". On April 6, the Gov of Canada also advised to wear non-medical masks, in tandem with social distancing measures, to "reduce the chance of your respiratory droplets coming into contact with others or landing on surfaces ... it seems a sensible thing to do".)


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17 March 2020
To: Canada and Provinces Ministers of Health

Might the niqab lower face cloth prevent COVID-19 epidemic?

Cloth coverings of the lower face, open to the bottom such as the niqab, would obviously deflect downwards the virus-containing droplets from coughs, and thus prevent those droplets from traveling laterally through the air onto nearby persons.

Suggest Quebec announce exemption of the lower-face-covering niqab, from enforcement of the law regarding wearing religious symbols in public, so nobody hesitates to use any convenient garment for the purpose of preventing COVID-19 spread via coughs.

(Later, consideration might be given to amending the religious symbols legislation to exempt lower face garments such as the niqab for epidemic prevention, but possibly add eye coverings often used to conceal identity and intentions such as mirrored dark sunglasses.)


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16 March 2020
To: Assembly of First Nations, all Health Ministers

Gloves-On to work thru COVID-19, made by and for First Nations, locally fresh daily!

Winnipeg Free Press published my letter advising all to wear gloves in public to keep hands clean of viruses - attached (and in email below).

Beside it is a letter observing that some First Nations homes do not have clean water to wash hands, yet public health agencies advise us to wash hands often.

So, make gloves!
    I suggest federal government could provide equipment such as modern sewing machines, and a supply of biodegradable fabric, to First Nations workers cooperatives, to commence textile enterprises, initially for making gloves to help guard against risk of COVID-19 epidemics.

The target could be to supply 3 new pairs of cloth gloves daily to every resident of a First Nation community, with government of Canada paying for costs and wages until the end of the epidemic risk. Gloves would help persons avoid contaminating the skin of their hands with viruses when touching public surfaces, and thus avoid contaminating the nose when touching with bare hands, and thus avoid respiratory viral infection.

A cloth mouth/nose shield might also be designed and made locally, perhaps open to the bottom, for the sole purpose of deflecting downwards the virus-containing droplets in the coughs of those infected. (Perhaps similar to the lower face-covering Muslim niqab.)

If Canadian-grown fibers such as hemp and maybe linen or paper are to be included in the fabric, then an expedited federal/provincial "AgAction" funding program might assist with immediate access to textile manufacturing equipment:
https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/food-and-ag-processing/ag-action-manitoba-capital-assets-and-equipment.html

The First Nations workers cooperatives might then undertake other textile ventures as they may decide.

USA and likely Canada are predicted to enter economic recession due to consumers and workers staying home because they are so advised and now also afraid to go out and touch anything in public with their hands for fear of contracting an illness.

Maybe, out of necessity due to poor household water quality negating hand-washing for epidemic prevention, those First Nations could develop expertise in personal protection from viruses by utilizing clothing, enabling their working through pandemics, as leadership example to re-invigorate our economy.


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13 March 2020
(To the public)

Winnipeg Free Press, page A6,
  under editorial "A most unwelcome visitor (first case of COVID-19) has arrived"
    under "COVID-19 concerns", second letter:

  "Like Victorian-era upper classes, perhaps we should all wear gloves when shaking hands, touching public doorknobs, handrails, currency, debit machines, etc., to keep our hands inside gloves clean of the viruses possibly on public surfaces. We would learn to never touch our faces with the dirty outside of our gloves, and thus prevent that route of infection.
  Any gloves - detergent washable, microwave sterilizable, or disposable - might aid us in preventing a local epidemic.
Grant Rigby, Killarney


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9 March 2020
To: all Ministers Health & Finance, Premiers, PM, DepPM

CoVid 19: Advise WEAR GLOVES. Infect Executives now.

Advise public to wear gloves whenever touching public surfaces, such as door knobs, currency, debit machines.

- Because it is droplets on surfaces that are most likely to contain the virus, and infection route is via contaminated hands then touching nose or eye.

- People will readily learn that the outside of the glove is the CoVid contaminated surface, and thus to never touch face with a glove.

- Gloves better for the economy, and perhaps more effective than relying on hand washing which are re-contaminated upon touching a public surface
  -- hands are now useless in public for our economy, as many will fear to touch all public surfaces.

- TV News videos have shown people in public places wearing breathing masks, yet everyone was seen touching handrails with unprotected hands!

HASTEN IMMUNE LEADERSHIP:
  - All enterprises should be encouraged to operate continuously through the epidemic, because the economy is essential for availability of supplies to ensure the vulnerable have best chance of successful treatment to survive the pandemic, and also to guard against all other potential threats.

- Apparently, most healthy middle-aged persons are likely to have a mild illness, with the result of then becoming immune.

- Government could offer to match the salary, and thus double it, for key executives who both volunteer and are selected, to be inoculated and quarantined, until fully recovered and thus immune. Limit the assistance to 1 per 100 persons in the business, to nobody having young children (in case inoculation kills), and to a maximum of $3000/week.

- Purpose is to ensure continuity, instead of managers all become ill at once, especially given many senior managers are also older persons more likely to be severely ill.


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25 January 2020
To: Provinces and Canada Ministers Health & Finance

Coronavirus Quarantines - use RVs motor homes. (and Health Care Funding proposal)

Suggest considering using RVs (recreational vehicles) / motorhomes / camper vans as an option for comfortably housing persons who may have contacted an infectious disease that might otherwise lead to an epidemic.

Announce possible interest to lease or purchase motor homes, new or used, motorized or pull-type trailer, requesting descriptions and offers.
Let social media aid informing owners of RVs.

The public would also realize they could self-quarantine within an RV that perhaps a neighbour has, to promptly protect their own family at first suspected symptoms.

FUTURE:
RVs parked on private home driveways might also become a regular feature of the public health care system, for example for those who require non-acute care and for those who wish to die near home. Cell phone cameras would aid monitoring many patients from central nursing.

One advantage is that transport into hospital for acute care is readily facilitated, driven by the patient or friend as an option.

In addition to flexibly rapidly increasing system capacity, there might also be cost savings to using RVs/motorhomes.

Redesigning of RV models specialized for health care would occur, to lower cost and enable better patient care and efficient follow-up sanitation.

Grant Rigby
M.Sc. Food Science