Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said officials in China had studied more than 1,000 close contacts of confirmed cases and not found any evidence of human-to-human transmission. What’s bothersome is that there have been cases where no contact to poultry has been found.  These cases leave an open door when it comes to the source of infection.

“That is powerful evidence because if you had a thousand contacts with someone with the flu you would be pretty sure some of them would have been infected,” Fauci said in an interview with AFP.

Nevertheless, Fauci cautioned that authorities needed to be ready for the possibility of the virus mutating and spreading between humans.

“It’s unpredictable as are all the influenza. One of the things we need to be concerned about is this might gain the capability of going human-to-human which up to this point has not happened and is somewhat encouraging news,” Fauci said.

“But we still need to be very prepared for the eventuality of that happening.”

Researchers are already developing a diagnostic test to identify H7N9, along with a vaccine, with clinical trials due in July or August.  Influenza viruses constantly change and it’s possible that this virus might become able to easily and sustainably spread between people, triggering a pandemic.

How many times have you entered a public restroom and observed that there are no paper towels, only the lowly often maligned warm air hand dryer.  It could be the new high-tech looking Dyson that seems to be the rage in most establishments currently or some older type of hand dryer.  If you are like most people that the UFE (Urine Feces Everywhere) has observed and conversed with, then several things are going through your mind.   If you spend enough time in restrooms, like the UFE team you know that Hand-Washing compliance is going to be much lower with hand dryers, than if disposable hand towels were supplied.  It also means that many people using the restroom without hand towels will be thinking of a way to exit the restroom without touching the door handle to the restroom as they exit because they know that many people use the restroom, fail to wash their hands, and then exit the restroom putting their soiled hands on the restroom door handle.

The UFE observers have spoken before about the ingenious methods that people come up with so they don’t have to touch the soiled door handle while exiting the restroom.  For the more limber people there is the Karate-type move where they reach up with their foot to hook the handle and open the door.   Some patrons exiting the restroom use toilet paper from the stall or a piece of paper from their purse, others pull their sleeve over their hand, some wait for another person to exit or enter the restroom, then they quickly exit while the door is ajar, grabbing the closing apparatus at the top of the restroom door and moving it to the side to open the door, some just casually wait until their unsuspecting friend grabs the handle first.  Some restaurants like the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group located in Chicago have signs posted in their restrooms recommending that you use your hand towel to grab the restroom door handle as you exit.  These signs are proof that businesses know that there are many people that use their hand towel to grasp the restroom door handle on the way out.  If you need further proof, think how many times you noticed a pile of disposable hand towels next to the restroom exit door because the business hasn’t really figured out that the garbage can should be within throwing distance of the restroom door.

You really have to wonder why some commercial establishments seem to understand that the restroom door handle is a possible source of contagions while other establishments don’t seem to understand the potential problem.  As it turns out it all comes down to dollars and cents.  According to the air dryer manufacturer Dyson, a medium size business having 200 restroom uses a day can save $5678 per year when they switch to air hand dryers.   In addition to the cost savings, a lot of businesses are conveniently claiming that they don’t supply disposable hand towels because they are conveniently “Going Green.”

UFE thinks the ideal restroom should have both the Air Dryers and disposable hand towels.  This is the best of both worlds for the going ”Greeners” and the patrons that don’t want to place their hands on any surface that has been touched by other people most notably the one that used the restroom but didn’t bother to wash their hands.

The advantages for the Air Hand Dryer; never have to worry about running out of paper supplies and  tree huggers can be satisfied that they aren’t adding to landfills.

The advantages for the disposable paper hand towels are; no worries that the warm forced air will irritate your hands,  peace of mind that the air from the air dryer isn’t another source of dangerous microbes, added friction of wiping with the paper product adds to removal of debris left on your hand after hand washing,  paper product is great for cleaning spills,  wiping your face, wiping the sink basin, peace of mind that you can use the hand towel to grasp the door handle that was grabbed by those non hand-washers.

Many times you get the feeling that restrooms with Hand Air Dryers are perceived by their establishments as being maintenance free.   No need to empty the garbage can or refill the hand towel dispenser.  How often do you go in a restroom with air dryers and you find the soap dispenser is empty and you wonder if the restroom is checked daily, weekly or monthly!  The UFE staff is in total agreement that if we had to choose between offering toilet seat covers or disposable hand towels, we’re going with the paper. Surprisingly in most cases the restroom door handle is dirtier than the toilet seat, hands down, no pun intended!

The free bucket of peanuts on the tables is not a new concept. Over the years many establishments have offered this friendly snack.  The UFE (Urine Feces Everywhere) observers were concerned when they observed the workers at several Texas Roadhouses tossing the peanuts that had been sitting at the patrons’ tables back in the large storage barrel in the middle of the restaurant at the end of the work day. We are not sure that this is company policy. The UFE staff really would like each table to be served a fresh bowl of peanuts between patrons.  Leaving the same picked over peanuts on the table between patrons is bad enough but when the UFE staff on several occasions observed the peanuts at each table being returned to the original barrel, we had to say, “Does the Texas Roadhouse Corporation,approve of this?”

The restrooms at the Texas Roadhouse are clean and brightly lit, but the men’s room have Urinals that reach to the floor (see picture below).  These Urinals have been for the most-part abandoned by most businesses for a reason.  These types of urinals usually cause splashing and excess urine on the men’s’ restroom floor which ultimately gets tracked into the restaurant.  UFE guess’s that the urinals are fitting with the Road house theme.  Unfortunately peanuts shells and shoe-tracked urine are an unsavory combination!

The tables at the Roadhouse are just full of a variety of menus and a full assortment of condiment bottles which can’t be sanitized as frequently as we would recommend. The thought of the debris and stickiness caused by the previous customers can make you lose your appetite for sure.  It seems that this clutter adds to the décor of the restaurant but to the trained eye, it looks like a UFE nightmare, Gross.

The Roadhouses have a nice bar in the middle of the restaurant.  If you spend enough time at the restaurant, you soon realize that the bartender never sanitizes their hands.   The use of the cleaning towel, “Rag-a-Plenty” , the communal towel which has hundreds of purposes, none of which have anything to do with the word clean.   Wiping off counters, killing bugs, wiping off condiment bottles, wiping hands between money touching, just to name a few. The bar area at the Texas Roadhouse would make for a great sequel to the movie “Contagion”,  add to that the over-used and under-changed sloppy tin of peanuts and you can see why the UFE team doesn’t meet  for a meal at the Texas Roadhouse unless it’s for business!

Concerns about a deadly new strain of bird flu intensified as the disease claimed a sixth life in eastern China and agricultural authorities in Shanghai ordered a wide-scale slaughter of poultry in an effort to stem its spread.

The new strain of bird flu has infected 20 people in China.  News that a Sixth person died in the outbreak has spread concern overseas.  The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 10 infected people had severe cases and two had mild cases of the fatal disease. It reiterated there was no evidence of ongoing human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Flu experts are very concerned about the new virus because it exhibits signs of being more readily able to infect humans from ailing birds than is another form of avian flu known as H5N1, which has been infecting people intermittently over the last decade.  Another big concern is that unlike H5N1, which can kill birds, this H7N9 virus doesn’t make birds very ill, so it is harder to detect when flocks have been infected.  In addition, some flu watchers are convinced that the test that doctors are using to detect the H7N9 virus are faulty — that they are not sensitive enough.   There are also reports that animals are falling ill with the disease, even birds falling out of the sky. These animals may test negative for the virus, but if the tests are faulty, that could be a big problem.

The UFE staff is wary of any travel to China.  This concern has been echoed in the Airline stocks that travel to these areas which have seen large declines in their stock value since this outbreak began.   It is best to use a “wait and see” approach as most experts agree that this outbreak could become more serious as more evidence is gathered.

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The Cheesecake Factory when it comes to basic restaurant hygiene still has a lot to learn.  As it the case with many full service restaurants these days, the patron’s silverware is present on the table neatly wrapped in a cloth napkin. Here the problem, once you open your napkin for use, where do you place the silverware?  The table is not an acceptable surface to place the utensils that you will place in your mouth.  At UFE we feel that if you are uncomfortable licking the table surface with your tongue then why would you place your silverware directly on it.   A disposable paper place mat would be a nice addition to the tables.

On the plus side, The Cheesecake factory doesn’t have an excessive amount to condiments on the table which UFE usually finds to be a hygiene disaster.

The Restrooms at the restaurants are usually dimly lit with Dyson force warm air hand dryers.  The UFE team has several problems with establishments that have warm air dryers instead of disposable paper towels.

The main problem with these force air dryers is that we see less customers washing their hand than if they had paper towels available.  There is also the problem of not being able to use the paper towel to open the restroom door as you exit the restroom.  Remember this is the very handle that has been touched by all the non-hand washers.  That same handle that test positive for either Urine or Feces nearly 100% of the time in our UFE tests.  Without paper towel there is no way to exit the restroom without putting your hands on the door handle. Observing hand washing in businesses isn’t a glamorous job but you do get to see the ingenious ways that patrons use to try avoiding touching the handle of the restroom.  Grabbing the handle with toilet paper, using some type of paper in your purse, trying to open the door by using your foot, pulling your coat sleeve over your hand to prevent skin contact are the just a few of the methods we have seen to prevent direct skin contact with the dirty restroom door handle.  Purposely waiting for someone else to open the restroom door is also a common restroom exit method.

The tally for the patrons exiting the Cheesecake Factory restroom without washing their hands is over 50 % for both men and women.  Men were approaching 60% quite often.

The UFE observers were surprised that the wait staff that worked at the restaurant also washed their hand less than 50% of the time after using the restroom.   Is it because they are in a hurry to get back to their job?  Is it possible that the noisy Dyson hand dryers discourage employee hand washing?

An interesting side note occurred in the women’s restroom during one of our visits to the Cheesecake Factories.  In the female restroom, someone from the wait Staff at the restaurant had just used the restroom and was exiting the stall and quickly headed to the restroom door to exit without washing her hands.  Although UFE doesn’t encourage any dialogue during our restroom observations, this UFE observer quickly blurted out to the waitress, “Hey, You forgot to wash your hands!’  The Cheese cake factory employees was half way out of the restroom when she looked  back  at the observer and quickly responded , “Obama’s got me covered!”  The UFE team doesn’t quite know what the meant but it was humorous none the less.  The point here is that it is embarrassing and unsanitary that such a large group of employees failed to take the time to clean their hands after using the restroom

The UFE team is in agreement that sinks located outside the restrooms are a much better way to insure that the restaurant employee that is serving you has taken the necessary steps to sanitize their hands before returning to work.

Overused under-Sanitized airplane restrooms are inherently dirty. The Lavatories are too small and now they are getting smaller.  Washing your hands thoroughly is impossible. Touching the soap dispenser is discouraged. The faucet requires one hand to constantly hold the water running.  So that leaves trying to wash your hand (singular).  It is best to take pre-moistened wipe in to the restroom. Skip hand washing in the sink, use the wipe on your hands. After using the wipe, you can then use the same wipe on the door handle to exit the filthy cubby hole.  It’s unconscionable that the airplane manufacturers could even consider shrinking these already too small Restrooms.

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The Centers for Disease Control study found that, in 20% of cases where a person contracted a foodborne illness, leafy green vegetables were the source of the illness.

Every year, 1 out of every 6 Americans contracts a foodborne illness. Of those who become ill, 128,000 require a stay in the hospital and another 3,000 die from the illness or related conditions.  In Canada our friends to the North, have a shocking food poisoning rate that is more than twice that of the United States, something to remember if you are planning a visit to Canada.

Many of the people who got sick from eating leafy green vegetables contracted the Norovirus. The Norovirus is a virus that causes what most people usually refer as the “stomach flu”. Symptoms usually include vomiting and diarrhea.

 The Norovirus is a fast moving illness and symptoms usually occur in only 10 hours after first being exposed. Generally, the illness is short-lived, lasting between 1 and 3 days.

Produce can get contaminated with Norovirus in the fields if they come into contact with dirty water or water that has had contact with animal waste. Recently, the FDA released a proposed new rule for produce safety that would set new hygiene standards for farm workers which would try to reduce contact with animal waste and dirty water.

Another way that produce can get contaminated with Norovirus is by food handlers and cleanliness in the kitchen.  Consumers are sometimes surprised when they learn that contamination sometimes has more to do with the kitchen or restaurant it came from then the food itself

Unlike the flu, there’s no effective treatment (vaccine), but there are ways to reduce your risk; however, most people are surprised to learn that hand sanitizer is not one of them.  Thorough hand washing with Soap and Water is the best route to prevention.

Vegetable-related illnesses are more common in sheer numbers, but they are not the most dangerous which might explain the lack of emphasis for produce safety in the past.  Other food poisonings from meat and poultry have taken center stage in the past.

Red meat was once the leading source of food poisoning but that is no longer the case.  Most people remember the deadly outbreak of E. coli associated with hamburger but there have been significant safety improvements in the handling of red meat.

 The largest proportion of foodborne illness deaths – about 1 in 5 – were caused by poultry, partly because three big outbreaks more than 10 years ago linked to turkey deli meat. According to CDC estimates, between the years 1998-2008 there have been 277 poultry-related deaths compared to 236 vegetable-related deaths so the difference is closer than most people think.

  The emphasis when it comes to food safety is always prevention.  Remember that many of these illness causing microbes can’t be neutralized with hand Sanitizer.  In addition, Hand Sanitizers are not recommended for a child which is a precaution that is usually ignored.  And of course the penultimate take-away which would significantly show the biggest improvement in food-related illnesses is hand-washing using Soap, Water and a Clean disposable hand towel.

UFE has always strongly opposed eating any type of store purchased raw spinach unless it has been thoroughly cooked.  The risk of possible exposure to potentially lethal contaminants is too large to eat any type of spinach raw.  In the first few months of 2013 alone there have already been dozens of spinach recalls.  Listeria, E.coli and Salmonella are just some of the lethal pathogens that are often the causes for frequent mass recalls.

Taylor Farms of Salinas, California,   had to announce a spinach recall in February of 2013 which affected 39 States. Organic Baby Spinach products over concerns they may be contaminated with (EHEC) Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli. Symptoms of the diseases caused by EHEC include abdominal cramps and diarrhea that may in some cases progress to bloody diarrhea. Fever and vomiting may also occur. This is the third time in as many years that the company has recalled spinach products due to suspected contamination.

Whether it is lettuce, spinach or some other type of produce such as cantaloupe, experts have been rushing to find the “perfect wash,”  to clean these vegetables before they are bagged for resale. It is interesting that pre-bagged greens are being rinsed with a chemical wash to rid the vegetables of possible harmful pathogens, but we don’t hear of any negative safety issues surrounding the contents of this wash.  This is interesting because irradiation of vegetables has been proposed and rejected because of consumer safety concerns.  This so-called chemical wash used to clean lettuce, etc. obviously isn’t 100% effective.  We are told that irradiation would be very successful at killing possible pathogens that cling to our vegetables.

Irradiation has been used in the medical field and by NASA for several years to provide sterile instruments and safe food. Also referred to as cold pasteurization, irradiation is the process of subjecting food to controlled amounts of radiation in order to kill harmful bacteria present both inside and on the surface of raw and ready-to-eat foods. Irradiation can also kill parasites and small insects, like fruit flies, to reduce spoilage.

Irradiating fresh vegetables would be a much more effective way of ridding these vegetables from potentially harmful pathogenic organisms.  The vegetable washes as we have seen come up short in their efforts to kills the harmful bacteria that can be present.

Organic vegetables seem to be the recipient of many recalls presumably because the fertilizer being used is partly animal dung.   It seems feasible that the consumer should have a choice between chemical vegetable wash or irradiation when they buy pre-bagged vegetables at the market.  Why can’t the consumer make the decision for themselves?  Each time we see another mass recall of possible tainted prewashed vegetables, it makes you wonder if you should just chose the hamburger.  It just seems that eating healthy is dangerous to your health.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections pose “a catastrophic threat” to the population, England’s chief medical officer warns in a report calling for urgent action worldwide.

The widespread overuse of antibiotics combined with a lack of new types of antibiotics leaves us in a health system that could potentially be similar to the health system in the early 19^th century.

Antibiotics are failing at an alarming rate while new bacterial diseases have increased dramatically in the last few years.  The well-known “Superbugs” MRSA and C difficile have been reduced to low numbers in hospitals, but there is an alarming increase in other strains of bacteria, including new strains of E coli and the pneumonia causing bacteria, Klebsiella.

These types of bacteria, which are also known collectively as gram negative are found in the gut instead of on the skin.  These bacteria are highly dangerous to elderly and frail people. The big problem is that few antibiotics remain that are effective against drug-resistant strains of these bacteria.

It is estimated that as many as 5000 patients die in the UK alone of gram-negative sepsis. Sepsis is a condition where bacteria get into the blood stream, and half of these reported cases are resistant to any available drugs.

Governments and health organizations need to look at Antimicrobial resistance as a potential catastrophic threat.  Without new forms of antibiotics going to the hospital for a minor procedure can become life threatening due to what used to be an ordinary infection that would have been treated with routine antibiotics.  If this drug resistance isn’t addressed, routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of risk of infection.

There has been an 85% reduction in MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which has reduced this once prevalent infection to two or three cases a year for a large hospital. But there are now 50 to 100 cases of gram-negative bacteria infection for every MRSA case, according to Professor Mike Sharland of St George’s Hospital in London, an adviser to the Department of Health on the use of antimicrobials (antibiotics and antivirals) in children.

The true cause for this lack of effective antibiotics is a twofold problem;

The first is that we are massively overusing antibiotic drugs, which effectively teaches bacteria how to resist them. There are two particularly pressing dangers: the lung disease tuberculosis and the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea. Doctors are battling new drug resistant forms of these bacteria at an alarming rate.

The second is that pharmaceutical companies are not working hard to produce any new antibiotics because they are not seen as profitable.  We haven’t had a new class of antibiotics released since the late Eighties, and there are very few antibiotics in the pipeline of the big pharmaceutical companies.  If physicians don’t stop handing out antibiotics like candy, even a cut finger could soon be a fatal event.   An organ transplant, joint replacement or just a hospital stay would be seen as a potential source of serious life threatening infection.  For the last twenty years health care professionals have made warnings that drug-resistant bugs are imminent.  That drug resistant Super-bug ship has arrived and only looks to increase at an alarming rate.

      History of SARS and the 2003 Outbreak

      It is believed that the disease was initially transferred to humans through civets, a mammal with a cat-like appearance. The SARS outbreak actually began in November 2002 in the Guangdong province of mainland China. However, to preserve public confidence, the Chinese government did not inform the World Health Organization (WHO) of the outbreak until February 2003.

 This new SARS-like virus has seems to be less contagious than the original SARS Virus which killed 774 people Wordlwide . The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday the patient died on February 10, two weeks after entering hospital. The cause of death was confirmed by a laboratory test three days ago.

    The virus, called novel coronavirus, or NCoV, was unknown in humans until it emerged in the Middle East last year. There have now been 13 confirmed cases worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Britain.

    The WHO first issued an international alert in September 2012 after the virus infected a Qatari man in Britain who had recently been in Saudi Arabia.

    The Geneva-based agency said it was monitoring the situation closely but it did not believe special screening at airports or other points of entry was necessary, nor did it recommend any travel or trade restrictions.

    Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that includes those causing the common cold as well as the one responsible for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around one in 10 of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

     Scientists are not sure where the new virus came from but one theory is it came from animals, possibly bats.