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Comment by kovrik | Hacker News Reader

Exactly what I meant. Yes, you can bleach all your clothes, but not your whole house.

Then, if you already have stomach flu, then I don't see how bleaching your clothes might help here. Take a medicine.

Finally, reading about stomach flu (I'm not a doctor), it doesn't look like a serious problem: > Most people with the stomach flu require no formal treatment. The key to a rapid and safe recovery at home (home remedy) is proper hydration.

If it gets more serious then take a pill or/and go to a doctor.

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It's a serious problem for the 70,000 people who get hospitalized for norovirus every year in the U.S. It's even more serious for the 800 people who die.

And given there's not "a pill" you can take for it, I don't see how a couple capfulls of bleach is more problematic.

you see news articles about norovirus all the time in the context of cruise ships because these are enclosed spaces with stable populations who infect and re-infect each other through fecal contamination and aerosolized vomitus. full decontamination (to stop the spread) without clearing everyone off the ship is very difficult.

imagine a house with small children (who are not good at personal hygiene) as a tiny cruise ship which you can never fully disembark, and then when the cooking/cleaning staff (parents) get sick, things get really ugly.

it's generally easier to clean the hard surfaces in your house (with harsh stuff like bleach wipes) than to clean the soft surfaces. that's presumably why she focuses on the laundry infection vector.

It is still unpleasant and if you have deadline in work or have to care about relatives or have any other duties or train a sport or are paid by hour + have bills, then you don't want to stay home in bed vomiting unnecessary. Also, if you have one sick kid, you probably don't want two sick kids and you sick at the same time on top of it. It is cool that it is not dangerous, but you still need to find baby sitting or stay from work.

If you are high school student who dont like to go to school, getting sick is fine. If you are anybody else, you want to avoid it even if it does not require formal treatment.

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