Posted on 11/11/2009 7:32:07 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Can you imagine how many people have physically handled your money? Do you know who has previously touched it? Did they have a flu virus or some other communicable disease that is transmitted by physical contact with an infected object? Physical paper currency is often dirty - not so much to the sight, but it is a good home for dangerous microbes. It is often kept warm by our body heat and even absorbs some body moisture - a perfect breeding ground for bad stuff.
It has been well-known for decades that paper currency is a major source of disease transmission. During the life of the average dollar bill, it will be handled by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It is hard to think of any physical object that is handled by more different people than paper currency. Millions become ill every year as a result of handling currency, and a not insignificant percentage of them die. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 36,000 Americans die each year from flu-related causes. How many people received the flu from paper currency? The precise percentage is unknown, but if it is just 10 percent, that still translates into a couple of million needlessly ill people and thousands of deaths.
The good news is that it is no longer necessary to use paper currency in the digital age. Payments of all types can be made by electronic means - with electronic banking; credit, debit and smart cards; and cell phones - all of which help the user avoid physical contact with dirty paper money. (Note: Most paper currencies are made largely from cotton cloth, which makes them very absorbent.)
The bad news is that government policies are slowing down
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Back to this nonsense????? Visa and MC were trying to make these stupid arguments back in the 70s.
Back to this nonsense????? Visa and MC were trying to make these stupid arguments back in the 70s.
This is a false issue to bring more Big Brother control over you.
Paper money is quite washable. So are coins.
ATM Keypads, touchscreens, and those special signature pens however are all loaded with microbes, possibly many of which pathogenic varieties. I'm most concerned about drug-resistant TB, but certainly influenza, rhinovirus, and the superbugs MRSA and VRE are of concern for transmission from keypads and the like.
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It’s not just the government. I have had two nurses tell me that anytime you bleed from a scratch you should go to the doctor. Generating business, I guess. And that is what they are teaching everyone now.
It’s not the bleeding cuts that will get you, it’s the ones that don’t bleed. I have never gone to a doctor for a wound, I just hit it with Peroxide if it is a larger one and bandage it up and continue doing what I was doing before.
It’s always amusing to suddenly find somebody somewhere is concerned about our health and wellbeing, and then uses nonsensical reasons to support their arguments. Hell, computer fraud has reached epic proportion. I’ve had to get two different credit card numbers because they were hacked.
One of the reasons the US economy is undoubtedly the housing market - and one of the reasons that market is hosed, is because modern computer technology turned what was once a very saleable but not very liquid asset - a home - and bundled the mortgages together, sliced and diced, cubed and squared, and able to be traded at the click of the mouse. In some ways were are much more vulnerable because of the ease of cyber-terrorism or cyber-theft. Anyway, since the premise is arguable, one wonders what the aim here really is. Or not.
What can/should a doctor do that I can't? I can clean it, put on peroxide/alcohol and bandage it. If the doctor gives out a prescription for general antibiotics without any indication of an infection or knowledge of what type of bacteria is causing it then he is putting everyone at risk for developing antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is worse than then one in a thousand minor cuts which gets infected and really needs antibiotics.
Personally I would happily put off refinancing my house or restructuring my stock portfolio until the lights come back on. But it would be awfully nice to be able to purchase a sixpack of beer while I'm waiting.
If we can’t handle germs on money....how can we handle WAR? the Wussification of America continues.
That is exactly what is happening. Wussification is a real threat to our Republic.
Same here. I’m probably worse. The medical profession hates people like me. My whole family and most of my colleagues have had the swine flu. By all rationalizations, I should be sick on the couch right now, but I just take my daily 3cc dose of colloidal silver. I feel fine.
“I have nothing to hide...”
Some people do.
Some people want to hide the stockpile of ammo, food, etc, they’ve built up over the years.
Some people don’t want others to know what size clothes they bought or what they read.
Anyway, it’s not about having something to hide. It’s about autonomy.
Paper is a hit. It should be possible to make very beautiful paper bills containing an exact amount of gold in $1 to $20 amounts. Silver has anti-germ properties, but would make for heavy $20 paper bills. These bills would be inflation and government default proof.
The problem with your minimum dime coin system is that retailers would set prices on every item to screw the customer out of 9 cents on every purchase.
You see, there would be no more need for a hundredths digit than there is for a thousandth’s digit now.
How about washing one’s hands? Alcohol-based hand sanitizers?
Who says that retailers will price items to the tenth dollar?
They will continue to price things exactly as they do now.
>>Who says that retailers will price items to the tenth dollar?
Common sense does. They don’t price in half or tenth cents now.
>>They will continue to price things exactly as they do now.
The whole point is that they won’t.
And seriously, are you worried about being cheated out of a nickel every time you go shopping? You think that retailers would like to get famous for that kind of slimy behavior?
Retailers should happily embrace this, because it would save them lots of cashier and accounting time.
Hey, I used to do daycare for a nice single mom who was a stripper. She paid me mostly in $1 bills!
Darn, saw an article about this recently, and I can't remember exactly where I read it. I can't find it on Google. (It was published at the CDC or NIH.) Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject "Hand Sanitizer."
Essentially, hand sanitizers are effective against most bacteria and enveloped viruses. Non-enveloped viruses might not be killed, nor will bacteria in spore form. All of these will be killed by bleach (on bleach resistant surfaces only, don't bleach your hands!). Some research has shown that the hand sanitizers kill susceptible organisms more effective than hand washing. Always use a product with at least 70% alcohol.
Neither hand sanitizers nor bleach are effective against cryptosporidia, a common cause of diarrhea among young children. To kill cryptosporidia, use hydrogen peroxide. If you are concerned about cryptosporidia, first clean the surface with bleach (diluted between 1:100 and 10:100), rinse it, then clean with hydrogen peroxide.
As an afterthought: Don’t bleach money! Washing and ironing it will kill anything! :)
You got it.
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