Question about Maasdam buffet

[luv2travel06]

Sheila,

...what I don't like doing is handling dinner menu. If there is noro on a ship, I read the menu in advance, decide what I want and don't touch the menu in the dining room. Just my personal 'idiosyncrasy'. :)

 

We take our own personal size (2oz) bottles of hand cleaner with us to dinner. When we are done with the menu we discreetly sanitize our hands before dinner.

 

We do the same thing in any restaurant we go to on land.

 

But we have never been on a ship when norovirus was rampant. We might go with your plan then.

 

Call me paranoid, but I won't touch a magazine in a doctor's office or any other waiting room. :eek:

[SwissMyst]

We take our own personal size (2oz) bottles of hand cleaner with us to dinner. When we are done with the menu we discreetly sanitize our hands before dinner.

 

We do the same thing in any restaurant we go to on land.

 

But we have never been on a ship when norovirus was rampant. We might go with your plan then.

 

Call me paranoid, but I won't touch a magazine in a doctor's office or any other waiting room. :eek:

 

One still have to get contaminated fingers into ones' own system somehow to actually become infected.

 

So just touching a contaminated object is only one part, and the most benign part, of the equation. It is the inadvertent touching of eyes, mouth or nose later with those contaminated hands that sets off the self-innoculation for the virus to enter and thrive in one's body.

 

The viruses do not crawl up one's hands and into one's mucous membranes on little tiny legs. Even a sneeze that puts virus into the air to be breathed by those in close range is not a very certain infection route either.

 

Just touching contaminated objects remains a weak link in all of this, particularly if Purell and wipes only eliminate bacteria and not viruses anyway and the one you want to avoid is the virus.

 

So "superstitious" might be a better description than paranoid. But no one is scoffing at the placebo effect either - even WSJ today weighed on the benefits of placebo. If we think we are doing something for ourselves, study after study now shows this "works" too.

 

Seems it keeps boiling down to: wash your hands well with soap and water to reduce both bacteria and viruses and 24/7 keep them out of your mouth, nose and eyes. We should probably all go around with those cone-shaped dog collars or our hands bound close to our chest --- which is exactly what they did to some cold study subjects to ensure there was no cross-contamination with self-inocculation by non-study bugs.

 

See if your library can get a copy and this would be a good one to stock in all HAL libraries: http://www.amazon.com/Achoo-Interesting-Youll-About-Mysterious/dp/1553374517