3 ms·

Yes, you save, according to OP, 2 seconds, 4, since you then have to open the lid every time. Since it has no impact on your health, you should prefer to save t

• mulmen 4y ago
  > crippling neurosis. Well that escalated quickly. You are ignoring the actual benefit of halving exposure with a couple of seconds of effort. Worrying about that kind of time is itself crippling neurosis. I reject your analysis.
  • alar44 4y ago
    Halving a 0.00001% chance that you get some crazy infection from flushing the toilet is definitely neurotic. You're better off saving the 2 seconds and not thinking about it. "But it's still half!" Half of nothing is nothing.
  • doliveira 4y ago
    Yeah, at first scan I thought it was going to be some ironic comment. Which it was, just not intentionally
  • ouid 4y ago
    I am not ignoring that effect. I am dismissing it with two arguments. The first is that this extremely unlikely to ever be your largest exposure to a pathogen. The reason that it is important in a hospital is because they essentially autoclave these room to try to eradicate C Diff. The second reason is that even if it is your largest exposure to that pathogen, and that is enough to make you ill, it is almost certain that a dose of half of that size will also be sufficient to make you ill. It is notable that there are no studies to the effect of "do people who close their toilet lids at home get sick less often". The scientific journalism of this "effect" is always about the quantity of germs, or conflating home and hospital settings, where again, the objective is literally zero C diff. It riles up the germophobes.
    • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      > It is notable that there are no studies to the effect of "do people who close their toilet lids at home get sick less often". There are also no studies proving that people who jump out of an airplane with a parachute live longer than a control. I guess we should not trust our instinct in this case. Using UV light to see the plume of a flush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI Search youtube for many other demonstrations.
      • ouid 4y ago
        I think you think that the only kind of study that confirm this hypothesis is some kind of RCT, where we give one group a placebo toilet flush, and the other I try to get infect with norovirus. The point of "https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094" which is more or less making the same tongue in cheek argument as you, is that there are limitations to what can be counted through an RCT. I am, however, not talking about an RCT. I am talking about the conspicuous lack of observational study of the clinical phenomenonology of toilet plume, rather than some secondary observation about scary germs. Epidemiologists must find ways to study illness without actually making people ill, but they still, for the most part, manage. Moreover, observational study is not, in any way, lacking, about what happens when you jump out of a plane with a parachute. It's not merely common sense, it has been observed to happen. Moreover, this is reflected pretty fucking well in the literature https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brjsmed00041-0015.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brj....
        • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
          I am simply amazed that you cannot see adverse risk in certain activities without a study - observational, RCT, or otherwise - confirming it. I wonder how people 500 years ago lived with risk without the proliferation of studies that we have today. Maybe risk simply did not exist back then since no studies confirmed it?
          • 4y ago
  • hgomersall 4y ago
    Is it a benefit to reduce exposure in a household, or even non-hospital setting? We're only just beginning to understand the gut biome, and too much historical advice that seemed sensible turned out to be problematic when understood better.