By Paul Goldfinger, MD   Blogfinger.net

There are quite a few You Tube videos on this subject.  They all seem to agree that soap and water works best to kill the coronavirus. But you need to scrub for 20 seconds.

Sanitizers are more problematic because there are more variables. We started out with none available. Then Eileen made some with a little alcohol  (70%)  around the house mixed with aloe.  But we kept looking, because I was worried that maybe her concoction wouldn’t kill anything.  I was hoping for something that had an official stamp of efficacy, but that doesn’t exist.

It looks like we should choose sanitizers with 60-70% alcohol, but if there is a lot of aloe or other ingredients, it might lessen the concentration of alcohol.

So we got one on the Internet with 60% alcohol and some assorted other ingredients, but I wasn’t confident.

We then bought another kind on the Internet that said  70% alcohol and a “thickener” which left your hands sticky for about 30 minutes.  I hated the sticky.

And finally we got one called a a “hand sanitizer” which  said “anti-bacterial and kills 99.9% of germs.”  I had to take it on faith that it killed viruses. I wish it said “kills viruses” but none of them do that.  And then I discovered that this one evaporated in 10 seconds after application, and that is a problem.

So we wound up using soap and water most of the time. And our friend Jean from the Poconos sent us the video below, and we learned that you don’t even need “antibacterial soap” just regular soap. When we have to use a sanitizer, we do, but we use soap as soon as possible.   Where is Purell when you need it?

MARY MARTIN:   ORIGINAL CAST OF SOUTH PACIFIC