Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum H1N1 is here.

Here in Australia they are recommending those in high-risk categories be immunised as a priority (pregnant women, healthcare workers, those with immune problems, diabetics, indigenous people) but the panic we had a couple of months ago in winter seems to have gone away. I suppose I was rather surprised to see the statistics which showed how deadly the ordinary seasonal influenzas had typically been!

Agreed currawong! Had a few infections through this year, stress + no sleep = sick ... but H1N1 isn't really bad, its just the terrible jokes that come with H1N1 that can really annoy me.

Yep...sorry about the misinformation. I checked with one of my physician friends last night and he said the alcohol in most sanitizers definitely helps. A good scrubbing session with soap and water is still better, but the sanitizers do help.

I fully expect to get H1N1 this year. I live near a hospital, and my wife works at the hospital, several of my friends work at the hospital, several of my students' parents work at the hospital. Some of these people work in pediatrics and the infectious disease department. They've already diagnosed some cases here, so I know the virus is running around town somewhere.

Guess we'll see how good my immune system is!

Oh...one thing I'm doing is limiting my physical contact with students and the piano they play on. Since people become infectious before they show symptoms, I could have H1N1 today and have no idea. I carry that little bit of knowledge around in the back of my mind every day, hoping that I don't do anything to infect others.

Me too. There is much more contact with beginners and especially their little hands. You have to touch them. Helping to place their fingers on the keys, opening their books and I sitting close enough to them to point to the notes on the page makes contact with germs unavoidable. Older advance students open their own books I am able to sit further away form them. This week I avoided demonstrating on the piano (and touching the keys after a student). Wouldn’t you know it, last night I had all beginners.

Tonight I have a family of four and the parent is a pediatrician. Yikes.

No offense Gooddog, but that's disgusting! Why in the world would he suggest that? Is someone planning on digging in the trash? That's what trash cans are for! The "dispose of elsewhere" would probably be my driveway where I would have to touch them to pick them up lol!

FYI: I had 6 piano kids yesterday, 3 out sick. Son's history class of 30 had 9 out sick, my own classroom of 16 had 4 out sick.

Well I picked up some hand sanitizers, but they only killed 60% of the bacteria. So back I went and got the 99.9% ones! (So what's the .1% issue?) So just check the bottles!

Here's hoping no one has to shut down a piano studio!

I don't keep a trash can in my studio. I do keep tissues and after a student blows his nose I ask him to put it in his pocket (and throw it away at home). I don't think that's disgusting. Then I give them a drop of hand sanitizer.

I actually heard this from a veteran teacher and also saw it in a teaching textbook. Did you ever think about the affect of sitting next to a virus filled trashcan for an hour? The book was addressing the fact that new public school teachers often get sick and one way to battle this was to avoid keeping a tissue filled trashcan near the teacher's desk. I have extended this. I request my students thrown their tissues in the large can outside my classroom or keep them in their pockets to dispose of later. I think it helps.

Sorry for butting in her, but my RN self can't help it. If I were you, I'd wipe down the keys after every student, if it won't hurt the piano. It's the friction that kills the bacteria more than the wipe, so you could probably use a more gentle wipe more frequently and then do the Clorox at the end of the day.

The most important thing is not to touch your face, and to teach your students not to. It drives me nuts to see people putting their fingers in their mouths or touching their face, hair, etc... You never really get your hands clean, just decrease the viral and bacterial count (think of how long a surgeon scrubs - almost 10 minutes with a hard brush and potent antibacterial scrub).

The virus can hang in the air and on surfaces for a long time.

The key is to break the pathogen cycle in as many places as possible, and the last place is keeping it out of your body, by not introducing to your mouth or nose.

Take care and stay well!

Holy cow. I forgot about the piano books, those little hotbeds of pathogens. Impossible to clean.

Just put a plastic liner in the waste bin. Otherwise the pathogens will be growing on the inside of your waste basket and when you pick it up those little things could get on you.
Remember, virus and bacteria are bugs (as one of my nursing teachers called them), they are alive and mobile, in a sense, although virus are really different in that they are parasitic.

At any rate, they die at different rates, and many can remain viable on a surface for several hours, and many can float in the air for hours as well.

This might be a good time to mention this website....I don't know why the mainstream media does not pick up on this in regards to the flu etc www.vitamindcouncil.org Not only do they talk about Vit D3 and the possible connection to fighting the flu, but a host of other problems we face due to the lack of Vit D3 in our bodies. Food for thought!

Here is a more direct link to the VitD3 connection and the H1N1 flu. http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-and-h1n1-swine-flu.shtml

Just be careful which web sites you put your trust in. The CDC and other reliable sources are better than someone called the vitamin council. While vitamin deficiencies can have a negative impact on your immune system, there is no evidence that I have seen, and by that I mean reliable double blind studies with adequate samples and replication, that show any nutrient can prevent the transmission of a pathogen.

By the way, you can have a blood test to determine whether you are deficient in Vitamin D. I had one because of my bone issues, and my levels were just fine.

I would think one of those pedal-operated wastepaper baskets, with a lid that closes by itself, would be both less unsightly and more sanitary.

Handwashing, sanitizer use, cleaning keys, making the kids use their own books, getting the vaccine... all you can do is try to improve the odds. All of them probably help, none of them is going to give you a 100% sure thing.

You can definitely help yourself if you take your vitamins, eat your vegetables, exercise moderately, get your beauty rest, and do a good deed once in a while. You might get the flu anyway, but the good health practices will make you stronger from inside... and you won't get dishpan hands from constantly disinfecting everything in your world.

Nikalette, your point is well taken. My reason for posting this is that this website, run by Dr. Cannell has been around for quite awhile. It may be that the Vit D3 is not beneficial in helping to prevent the H1N1, but at this point, making sure your Vit D3 levels are optimum, which it sounds like you have done, is a good thing. It certainly cannot hurt, and if it does prove to be of help in preventing one from contracting the flu, great! Unless your are allergic to Vit D3, I don't think there is anything wrong with getting one's levels up to what Dr.Cannell talks about on his website. Dr.Cannell also talks about getting a blood test for your D3, but you must get the correct one, there are 2 different ones, and only the one called 25-hydroxyvitamin D test, also called a 25(OH)D is the one that will give you the correct levels that he talks about. You can have the test before starting the extra D3, or after taking it for 2 months. All this info and more is on his site, www.vitamindcouncil.org

Thanks to his website, I have been taking extra Vit D3 now for almost 11 months, and have not had a cold or sore throat since starting it. My levels are at 70ng's per ml, but it took much larger amounts of D3 to get there than what the gov't currently recommends as your daily intake requirements.

Grandpiano man: Good for you on the Vit D3 working for you.
The doctor who had me take the D level blood test did so because the necessary requirements (he is a sports medicine doc) are about double what the MDR lists.

Jeff Clef: You're right about just reducing your odds and all the wellness advice. However, the single most important prevention for contagious illness is adequate handwashing, and secondarily, keeping your hands away from your face. At home, with my daughter and myself, we do the routine handwashing, after the restroom, before eating, after coughing etc...

Warning: graphic content:

But in public, that's a different story. I won't even TOUCH a door handle in a public restroom without a paper towel. We carry cleanser in our bags so we can clean our hands before eating (a very important practice, which appears to have vanished) without going into the filthy bathrooms in most restaurants. Why are they filthy? Because people don't wash their hands after using them.

When I see a woman (and I KNOW it's worse for men), walking out of a restroom without washing her hands, I want to call out "Bon appetit! Enjoy your sandwich!"

Oh, and just to sicken you even further, most public restrooms don't have lids over the toilets. A toilet when flushed sprays a fine mist of water and other "things" many, many feet, and that mist stays in the air for hours.

Never face a toilet when you flush. And keep your toothbrushes a good distance away.

I do have a special interest in infection control...I used to give classes to nurses' aides, practical nurses, medi-cal workers, etc...on infection control. I'm sure their lives were never the same after my lectures.

Hee hee me too I use a towel on the handles of the bathrooms (why can't they all just push open??) and my sleeve for all other doors. Embarrasses the heck out of my kids. That is the grossest thing ever when people don't wash. I wish people would yell something at them, that would be fun! lol Trouble is, most of them wouldn't even understand what you're talking about.

I had to lightly harass the lady at the clinic the other day when I went in for a flu shot. I had to sign a paper and went in my purse to grab a pen (won't touch those either). She handed me the "magic" pen that I HAD to use because it shows up on the computer. I thought it was a bit daft to have a communal pen in a clinic where everyone is sick! Ummm duh? Went straight into the uncovered toilet room, washed, then used a paper towel to open the door lol.

Ebony & Ivory

Doesn't that make you ?

Well, I seem to have it. All week, my hyper-responsible, never-miss-work roommate has been home sick with what her Dr. believes to be H1N1, and today I started getting sick myself. I felt fine yesterday, but today I woke up with a headache, gradually developed a back ache, then my sinuses started emitting strange, thick mucus as well as bleeding sporadically. And I'm nauseated. Funsies.

The weirdest part is how about 2 hours ago I started to feel like I was drunk (on something weirdly hallucenogenic... absinthe, perhaps?), with my head swimming and my body getting weak and clumsy. In the opening of her article about catching the swine flu, pandemic expert Laurie Garret says, "As I type these words my brain is swarming with mind-twisting immune-system chemicals called cytokines", and now I know just what she meant!