How does noro move so quickly and get such momentum

[stella9]

"tis the season........

I am hearing about schools around the country with noro outbreaks. I remember when my childrens school had one a few years ago. How does it happen so fast. It is like one day there will be a few kids out. Then the next day 100 and the next day 150!!! I know the illness is allegedly spread by the fecal-oral route. If that is the case, how can so many be sick and so quickly?

Stella

[Elski]

The fecal-oral thing isn't alleged, that's definitely how it's spread. It basically spreads like wildfire because it's highly contagious (each bowel movement contains millions of microscopic virus particles and it can take just 10 of them to infect the next person) and has such a short incubation period (12-72 hrs).

If only people would pay more attention to hand hygiene 'eh? *sigh*

[Rebecca85]

Basically because kids do stuff like go to the toilet, don't flush and don't wash their hands. Then they touch each other, and the tables, and class equipment, and leave viral particles. Then most of the kids have a nervous habit like thumb sucking, nail biting or pencil chewing, so they get the virus in their mouths.

[pemommie]

After eating lunch with my daughter today at school, I can see exactly why and how it is spread so quickly. I send wet ones wipes with my kids every day to wipe their hands just before they eat, and still I sat and watched kids handling each others stuff and passing things back and forth. Kids just don't care. And, while it was so hard for me to do, I sat and watched my own kid in the mix and didn't say a thing. I thought "let her be a kid, not an obsessive compulsive wreck like me." I will probably pay for it (because IT is all over the place right now), but I let it go. I cannot and will not be there every moment to keep her from wiggling a loose tooth in her class (which I KNOW she is doing and it makes me crazy) so I have to let it go. But holy cow, it is so damned hard.

[Rebecca85]

Not sure about other schools, but at our school all infants (under 7s) are supervised washing their hands before they go into the hall to eat. Juniors (7-11) are sent to wash hands but not directly supervised. And well done for letting your kid be a kid!

[AndiGirl]

I think the Norovirus hits fast and furious. To me, it's unlike a cold where you can feel little twinges of symptoms coming on here and there. I had the stomach bug right before Christmas break. I felt fine in the morning, then by noon, I thought I was going to lose it. I had so many loose ends to tie up at work, plus get ready for the holiday. I was proud of myself for not panicking. I even envisioned myself running to the wastebasket. I was pretty nauseated, but I was able to fight through it, and I didn't v*. One of my co-workers wasn't so lucky. She is a teacher in her early 60s, though she looks much younger. She had to call her husband because he barely made it to the bathroom. That poor woman was sick for several days.

[Andrilla]

Not sure about other schools, but at our school all infants (under 7s) are supervised washing their hands before they go into the hall to eat. Juniors (7-11) are sent to wash hands but not directly supervised. And well done for letting your kid be a kid!

At the school I work at the sinks are basically in the hallway so that teachers can watch them wash their hands when they come out of the bathroom, but that doesn't mean that they wash their hands well. They all use soap, but they just squish soap on their hands and then rinse it off, no real washing involved. You can't watch 25 kids wash their hands and make sure that they do a good job while making sure that Skyler and Kean don't get in a fight, or that Jessica isn't just talking to Ariel instead of using the bathroom, and then making sure that Frankie isn't running back to the class room. You don't have enough eyes to do it all at once! (I've tried!)

And before they wash their hands, maybe Alexis is fixing her hair. She washes her hands and suddenly her fingers are back in her hair again, getting that pony-tail just right. The kids I work with are 8, they still don't have that hygiene thing down. I'm more surprised that any of them are healthy! (BTW, names are fake, I'm not running around breaking privacy rules)

[Rebecca85]

Oh yes, I realise that, but it's better than not washing at all! I figure even if they do a rubbish job of washing their hands, it will remove maybe half the germs on their hands, which will hopefully mean they leave less germs everywhere and so maybe only the kids with weak stomachs will get ill instead of the whole class!