Respiratory viruses — like the novel coronavirus, the flu, and the common cold — can be spread via our hands. 

If someone is sick, a hand can touch some mucus and viral particles will stick to the hand. If someone is well, hands act like sticky traps for viruses. We can pick up droplets that contain the virus, and they’ll stay on our hands, and perhaps enter our bodies if we touch our hands to our faces.

That’s why our hands are the front lines in the war against Covid-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends washing hands with soap and water as the top way to clean our hands. “But if soap and water are not available, using a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol can help,” the CDC says.

Sanitizer might feel like a modern-day, scientific, and more clinical upgrade to soap. But I’m here to tell you that soap is even more routinely effective than hand sanitizer.

That’s because when you wash your hands with soap and water, you’re not just wiping viruses off your hands and sending them down the drain. You’re actually annihilating the viruses, rendering them harmless. Soap “is almost like a demolition team breaking down a building and taking all the bricks away,” says Palli Thordarson, a chemistry professor at the University of New South Wales.

Soap, Thordarson explains, is common phrase for what chemists call “amphiphiles.” These are molecules that have a dual nature. One end of the molecule is attracted to water and repelled by fats and proteins. The other side of the molecule is attracted to fats and is repelled by water. 

One side of the soap molecule (the one that’s attracted to fat and repelled by water) buries its way into the virus’s fat and protein shell. Fortunately, the chemical bonds holding the virus together aren’t very strong, so this intrusion is enough to break the virus’s coat. “You pull the virus apart, you make it soluble in water, and it disintegrates,” he says.

Then the harmless shards of virus get flushed down the drain. And even if it the soap doesn’t destroy every virus, you’ll still rid them from your hands with soap and water, as well as any grease or dirt they may be clinging to. Soap will also wash away bacteria and other viruses that may be a bit tougher than coronavirus, and harder to disintegrate.

The trick is this all takes a little time to happen, and that’s why you need to take at least 20 seconds to wash your hands.

First off, your skin is wrinkly, and it takes time for soap to penetrate into all the tiny folds and demolish the viruses that lurk within. Then the soap needs a few moments to do its chemical work. “You do need a bit of time for all the soap to interact back and forth with the virus particle,” he says. Twenty seconds should do the trick just fine.

You don’t need “antibacterial soap” — which the Food and Drug Administration advises to skip altogether due to a lack of evidence of its usefulness. And you don’t need a super-harsh detergent like you’d put in your dishwasher or laundry machine. Simple soap works fine. “As long as you give it a little bit of time, it will do its job.”

It carries over no balance from day to day. It allows no overdraft so you can’t borrow against yourself or use more time than you have.

Each day, the account starts fresh. Each night, it destroys an unused time. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, it’s your loss and you can’t appeal to get it back.

There is never any borrowing time. You can’t take a loan out on your time or against someone else’s. The time you have is the time you have and that is that.

Time management is yours to decide how you spend the time, just as with money you decide how you spend the money.

It is never the case of us not having enough time to do things, but the case of whether we want to do them and where they fall in our priorities.

The images above have been designed to encapsulate every element of who we are and why we are. I put it together last year - and modified it this year to include our Turtles - each representing one of our Pōhatu Tūmu Foundation Stones - and the Key Competencies.

For us at WHS it was a day of fun, food, henna art, celebration of family - and lots of colour. Thank you parents for your support - and your patience in dealing with the colour stained kids we sent home!

Back in 2009 I was the first person in the South Island to contract the Swine Flu. I picked it up while on a sponsored visit to Apple Computer Headquarters in California.

Our family went into very strict quarantine for about a month - Tiaki (in picture) my wife and mother-in-law did not leave the house. Tiaki caught the virus from me but neither my wife nor my mother-in-law did. Swine Flu was more contagious than Covid-19. For Tiaki and I the impact was very minor - it was like having a cold, and definitely not as bad as having the winter flu.

In saying all of that, it does not mean I am treating this Covid-19 virus lightly. We know the risk for children and young people is very, very low. The big risk is for the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. So I though I feel confident that if I did catch it I would be fine, the risk is I could pass it on to someone who would not be fine. Therefore it is vital we take every precaution to avoid possibly spreading the virus.

 What is SchoolDocs?

SchoolDocs provides a comprehensive core set of policies and procedures applicable to all New Zealand primary, intermediate, secondary, and area/composite schools, that is tailored for each school.

SchoolDocs updates, modifies, and creates policies in response to changes in legislation or Ministry guidelines, significant events, reviews/requests from schools, and regular reviewing from the SchoolDocs team.

SchoolDocs has a regular review schedule - and parents are invited to contribute

MASSEY CROSS COUNTRY RUNNING is the best way to keep fit during winter!! Fun runs, relays, and races are on Saturdays at 3:00pm at Moire Park Massey and interclub events held at other venues around Auckland.  The season starts at the end of March and continues to the end of September.  

The Massey 1K Challenge, a free event for kids aged 7-16 years old, will be held on Monday 30th Mar at 5.30pm at Moire Park.  

There will be a 2km time trial at Moire Park on Saturday’s 4th and 18th April at 3.00pm.

For more information, check out the website: www.masseyathletics.org.nz. or e-mail masseycrosscountry@gmail.com.