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Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Apple Confirms That It's Okay to Clean Your iPhone With Disinfectant
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Dude, now why did you give that advice away.😁 I thought I was the only one that was aware of this.
Yes, it’s true, hardware stores actually do have a small specific section usually of household cleaning products, the caveat being, they mark them up considerably, given they realize that’s not their ‘forte’ of what they sell in the store. But I have no problem paying a higher price, especially when these hardware stores are usually smaller/localized, and I don’t have to travel to the mall/to larger retail stores to track down cleaning supplies.
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Whoosh Is the exact same product Apple stores use to clean devices/surfaces. As a matter fact, I even asked them at some point what they recommended, and that’s exactly what they pulled out behind the counter. [It’s also available on Amazon if need be.]
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The Coronavirus is reported to contain a fatty outer layer. Oil repellent dish detergent should be effective at disrupting or at the very least repelling the virus.
My best friend who’s a nurse replaced her standard soap with dish detergent. I’ve done the same in my home. All my soap dispensers in the bathroom and kitchen are filled with Dawn. I wash my phone this way.
I have been using a sponge with hot soapy water, I get it lathered up, squeeze out most of the water then run that over the surface of my iphone and ipad. Then a second run with the sponge mostly rinsed out with hot water. And I press hard to remove as much moisture as possible with the sponge. Then a final wipe with a microfiber cloth (or if I don't have one handy, a paper towel). So just to clarify, I don't immerse either device in water, I only wet the front and back as I described, and then sponge off the water, followed by a final dry patting with a cloth/microfiber/paper.
Front and back, both are in leather cases. The leather really doesn't look much worse than it would on a 1-1/2 year old case. The iphone (2018 model) and ipad pro (2018 model) are both still going strong. No problems at all with these cleaning methods for me. And I have done this regularly with my previous iPads (at least 3 years). For the phone cases in the past, I would use something like Windex on the back of the case. And just a hot moist sponge for the front glass surface, and I was really careful not to allow water into the ports. That was when iphones were far less water-resistant.
I started doing this because it is so difficult to remove the oils from the screens. The added benefit is the sanitization of the devices.
As to the SARS-CoV-2 situation, YES, this is worse than a 'flu' for numerous reasons, starting with the fact that this is a NOVEL infectious agent to which we have NO resistance.
Secondly, SARS-CoV-2 is far more infectious than the flu — based on the data that we do have (data which at best covers 3 months).
Third, the incubation stage — and this has been observed — is 7-10 days. That means people will be showing no to minimal symptoms for 7 days or so before they reach the 'peak' when infection becomes acute, if it is going to become more severe for the subject. Meanwhile, people will be unknowingly infecting others for the entire period.
With a flu, infectiousness comes with the onset of symptoms. So sick people and those around them know to stay away or take precautions.
Fourth, the complications and fatalities are much higher (than the flu) in individuals 50+, with complications and severity increasing with each decade of age. Look at this chart — and this is actual data — and see how much higher are the fatalities in 50+. In the 60-69 group you are already at around 3%, and 70-79 hits 7-8% fatalities.
The medium article details the hows and whys as to the complications and just how this virus affects people.
Here's the link to the article: https://t.co/73TurPhxOE?amp=1
Sorry for the length of this post, but this really is a serious matter, no one should have any doubt of that.
Front and back, both are in leather cases. The leather really doesn't look much worse than it would on a 1-1/2 year old case. The iphone (2018 model) and ipad pro (2018 model) are both still going strong. No problems at all with these cleaning methods for me. And I have done this regularly with my previous iPads (at least 3 years). For the phone cases in the past, I would use something like Windex on the back of the case. And just a hot moist sponge for the front glass surface, and I was really careful not to allow water into the ports. That was when iphones were far less water-resistant.
I started doing this because it is so difficult to remove the oils from the screens. The added benefit is the sanitization of the devices.
As to the SARS-CoV-2 situation, YES, this is worse than a 'flu' for numerous reasons, starting with the fact that this is a NOVEL infectious agent to which we have NO resistance.
Secondly, SARS-CoV-2 is far more infectious than the flu — based on the data that we do have (data which at best covers 3 months).
Third, the incubation stage — and this has been observed — is 7-10 days. That means people will be showing no to minimal symptoms for 7 days or so before they reach the 'peak' when infection becomes acute, if it is going to become more severe for the subject. Meanwhile, people will be unknowingly infecting others for the entire period.
With a flu, infectiousness comes with the onset of symptoms. So sick people and those around them know to stay away or take precautions.
Fourth, the complications and fatalities are much higher (than the flu) in individuals 50+, with complications and severity increasing with each decade of age. Look at this chart — and this is actual data — and see how much higher are the fatalities in 50+. In the 60-69 group you are already at around 3%, and 70-79 hits 7-8% fatalities.
The medium article details the hows and whys as to the complications and just how this virus affects people.
Here's the link to the article: https://t.co/73TurPhxOE?amp=1
Sorry for the length of this post, but this really is a serious matter, no one should have any doubt of that.
The Apple support document linked to is dated December 10th, 2019. There is no mention of Clorox wipes or isopropyl alcohol or disinfecting the iPhone. Instructions for cleaning iPhones are not even included in that support document. A link from that support article to another support page on how to clean various iPhones is dated Sept 2019 and also does not mention any of the above. The link to the Wall St Journal article requires an account and to be logged in to read it, so I can't access it.
I think that there is no easy way to compare the two. The flue is allowed to spread freely, people mingle as usual. For the Corona virus counter measures have been taken, but the case of Italy shows how bad it can turn out when you are initial unaware and give the virus freedom to spread. In hindsight researchers will probably dig deeper and compare patient profiles.
But I am happy that Apple actually makes such a statement. No matter what they said before, I used to clean my screens for hygienic reasons. Even if it is only me who uses the device, you touch door handles, are on public traffic holding on to something to avoid falling etc. And aren't there legions of mobile users taking their beloved phones to the bathroom?
After all our health should be more important than the state of our precious little toys, which anyway will be replaced quite soon with the next "revolutionary, re-imagined gadget". What good is it to monitor heart rate and sleep cycle, if the very same device happily collects bacteria and viruses and is not allowed to be cleaned?
The initial case fatality rate (CFR) of any pandemic or epidemic caused by a novel pathogen is almost always wildly overstated, not deliberately, but due to 'fog of war'. The early CFR figures for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic were 10 times higher than what was eventually determined to be the case. The true CFR of COVID-19 will almost certainly be much lower than the 2 to 3.4% range that you have cited, as diagnostic kits improve and other confounding factors are sorted out, all of which will take some time.
Fortunately, we have a tantalizing confirmation that panic is overdone and counter-productive. Remember the COVID-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship? Data on the outbreak is now available from Japanese authorities, and the CFR for this localized outbreak looks much, much less scary.
But two things to keep in mind first: 1) People who go on cruises are generally healthy, or rather, healthy enough to travel (although the rate of underlying conditions is not lower than that of the general population), and 2) The demographics on cruises tend to be older, although I cannot confirm this to be the case for Diamond Princess from the Japanese data linked above; but it is not an unreasonable assumption to make.
So what does the data from Diamond Princess tell us and why is it significant? A quarantined cruise ship is an ideal natural laboratory to study a virus. Many variables normally impossible to control are controlled. We know that all but one patient boarded the boat without the virus. We know that the other passengers were healthy enough to travel. We know their whereabouts and exposures. While the numbers coming out of China are scary, we don’t know how many of those patients were already ill for other reasons (it's peak flu season in China). How many were already hospitalized for another life-threatening illness and then caught the virus? How many were completely healthy, caught the virus, and developed a critical illness? In the real world, we just don’t know (yet).
Of the 3711 people on board the Diamond Princess (a good sample size), 705 have tested positive for the virus, but the actual infected figure is likely higher due to the unreliability of current test kits. Considering the confined spaces on the ship and the duration of the quarantine, the contagiousness of COVID-19 is surprisingly low. Of those tested positive, more than half are without symptoms, while very few asymptomatic people were prioritized for testing in China. This alone suggests a halving of the virus’s true fatality rate.
On the Diamond Princess, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, making for an initial case fatality rate of 0.85%. The most important insight is that all six fatalities occurred in patients who are older than 70 years of age. Not a single Diamond Princess patient under age 70 has died. This is the opposite of H1N1, which killed more young people than old.
Of course, a CFR of 0.85 is nothing to sneeze at (pardon the pun), but these patients were likely exposed repeatedly to concentrated viral loads due to their being on a confined ship, which significantly worsens the illness. Also, treatment was not available for these patients for quite some time due to the ship being at sea and repeatedly denied entry from port to port, which is itself a humanitarian travesty. Therefore, the true CFR for Diamond Princess is likely even lower, maybe significantly lower.
All of the above indicates that COVID-19 is benign for children and non-geriatric adults but potentially fatal for the old and chronically ill. So it seems that the focus should be on preventing the spread of COVID-19 among the truly vulnerable populations: those over the age of 70 and those with pre-existing conditions. I'm talking about nursing homes, hospices, long-term care facilities and so on.
Unfortunately, I don't think we are doing that presently. The media (as usual) is performing a disservice with politicized editorials and sniping when scientific facts and expert medical advice should instead be filling the airwaves and newspaper pages. I'm afraid we may have a man-made disaster on our hands.
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Business are going totally bonkers with this viruses..
Something that previously had damaged the phone, is now considered 'normal' thanks to COVID-19? I honesty don't get this. Apple always recommended their own cloth.. and "against" any thing like this.
Something that previously had damaged the phone, is now considered 'normal' thanks to COVID-19? I honesty don't get this. Apple always recommended their own cloth.. and "against" any thing like this.
That Japanese Diamond Princess study is interesting. Thanks for sharing that. It goes counter to what the WHO found in China (which doesn't necessarily mean one or the other is the wrong conclusion). Based on what the WHO's fact finding team observed in China, they believed that truly asymptomatic carriers were very rare (page 12) and that some people just had such mild symptoms or had not yet become symptomatic yet (but would eventually).
I think that's only true for the first half of the outbreak. That same WHO team described the great lengths China went through to find, test, and observe every single person who was even remotely a suspected carrier. They setup a massive dragnet, tracked people at checkpoints using QR codes, deployed drones, enforced quarantines to the point of welding entry doors to apartment complexes shut, and deployed over 9000 epidemiologists.
Based on what they observed with the results of aggressive contact tracing combined with aggressive testing, they advised against assuming the denominator is an order of magnitude greater that what's reported. Of course, this only applies for countries that are doing it right.
One thing that has to be factored in is that almost all of the case fatality rates being reported are using the number infected as the denominator instead of the number recovered. The disease takes up to 6 weeks to run its course. Some of the infected are not out of the woods and a small number of the mild cases have been known to abruptly make a turn for the worse and go critical. If just a couple more lands in the deaths column in the next few weeks, the CFR starts to look like the popular expert consensus of between 1 and 2%.
If there's an undercount, perhaps the two sides cancel out more or less, but we also have to remember that in the fog of war, there can also be a death undercount too. In the early days of the Wuhan outbreak, it was reported that people who didn't make it to a hospital, were not counted as a Covid-19 death.
A just released Chinese study might shed some light on some of the dynamics of transmission on the cruise ship. It's a case study of a superspreader event on a Wuhan commuter bus. Air conditioning and a closed air circulation system may have allowed the virus to stay airborne and viable for an extremely long time and an extremely long distance. @JPack posted a link to the actual text of the study in another thread, but it's in Chinese. I can't read it so I'm referencing the article written on it.
One additional thing to caution about interpreting case fatality rates and the fog of war is that we may be optimistic in assuming that this outbreak is going to be dealt with the way the Japanese were able to deal with the Diamond Princess cruise ship. They weren't already saturated with a massive caseload and they had time to divert people to hospitals that had capacity.
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a leading research hospital, has 1000 beds, but only 16 of them are properly equipped to handle Covid-19 patients. They're also running dangerously low on masks and protective equipment and have already instituted rationing of those to prepare for an outbreak at scale. China had to convert stadiums and conference centers into makeshift isolation wards. If we get a demand spike, our healthcare system can quickly get overrun and it'll be hard to keep it in check.
In the fog of war, not everyone gets a ventillator. It might even be that not everyone gets oxygen. There will also be non-Covid 19 collateral damage if ERs or ambulance services are unable to process the demand for their services. In Wuhan people were dying of other things because ambulances couldn't get there. They were either transporting pneumonia patients, or they were sidelined because it took an hour between transports to sanitize the ambulance.
This is why it's imperitive we "flatten the curve" so that we don't overstretch the healthcare system. I want to see a CFR under 1% or even way under 1% as the optimistic projections predict, but that won't be possible unless we slow it down and prevent it from entering logarithmic growth.
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If anyone dies from this, they're ready to go.
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Our bodies will adapt, as they always have. That's why we have immune systems.
Sure. Like the 35 year old healthy doctor who discovered the disease?
I can't believe Apple mentioned Clorox on their website, that's free publicity!
Or did Clorox ppl pay Apple like 5 Billion dollars to be on their website? i think they paid 10 Billion!
Or did Clorox ppl pay Apple like 5 Billion dollars to be on their website? i think they paid 10 Billion!
It may be where you live, but I cannot recall the last time I gave a debit/credit card to a cashier.
The issue you should be concerned with is that the cashier may well have scanned and handled ALL the items you are buying.
Best to use a self checkout or "Scan as You Go" type of system. 😁
Fair logic, but someone(s) also had to stock those items. So, indeed, a self-checkout would avoid one less and recent pair of hands recently contacting your purchased items, though items could potentially be infected on the shelf. Obviously, this conclusion doesn't account for how long a product sits untouched, i.e., if the bacteria, virus, etc would find a host before dying, and so on.
Overall, as always, it's good practice to be generally sanitary and appropriately cautious always -- that goes for both consumers and employees.
Don't be silly! An iPhone infected with flu-like symptoms simply needs to gargle with warm water and hydrogen peroxide!