Considering the Coronavirus outbreak - are "made in china" knives safe to handle ?

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I am not a medical professional and certainly don't want to raise any "false alarm".

Just wondering the impact of recent Coronavirus outbreak on "made in china" knives. As per CDC the virus (CDC is referring it as 2019-nCoV) could potentially be transmitted by touching an object with the virus on it.

Is it possible for a "made in china" knife to get infected (during the manufacture/assembly process) and potentially serve as a vessel to transmit the virus across the globe ? I am not sure if its a standard practice for the knives to get sanitized or disinfected before shipping.

Do we have anyone knowledgeable in this matter on BF, who would like to weigh in ?
 
Nasty bugs like coronaviruses can last for days on objects. The sinister sounding Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (more commonly known as MRSA) lasted longest (168 hours) on material from a seat-back pocket while the bacteria Escherichia coli O157:H7 (also known as E.coli, which can cause kidney problems) survived longest (96 hours) on the material from the armrest of planes, according to research presented in 2014 to the American Society for Microbiology.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/h...s-from-china-has-spread-so-quickly-2020-01-21

You'll be fine - by the time it makes it from China to the retailer to you, the viruses will be dead.
 
This interests me.

I didn’t find anything specific to the current Coronavirus strain but what I found about the older SARS Coronavirus surprised me.

This publication reported dried surface SARS-CV remained infectious for 9 days.

This research used a surrogate virus with similar properties to Coronavirus and showed dried virus stability on stainless steel at room temperature for up to 28 days! That really blows my mind.

Of course, stability outside the host probably varies with different strains.

Regarding something having to bathe in body fluids to become a vector, sorry, that is categorically false. (Although that would certainly increase the viral load!). Transmission is commonly fecal-oral (poor hand hygiene), respiratory droplet (cough-cough), or nasal secretions (rub a runny nose then touch something).
 
Good question.
Knives are a very small part of what we buy from China.
Clothing and thousands of other products come from that country. Just walk into a Walmart and you're literally surrounded, lol!

If you were looking for piece of mind, a knife could be soaked in alcohol in a container for a day or two, I suppose.
 
Of course, we could then apply that to knives or other products from anywhere, even from the U.S. How about your produce, if whoever picked it had some form of hepatitis or other disease? Or simply didn’t wash his/her hands after going to the bathroom? Or if the produce came in contact with bird or other animal waste? There are lots of people who only give their produce a cursory washing, if that, prior to eating. Or what if the restaurant worker were HIV-positive? There are tons of things like that a person could potentially worry about.

After the Fukushima disaster, I remember someone asking if the Spyderco knives coming out of Seki were going to be radioactive.

Jim
 
James Y said:
Of course, we could then apply that to knives or other products from anywhere, even from the U.S. How about your produce, if whoever picked it had some form of hepatitis or other disease? Or simply didn’t wash his/her hands after going to the bathroom? Or if the produce came in contact with bird or other animal waste? There are lots of people who only give their produce a cursory washing, if that, prior to eating. Or what if the restaurant worker were HIV-positive? There are tons of things like that a person could potentially worry about.

After the Fukushima disaster, I remember someone asking if the Spyderco knives coming out of Seki were going to be radioactive.

Jim
Click to expand...

LOL, hepatitis or HIV from someone who handled your food?

Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.
 
What if they bled, or coughed or sneezed on or around it? I am not HIV-paranoid; my point being there are millions of things a person could potentially worry about. I doubt anyone will get coronavirus from a Chinese knife. But if you’re worried about it, consider there are a million other Chinese-made products people buy, including this Apple product I’m writing on, as well as food products from China. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ve never gotten sick from any knives or other non-food products. And food products only a few times overseas.

Jim
 
James Y said:
After the Fukushima disaster, I remember someone asking if the Spyderco knives coming out of Seki were going to be radioactive.
Click to expand...

Dang! I can only imagine what flippers would be asking for a radioactive Endura sprint these days! :D

Think the same might be true for a WE Coronavirus sprint?
 
Blues Bender said:
LOL, hepatitis or HIV from someone who handled your food?

Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.
Click to expand...

One of the primary ways that Hepatitis A is transmitted is via food that hasn’t been handled carefully. It’s not really an issue if you’re in the US, but Hep A vaccinations are recommended if you’re traveling in less-developed countries, for that exact reason.
 
corona-virus-memes-first-mexican-victim.jpg
 
:) The best prophylaxis is 100 proof "medical" alcohol .

"Corona" beer pretends , but is actually too weak . :rolleyes:
 
I would say you are statistically more likely to catch one of the strains of flu that the shot isn't as effective against this year from a doorknob than some random virus from Asia.

Keep in mind that while I dont mean to downplay the seriousness of a pathogen, 1000s of Americans will die from flu or flu complications this year. This virus is scary because it is unknown, but so far it doesn't seem to be anything more deadly than 100 other bugs that could kill you.

If it bothers you, open your knife package with rubber gloves and disinfect it before handling it. It's not like someone is going to mail you a knife like some random white powder that you won't know is coming.

I have bigger things to worry about than that.
 
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