{"id":1722,"date":"2009-05-08T14:31:02","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T14:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/05\/08\/hygiene_hypothesis\/"},"modified":"2009-05-08T14:31:02","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T14:31:02","slug":"hygiene_hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/05\/08\/hygiene_hypothesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Hygiene hypothesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The clinical building at my institute has always been very conscientious about infection control. They&#8217;ve had hand sanitiser dispensers for years, but in the last few months (before swine flu!) they&#8217;ve begun to supplement them with large numbers of new signs exhorting people to &#8220;stop the spread!&#8221;.<br \/>\nThey&#8217;re also using a series of new stickers. Here&#8217;s the one on the outside of the ladies&#8217; loo next to a seminar room:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3594\/3512278793_4a940641e2_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" \/><br \/>\nI&#8217;d noticed that this number did not increase during the week since I was last in the building, a rather surprising turn of events given the amount of caffeine required to get through some seminars. But it was my colleagues who noticed that something much more sinister seems to be going on. As soon as I heard, I immediately dashed in there, personal safety be damned and iPhone in hand, to document these shenanigans for the benefit of my readers.<br \/>\n[cont]<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThis is the inside of the same door. The door opens inwards, meaning that the only way to leave the room is to use the handle.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3654\/3512279281_0e590b117a_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" \/><br \/>\nWormhole? Rabid toilet beast that pulls its prey into the sewers by the thousands?<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3556\/3513150512_e130a7a3d9_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"191\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Previously documented inhabitant of Vancouver&#8217;s sewer system<\/em><br \/>\nOr are 82.7% of all users too freaked out by the stickers to touch the handle, and can only leave the room when someone else opens the door from the outside? It&#8217;s a fine line between good hygiene and germophobia after all. Must get pretty crowded in that room at times.<br \/>\nMaybe the answer lies inside the stalls. I chose one of the three and ventured in, wary of rabid toilet beasts, but trying hard to visualise the first Pulitzer to be won by a random person with a crappy camera.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3359\/3513085850_63d20f32ce_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" \/><br \/>\nBut<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3659\/3512279115_5fce0aa6c2_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" \/><br \/>\nHypotheses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>3,321 out of 5,499 users chose this stall, with 71.3% of them meeting an untimely demise some time between flushing and exiting the stall. This would suggest either a rabid toilet beast, or an unnecessarily strong flush, causing a powerful vacuum that sucks people into the sewers. Either way, we should check those <a href=\"http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/ennis\/blog\/2008\/05\/27\/theres-something-fishy-afoot\">feet<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>953 out of 5,499 users chose this stall, and flushed an average of 3.84 times each, perhaps to banish the rabid toilet beast.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Either way, it appears that only the survivors of this one stall made it out of the room alive. Pulitzer Schmulitzer, I got the hell out of there without further journalistic investigation.<br \/>\nAny other ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The clinical building at my institute has always been very conscientious about infection control. They&#8217;ve had hand sanitiser dispensers for years, but in the last few months (before swine flu!) they&#8217;ve begun to supplement them with large numbers of new &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/05\/08\/hygiene_hypothesis\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}