To get rid of viruses, soap actually works better than hand sanitiser 🧼 wash your hands
viruses • chemistry
Basically, a virus is a big self-assembled bunch of proteins and lipids. The fatty lipid bilayer is what holds the whole thing together.
Soap easily dissolves those lipids, making the whole thing fall apart and killing the virus.
The alcohol in hand sanitiser does the same thing, but not as well. Any antibacterial compounds don't touch viruses at all, so don't waste your time or money. It's basically just expensive soap.
⛓️ source link • lots more info on soap and viruses
thank you, I won' t read the long thread but this was interesting nonetheless
Bacteria
Also super important to remeber that anti-bacterial stuff is actually whack as fuck and kills freindly bacteria an helps malicious bacteria get stronger.
Bacteria
@Chickiepup Oh totally. If it kills 99.99% of bacteria then congratulations, in a few hours you'll have the same amount of bacteria again and won't be able to kill them this time!
Bacteria
Broke: Bacteria bad
Woke: Bacteria is good for soil
Bespoke: GET THAT GOOD BACCA ALL UP IN ME M8
Bacteria
@Chickiepup @InvaderXan there are about as many bacterial cells in our body as human cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#Relative_numbers
Bacteria
@uint8_t @Chickiepup @InvaderXan More bacteria cells
viruses • chemistry
@InvaderXan aaaaaaah.
i thought it was a size / time thing
viruses • chemistry
@meena Apparently not? I just thought this was interesting. It's one of those things I didn't realise till I read about it, but then I was like, yeah, that makes perfect sense
viruses • chemistry
@InvaderXan Also, the main purpose of washing your hands isn't to *kill* viruses and bacteria; it's mainly to remove them from your body. Soap happens to kill certain classes of things quite well, as you say, but that's an unexpected benefit
Hand sanitizer has to kill everything. Soap doesn't need to: as long as the stuff is off your body, you've accomplished your goal. In high risk environments people wash AND sanitize; washing removes most, sani kills the rest.
⛓️ source link • lots more info on soap and viruses
But I'm just paraphrasing someone else right now. Here's a twitter link to a (long!) thread written by a chemistry prof, all about how and why soap kills viruses. It's worth reading, even if it does get a bit technical!
https://twitter.com/PalliThordarson/status/1236549305189597189