It’s been pretty well established that COVID-19 spreads through droplets of moisture suspended in the air. Apparently, a very cautious person wants to be sure that we don’t spread the virus through the sewage system. Or maybe someone’s worried that people will be smelling stuff that normal people would avoid smelling.
When we “checked in” to the quarantine hotel, we were given a bottle of chlorine tablets, and written instructions for how to use them. We are supposed to put a tablet in the toilet before we flush down our business. This makes our poop nice and clean before it hits the sewage system.
The written instructions were to put ten pellets in the toilet, wait 30 minutes, then flush. A friend had shared the written instructions with me in advance, so the Poopoo Pellet thing wasn’t a surprise. What the hotel staff told us was different, though. The hotel staff told me to put in ONE pellet, and to flush it right away. I asked for confirmation that she said one pellet, not ten, and that we didn’t have to wait 30 minutes. She confirmed yes, one pellet, and don’t let it mellow, just flush it down.
Because it was so important to get it right, we were given written and oral instructions. I believe that this is a arbitrary bureaucratic policy informed by pseudo-science, and so the fact that two sets of instructions were contradictory does not bother me in the slightest. I think that waiting 30 minutes for the poopoo pills to do their magic, and flushing the pills down with the poop right away, are equally effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19. That is to say, not at all.
Yes, I’m pretty skeptical that even if I were carrying the COVID-19 virus, that I could spread it via my poop and pee. And if I could spread it that way, I doubt that a chlorine tablet in the toilet would prevent that. In fact, if this is a danger, then we have a bigger problem to worry about. To be honest, the whole thing sounds like something I’d hear from a certain elected official in the U.S. You know who I mean: the guy who talked about stuffing ultraviolet lightbulbs up our body cavities (or something like that). But I try not to be a jerk, and I admit that I’m not an expert on poop-born COVID, so I’m playing along.
I plop a poopoo pill into the pottie before I begin my business. The chlorine smell that wafts up from the toilet bowl invokes happy memories of frolicking in a swimming pool, during the salad days of my youth. The smell cheers me up as I sit on a Chinese toilet, waiting for this silliness to end.
Hygiene theater! Such fun.