IT’S INFECTIOUS. My humour, that is, in this early winter season. At least, I hope so. But something else about me might be infectious too. At least, I fear so.

I’ve been beset with some kind of virus for a couple of weeks now. It’s adenovirus, probably. I’ve had a nasty chest infection, wheezy lungs, and a disturbed gastro-intestinal tract. You really don’t want to know the details.

I have neighbours, mostly young ones but not exclusively, who come round to see me frequently, so they can get my support with their coursework or Stuff they want to do online. In these last two weeks I’ve been telling them, ‘I’m in quarantine — I’ve got the Dreaded Lurgy!’. Or some translation of the above, since none of them know The Goon Show. Yet they insist they must come, and want to brave my menagerie of bacteria and viruses and use the computers.

Viruses delivered by computer

I wonder if you realise what a horrible device the computer is for passing on viruses. And I don’t mean malicious bits of software. If you have a cold or the ’flu, you may be sitting there sneezing and coughing all over your keyboard. Plus, our hands are fantastic organs for getting contaminated with germs and viruses — and the next pair of hands that touches that keyboard (or that drives the mouse) will — with an appalling degree of certitude — carry our microbial payload to their mouths.

So, when these friends have insisted on coming round to use my computers, I have asked for a little time in which I can wipe down the keyboard and the mouse with disinfectant and isopropyl alcohol first. Though I have subsequently learned that a solution of hydrogen peroxide might be a better weapon.

Compared with a toilet seat…

According to a Web article at Applelinks, microbiologist Charles Gerba at the University of Arizona conducted a study of which objects in a typical office work environment are the most germ-ridden. Telephones came top, followed by the surfaces of desks, water fountain handles, computer keyboards and mice. The stats read allegedly thus:

  • Phone: 25,127 germs per square inch
  • Desktop surface: 20,961 germs per square inch
  • Keyboard: 3,295 germs per square inch
  • Mouse: 1,676 germs per square inch
  • Toilet seat: 49 germs per square inch

If that’s true, I realise now that I should not only be sterilising my keyboard and mouse, but even more importantly those places on the desk my hands and wrists constantly caress, and which furthermore get nourished daily with spilled coffee and crumbs and soy sauce.

As for your phone, into which you breathe so intimately — well, lending yours to a friend when you are ill is about as direct a transmission vector as snogging them full-on!

Prevention is better than curse

Are you involved in administering a workspace in which people share computers, or do hot-desking? Places such as Internet cafés, University computer labs? Perhaps it’s time to look at how we manage those environments, to minimise their potential for spreading epidemics via the epidermis, and viral aerosols broadcast via coughing and sneezing onto receptive keyboard and desk surfaces.

The article referenced above not only has some good suggestions about how to disinfect IT and comms equipment, but it also links to descriptions of computer peripherals that have been specifically designed to make it easier to manage this health risk. There are…

  • keyboards and mice made with organic antimicrobial compounds such as Microban embedded — or even better, colloidal silver;
  • keyboards and mice that are so totally sealed that they can be washed in a dishwasher;
  • keyboard membranes that offer a condom-like surface protection and at least make the touched surface easier to clean, with fewer cracks and hidey-holes where viruses and microbes can breed.

Of course, one could always retreat to a remote cottage in the Outer Hebrides and avoid epidemics that way. Except, I suppose, those social/behavioural epidemics of ideas and behaviours which shower down into our lives like clusters of meteors each time you connect to the Internet.

But that would be taking me on to a future subject of Gladwell’s ‘Turning Point’ thesis, which is my current reading…