The Janitors' Closet

Fight the flu

Ran across a good summary from Diversey on how to protect from the flu, in Building Services Management's e-newsletter.

"People already infected with influenza can transmit the disease to others starting a day before the infected person shows symptoms and continuing for approximately 7 days after they show symptoms. Influenza viruses are spread through droplets that carry the virus as a result of a cough or sneeze. The virus can live on surfaces for up to several days. A single sneeze can release 40,000 droplets, which can travel through the air and be inhaled or swallowed by others. Droplets can also settle on surfaces, where people can pick the virus up on their hands and by touching their mouth, nose, or eyes, become infected."

I particularly appreciate the stress placed in the above on the virus being able to live on surfaces for several days.  Many janitorial firms stress restroom disinfection (or at least "cleaning"); somewhat fewer use effective procedures, and chemicals, to sanitize "touchpoints", the door jambs, light switches and phone hand sets that folks touch all day long.  And an office full of people, some contagious, is a good place to get sick:

"If you get influenza, your doctor may prescribe antiviral drugs to reduce the severity of your illness. Commonly touched surfaces (door handles, light switches, elevator buttons, keyboards, phone, etc.) should be disinfected regularly or when visibly soiled."  Comes close to taking the words out of my operations manual.  We sanitize touchpoints always, but really stress them during flu season. 

The summary also stresses Alpha HP, the hydrogen peroxide solution we use, together with microfiber wipes, on touchpoints, and Virex 256, our disinfectant of choice for restrooms and lunchrooms.  Finally, to cover all bases, it repeats what Mom used to stress:

"Get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, be physically active, manage stress, and drink plenty of fluids."  Chicken soup, as well.  And I like a good murder mystery.

Related articles

A "fitter" swine flu virus

Cleaning to prevent whooping cough

So now law school is cheaper....

Having trouble getting my head around this one.  Down the road in Tucson, the University of Arizona has announced a tuition cut for students in its law school; this less than a week after the U of A and Arizona State University (my alma mater) announced tuition hikes for everyone else.

The stated reason is a marked drop in law school registrations at the U of A.  The reason for the drop in registrations is the high unemployment rate among their recent grads (11% and counting).  As a rule, high unemployment in a given skill category would seem to indicate the existence of more folks looking for jobs in that category than there are jobs available.  The market signals an excess of job seekers by either lowering pay for those jobs, or hiring fewer of them.  As pay decreases, or jobs cannot be found, fewer folks go into that line of work.  It's called "supply and demand".

How will the tuition cut be paid for?  "...UA will be able to reduce tuition by bringing in new revenue through proposed master's programs for non-legal majors. Some existing programs also will be expanded to more students, including a juris doctorate for attorneys from outside the United States."  On the other hand, pretty much all public university education around here is paid for by a mix of tuition and state subsidies.  So additional students, or programs, cost more than they bring in via tuition.

Nothing mentioned in the article about cost cutting at the law school, so as to be able to offset the lower tuition, so we can assume that the lower tution income to the school will need to be offset by raising the amount the state kicks in.  That would be my tax dollars.  Or, perhaps, a part of the tuition increase to everyone else is earmarked to subsidize the law students.

Surely, society would not want to risk a shortage of lawyers.

Not enough store stockers?

Caught a Bloomberg article on Wal-mart customers complaining about items not being available, due to too-slow stocking of store shelves.  Wal-mart employment is down, during the recent recession (and "recovery") even though number of stores is up.

An area the article does not explore is whether Wal-mart is experiencing problems finding folks to hire.  We keep seeing figures about large number of unemployed folks, all of whom really want to find a job.
While unemployment is slowly falling, most if not all of that drop in unemployment is due to people leaving the labor force.  The labor force participation rate is down about three points, from 66% (and a fraction) to 63%, since the start of the downturn.  The fall in unemployment pretty much matches the number of workers who have decided to no longer be workers.

Further, if there were many more folks aggressively looking for jobs than there arejobs, we would see salaries falling, as people "bid down" wages.  Not happening.  In my own little slice of Heaven, I see no more people looking for work than usual, and no more than usual wage competition.  I do, however, see the occasional individual asking me to take down his name, as having applied for a job - though he doesn't want to be hired.

In The Redistribution Recession, Casey Mulligan quantifies what many of us have suspected: the recent expanding of benefits to the unemployed (both government programs like 96 weeks of unemployment insurance, expanded food stamp availability, rent assistance; and private "benefits" like easier debt and mortgage forgiveness if one has no job) has created a large group of people who find it possible to live passably while not working.  With a significant reduction in the number of our people who work, but no reduction in the number of people who consume, we're looking at a much less productive economy, and a poorer life for us all.  Which will continue until we've the political and societal will to end those benefits.  And the longer we wait, the less fit those folks will be for productive work.

An old curse runs, "May you live in interesting times".

 

Cleaning to prevent whooping cough

America has recently seen a resurgence of whooping cough (pertussis), a scourge of western societies until the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) vaccine was developed.  A good Cleanlink article by Kassendra Kania, emphasis thorough touch-point disinfection:

"To kill whooping cough bacteria as well as cold and flu viruses, BSCs should use an EPA-registered, hospital-grade disinfectant with a kill claim for influenza A and B. Cleaning protocols for preventing the spread of whooping cough will be the same as those used during cold and flu season.  “You need to spray the surface and thoroughly wet it. If it starts to dry out in 10 minutes, you should respray it,” says John Thomas, sales manager and healthcare specialist for Philip Rosenau Co., Warminster, Pa."

We've used a Diversey hospital grade, quaternary ammonia based disinfectant for years, in restrooms, lunchrooms, and medical facilities generally; we've trained our folks on proper dwell time.  We also take to heart the article's emphasis on soil removal; you don't want to give the critters a place to hide.  We first use a hydrogen peroxide based cleaner/sanitizer, on a disposable wipe, to clean surfaces and limit cross-contamination, thus getting a fair pathogen kill along with soil removal, prior to disinfection.  We figure the disinfectant finishes the job.

The article also mentions proper A/C filters, to limit airborne pathogens.  We add to that HEPA filtration on our vacuums (we vacuum both carpet and tile) for the same reason: catch the germs before they get airborne, and inhaled.

Should you follow the media, however, the primary reason for the current resurgence of whooping cough, and a number of other communicable diseases thought only a few years ago to be irradicated in modern societies, is what I'd term superstitious parents refusing to vaccinate their children.  For all of the media hoopla about the dangers of various vaccines (autism is the most common claim), there is no scientifice evidence for any such danger.  In many of our more affluent communities (think Marin County, California), vaccination rates have fallen below the 90 to 95% threshold needed to maintain "herd immunity".

Curiously, the major outbreak in Arizona of late has been in Colorado City, a tiny farming community along the Utah border in the Arizona Strip, the inaccessible territory north and west of the Colorado River and its Grand Caynon.  (Some areas you cannot get to from the rest of Arizona.  My first non-dishwasher job was for the Photogrammetry and Mapping Division of the Arizona Highway Department; we were plotting a 20 mile stretch of four lane highway across the corner of Arizona between LA and Las Vegas.  We had to send our results to the Arizona Highway Department at an address in Utah.)

Colorado City used to be called Short Creek.  It was (and still is) the habitation of a fundamentalist offshoot of the LDS Church, practicing polygamy.  Back in the '50s, Arizona Governor Howard Pyle led a DPS raid into the area; convicted a bunch of husbands of having more than the usual number of wives, and re-distributed scores of children to more "main stream" families in the Mesa area.  The convictions were eventually overturned; husbands, children and wives (multiple) were reunited, mostly.  The state has been a bit hands-off ever since.

But - to get back to vaccinations.  The recent outbreaks in Colorado City (assumed to be due to aversion to vaccinations) are in a community at the other end of several spectrums from mostly politically liberal, northern California communities.  Fascinating how irrational, superstitious behavior lurks on both fringes.