Even if you are living under a rock, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about COVID-19 and its potential to be a serious pandemic. There is, it turns out, not much you can do about the threat other than taking common sense precautions. The most important of these is to wash your hands regularly and thoroughly. Via Karl Voit, here is a very useful two-part thread that explains why washing with soap is so effective and hand sanitizers are helpful but not as good as soap:
1/25 Part 1 – Why does soap work so well on the SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus and indeed most viruses? Because it is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. A two part thread about soap, viruses and supramolecular chemistry #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/OCwqPjO5Ht
— Palli Thordarson (@PalliThordarson) March 8, 2020
The introduction sounds as if it might be too technical but it isn’t. It’s accessible, informative, and definitely worth reading.
If you’d like an informal summary of the situation, Ali Abdaal has a 20 and a half minute video that explains what’s going on in a more even handed way than the click bait headlines you’ve been seeing.