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Comment by candiodari | Hacker News Reader

Why not just wait? Virus mantles are incredibly complex molecules, and therefore ... not very stable.

Just wait. 2 hours ought to do it, so just don't touch them the day they're returned and then proceed as normal.

Also the odds of a virus infecting you seem very minimal even if you handle a book with live virus on it.

I seem to recall early information saying Sars cov2 can live over a week on paper / wood. Maybe that's not thought to be the case anymore.

I think the crux of the problem is that folks are not trusting authorities anymore, and information, sometimes conflicting is coming from everywhere. No single unifying source has appeared to keep folks on common ground, especially since this is a rapidly changing situation, and what was thought to be true 2 weeks ago is no longer considered true.

Our local library is holding returned items in isolation for 72 hrs before returning them to general circulation, which seems to be in line with what I've seen most experts recommend currently.

There's a lot of variation in even well-intentioned "expert" information out there. And, in any case, people need to make their own risk assessments. I'm not going to tell you that you're not allowed to literally lock yourself in your house. But I'm not going to do so (under my and my location's current conditions).

And not everyone is in a position to independently evaluate from first principles what precautions are appropriate and which are insufficient, unhelpful, or excessive.

According to the BfR institute, it can live for 24 hours on cardboard, I would imagine that it is the same for paper [0]. Outside of a lab it is probably significantly shorter than that. Given that there have been no known cases of transmission via objects I think the risk is very low.

[0] https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/can_the_new_type_of_coronavirus_b...

They detected viral RNA, they did not claim it was infectious.

Exactly. I would be a disaster if the viruses were indeed viable this way, I think excessive hygiene actually harms the immune system by restricting eustress from other bugs.

Some sources say 72 hours - not 2 - without mentioning that it's the time required to achieve absolutely guaranteed 0% viable viruses.

However, the drop is nonlinear and indeed after 2 hours half of the viruses will be inactive.

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