We have gone cleanliness mad!

[Workingman]

I have just read an article about a trial using robots to sanitise Leeds city centre and then the airport, and another to sterilise shopping trolleys.

Yeah, why not! And when they have finished they can go to the parks and clean the grass and the trees and then go off to the beaches to clean the sand.

Covid-19 is a barsteward, no doubts about that, but the simplest and best ways to stay safe are to wear a mask (probably), keep your distance and wash your hands, especially before touching your face, eyes, nose and mouth.

We cannot sanitise, sterilise and antisepticise the whole planet, and we shouldn't even try. Never mind the cost, it all smacks of being seen to be doing something, and there is a danger that it will make us feel safer (when we are not) - then we drop our guard.

Many of us are already daft enough to try to keep our homes operating theatre sterile - impossible and unnecessary - but this is even dafter.

[cromwell]

Indeed. We have a woman down the street who is obsessive. I regularly see her with a dustpan and hand brush sweeping her (spotless) drive.
We can't sterlilise everything and nor should we try.

[Workingman]

Perhaps I should not have mentioned household cleaning ....!

My main problem is with this trying to keep us Covid free. So the streets and airport are cleaned in a general way, but what about bus shelters, handrails in shopping centres, shop counters, money etc? And how often are they done? Daily - waste of time. Hourly - not much better than daily. After every use or on a rolling programme - impractical.

Then there are the chemicals used - are they safe? They are in a liquid solution so do they evaporate for us to breathe in or will they develop into 'crystals' like salt when the water evaporates? Will they then be washed into the drains, to streams, rivers, and on to the sea?

And how much are these technological 'solutions' costing us? And what happened to us taking steps to look after ourselves? We really must stop this nonsense of others looking after us 24/7.

[Suff]

I've totally given up. I completely ignore every single bit of "advice" and only comply with anything which is totally mandatory.

Nothing is being done sensibly anywhere and they are all a bunch of wasters, in every country. So I do what seems sensible to me and comply when I must.

The rest of it? Waffle. Honestly what did they expect to happen when they unlocked with a case rate above Zero.

For those of us who are discerning, the numbers are just above where they were in late lockdown and, as I understand it, the vast majority of these new cases are in younger people who develop relatively few symptoms and we only know about them because we are doing intense testing around any reported cases. During the high levels of cases these people would never have been looked at.