Licking the Christmas Card envelopes to close them

I shred envelopes, our recycling centre doesn’t take them.

and here is the link www.liveabout.com/fear-of-licking-3299081

A bit like the strory that made us all wide-eyed in childhood - that if we swallowed an apple pip a tree would grow in our stomache and grow out through our mouths.

Eggs in glue - Urban Myth. Look it up

I worked in a post office years ago and my co worker told me never to lick a stamp as the glue is made from a gum made in the tropics and can contain eggs that can hatch in you gut to cause internal parasites.

I licked mine - I spent so long writing each one that any sponge put out to wet the sticky would have dried up between cards. Maybe in future I'll write them and stack them unstuck, then go through with a wet cloth or sponge and stick them all down in one go. Or splash out on self-adhesive ones.

Anyway, as some have said - the sticky part is, by definition, no longer accessible, so how would you get any virus from it?

And regarding the paper-knife survey - I do have one, but I also have a nifty little gadget which is great for opening letters. After years of secretarial and office work it's second nature to open letters neatly with a knife.

I might post a picture of the "nifty little gadget" but I don't have it to hand at the moment.

petra

Brilliant!

I do, but not as soon as I get home, the chances of COVID being on the purse and being viable is so low that I can safely touch it later in the day without any problem.

All these fears of COVID transmission through letters, parcels, deliveries etc etc, have been proven so many times to be groundless, that I really do not understand why people get so obsessed with them.

M0nica

FoghornLeghorn

No, because she then probably didn't touch these things again until another shop, when she would have been also wearing gloves. She will then go home where the bag will be out away for anything from several hours to days, by which time any vestigial quantities of virus, and they are likely to be very few, will have died.

On the other side. If she had shopped bare handed, she could have picked up a significant load of virus on her bare skin, that may well have stayed there for sometime, unless she is far more assiduous than most shoppers I see, in using hand sanitiser in shops, if you can find it and if the bottle isn't empty.

I wear gloves and I find that as a result I use much more sanitiser on those gloves constantly, both in volume and frequency, because I have dry skin and early in the first lockdown the constant washing and sanitising was making my hands sore and red and therefore more susceptible to absorbin any virus on them. With gloves on, I always use generous squirts of sanitiser and spread it allover the gloves, right up the wrists and deep into any folds or crevaces.

Do you really never touch anything in your handbag between shopping trips? I know I do. I use my debit/credit cards for online purchases for starters. The window cleaner likes cash so I delve into my purse. And I wonder where she disposes of her gloves when she gets into her car or gets home. And how she removes them come to that. I’ve seen so many people just screw them up and put them in their pocket. In fact gloves are no longer recommended as general ignorance of their correct usage has shown that they pose more of a transmission risk than bare, frequently washed hands.

I use a wet cloth or dip my finger under the tap.

I've done this for years, ever since someone reported that cards made in a sweat shop had cockroach eggs on the glue!

Licking!! Just what I need a large dollop of Covid spit for Christmas
Situpstraight Imagine this! You're in Melbourne Australia and you receive a card from Great Britain in a stuck-down envelope.
Inside is a card "saying"
Merry Christmas' Good News; we've just recovered from Covid-19! Have a nice day!"

Would you then put it on the mantelpiece for everyone to pick up to read, or would you declare your home a Covid hotspot and everyone lockdown.?
You'd say Yuk!
I'd say Good.

It's all a matter of commonsense.
OoRoo

Rufus2 really you are giving an example of a TV program! I live in the real world. And in the real world hopefully most people have common sense. You should be preaching to the idiots who don't wear masks who can and have mass gatherings. Also all the nut jobs who don't believe Covid is real and just a government conspiracy. The anti vaccine ones or again the nut jobs who say the government is putting a tracking device into the vaccine. I ask you are these people for real.

We are all born with common sense lets use it. And for once follow the rules. It's not hard. If we had bombs dropping on us people would do as they are told. Well Covid is a bomb it's just we can't see it.

In my experience most people are doing everything they can to look out for eachother. Unfortunately it's the selfish ones who get noticed. And it's across all age groups , all religions and races. And the same all over the world.

FoghornLeghorn

No, because she then probably didn't touch these things again until another shop, when she would have been also wearing gloves. She will then go home where the bag will be out away for anything from several hours to days, by which time any vestigial quantities of virus, and they are likely to be very few, will have died.

On the other side. If she had shopped bare handed, she could have picked up a significant load of virus on her bare skin, that may well have stayed there for sometime, unless she is far more assiduous than most shoppers I see, in using hand sanitiser in shops, if you can find it and if the bottle isn't empty.

I wear gloves and I find that as a result I use much more sanitiser on those gloves constantly, both in volume and frequency, because I have dry skin and early in the first lockdown the constant washing and sanitising was making my hands sore and red and therefore more susceptible to absorbin any virus on them. With gloves on, I always use generous squirts of sanitiser and spread it allover the gloves, right up the wrists and deep into any folds or crevaces.

And you worry about envelopes
Whiff Of course! Obviously you didn't see a Seinfeld episode in which George asked his fiancee to address and stick down envelopes containing their wedding invitations.
Being a scrooge he'd bought el cheapo ones which had toxic glue and after licking a couple of hundred she took ill and was dead by the end of the show!
You can't be too careful!

Petra you have a naughty sense of humour same as me.

Last week I was behind a woman at the checkout in M&S who was wearing plastic gloves. She:

Put her shopping in her carrier bag
Reached into her handbag to get her purse
Opened her purse to get her debit card
Paid for her shopping
Put debit card back in purse
Put purse back in handbag

So every single thing she had touched in the shop with her gloved hands had now effectively been transferred to her debit card, her purse and her handbag, all of which she was taking home with her. Utterly ridiculous. As are most of these incorrectly applied ‘safety’ precautions.

I licked all the envelopes for our cards and opened all the ones we received when we got them. Never gave it a thought, as we open our mail when it arrives anyway.

MamaCaz we have a paperknife, it was a present for OH in his golfing days and has a golf ball on the end . Have used it a couple of times but it generally sits forgotten in a drawer. How come I didn't realise this was the perfect time to use it ???

Talk of paper knives reminds me that my dad had one, which he kept in his bureau. I can see it in my mind’s eye now!

I expect my mum chucked it out when he died, like everything else of his.

Lickable flaps Not something you expect to read on GN.
Gave me a giggle ?

I rushed to the post on Saturday with my licked envelopes but found the collection time had changed so they're all sitting in the post box until Monday - should be ok by then! I did give a card to a friend by hand when we met up for a walk in the park - the only thing we can do now in tier 4 - so I just tucked that in. Didn't write on the envelope either so she can use it again if she's so inclined.

I didn't lick the envelope. I lightly glued it with a pritstick.

MamaCaz

Nope, never had a paper knife and never felt the need for one.
Curiosity has got the better of me now - I wonder what percentage of us own and use one.

I got one in a cracker one year.

And DH has one, I've just discovered that the other end opens out into a neat little penknife for opening parcels fastened with that awkward but useful brown tape.

And buy some nice soap.

For Gods sake ''Get a life''. Leaving this, leaving that for days on end, sorry but get on with your life and stop worrying so much. At our time of life you could hole up, see absolutely no-one, be miserable, lonely and then you pop-off. Live you life, enjoy your-self, have fun while you can, you are a long time dead.

Greeneyedgirl

All the cards I sent were stuck down, all the cards I received were also. Oh dear ?

We’re doomed, we’re doomed, I say!

I always use a paper knife to open envelopes, but not because of fear of infection. That had not occurred to me, either before coronavirus or now during the pandemic. I am still unworried.