How awesome is norovirus?

[rmd]

Even more awesome than that. Just in time for Arisia and January in general (apparently, January is PEAK NOROVIRUS TIME), Carl Zimmer writes about Noro in NatGeo.

Comments

[entrope.livejournal.com]

GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! But yet, that article was completely fascinating. Well-timed link!

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

My favorite comment:

"I guess it comes as no surprise that as a sufferer of agoraphobia, I have never had this illness."

What an appalling, yet fascinating thing. Makes me want to wash my hands and wear a surgical mask.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

It makes me want to mail hand sanitizer to all my friends!

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Hand Sanitizers May Actually Cause Outbreaks Of Norovirus
from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232708.php

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

... welp. Thanks for stopping me from playing into the villain's hands!

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

can survive freezing and heating and bleaching.

Ugh.

In 2010, scientists surveyed a hospital for noroviruses and found 21 different types sitting on a single countertop. It takes fewer than twenty noroviruses slipping into a person’s mouth to start a new infection.

yuck!

[totient]

Norwalk, OH! No kidding. I rode through Norwalk on my cross country ride, and spent the night in a motel less than a mile from ground zero.

[cz_unit]

Yep. It's why the tub and the toilet are next to each other. There is nothing quite like vomiting and crapping at the same instant.

Oddly enough I have never had it anything like that since. Which is good.

[kjc.livejournal.com]

It is so evil.

I'm pretty sure I caught it last year from a packet of toilet paper. (I told you this, right? I was cleaning out that apartment belong to L's parents and the delivery/pick-up guy either puked or crapped or both in the bathroom... I told him he had noro, cleaned the bathroom with a substance the CDC endorses for killing noro, and then caught it a week after the guy had been there. The only thing I didn't clean/throw away was an opened pack of TP on the back of the toilet. Cleaned the bathroom a second time & fortunately, the nice little old people didn't get it.)

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

Yeah, norovirus is awesome in the classical definition of the word. I was completely freaked out about keeping M from contracting it last year, so recently having finished chemo. Blah.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Oh, norovirus, you evil, fascinating, evil thing.

If I never get it ever again, I'll count myself lucky. What a wretched illness.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

And to top it off, the death rate from norovirus is low, so the host is under little pressure to evolve countermeasures...