The public is being swamped by informational fraud, because there are so many know-nothings pretending to know something serving as propagandists for causes.

The primary tactic for informational fraud is to make a statement that could be true but is totally irrelevant. It must be irrelevant to strip away necessary requirements. Then nothing more is explained. The complete absence of explanations pushes the irrelevant statements into every nook and cranny of the subject creating false assumptions.

So the tacticians of informational fraud choose a point which is positive or negative but irrelevant. They make sure it is a true statement. Then dropping the subject like a hot potato spreads the positiveness or negativeness across the entire subject creating fraud meaning for the elements that are relevant.

A complex method of doing the same thing is to write a headline which suggests something implausible. Then go into endless detail on tangential subjects, usually the history of the subject skewed toward the purpose. You wait for the relevance and explanations, but they don't exist. Supposedly the central point is proven in the tone of the nonsense.

Know-nothings are used for this tactic as a method of keeping accountable persons in the background. Then, the deficiencies are simply the result of someone misinterpreting something they are not familiar with.

Of course, this pattern is practiced most thoroughly in know-nothings promoting greenhouse gas alarmism and the answer in renewable energy claiming it is on par with coal. Then the deficiency of standards shows up almost everywhere.

A complex example is some researchers studying how long viruses survive on a surface. The whole relevance is in what "survive" means. The reporters don't say, since they are not scientists. The scientists did say that their study does not show whether the viruses could actually create an infection in humans. But the reporters usually omitted that statement and assumed and claimed that people would be getting sick from the viruses.

The only relevant point in such a scientific study is what is meant by survive and how was it measured. That point is too technical for nonscientists, so they ignored it. The scientists might have simply determined if the RNA could be replicated afterwards. That point would not be of much relevance, as Mammoth DNA can be replicated after thousands of years in tundra. So maybe the scientists stuck the viruses in tissue cultures to see if they would grow. That too would not tell much, because those tissue cultures are derived from strange lines, usually cancer cells subcultured for 50 years, which do not have the same characteristics as vulnerable human cells.

But the researchers did say that they did not determine if humans could be infected by the viruses which were removed from the surfaces after three days, and the reporters usually omitted that statement while replacing it with their own interpretation that humans could be infected by the viruses after siting on surfaces for three days. The omitted information was the total meaning, and what replaced it in the reports was total fraud.

A general misconception concerning surfaces is the numbers. Throughout microbiology, everything is referenced to numbers, such as the lethal dose that causes 50% to die (LD-50), or the infective dose for 50% of the test subjects (ID-50). Generally, hundreds or thousands of virus particles are required to create the ID-50, because most virus particles won't end up in the right place doing the right things while evading the defenses. How many virus particles could be placed on and then removed from a dry surface and then be placed in contact with vulnerable tissue such a mucus membranes? No one knows, but carefulness is always necessary in public environments. For this reason, people often rub their eyes with knuckles which don't touch door knobs.

Understanding the numbers game is important, because what it means is that you don't try to kill pathogens on surfaces; you remove them, in most circumstances. Removing pathogens does not require getting all of them, because the numbers can be reduced to nonfunctionality by proper wiping. Hands are a different problem, as people generally are familiar with.

People are always supposed to be cleaning surfaces and their hands, mostly because of Staph, Strep, enterics, fungal spores, etc. When those pathogens are taken care of, the viruses are taken care of in regard to surfaces. But what people are not being told is that damp cotton is just about the only relevant way to clean pathogens from normal, smooth surfaces, other than hands, under usual conditions. Damp cotton grabs microbes and digs them out. Dry cotton does not. Wet cotton leaves liquid behind which could be assumed to contain microbes. Anything that damp cotton leaves behind is not going to be infective under normal circumstances. Washing hands with soapy suds before wiping on cotton loosens up particles and dissolves the oils, and then the cotton does most of the removing. Damp paper towels are not as effective but an acceptable alternative.

Damp cotton is not real easy to produce. Spinning wet towels in a washer set on spin would be a method. Squeezing enough water out of wet towels is difficult to do. The simplest method of producing damp cotton is to spray a dry towel with a hand sprayer.

Bleach is totally worthless for wiping away bacteria, because it is way too slow and dilute; and the fumes are bad for lungs. Halides react by substitution, which means attaching to cell surfaces where they can create antigenic reactions. Even though viruses would be more vulnerable to bleach than bacteria, the dangerousness of the fumes should not be ignored. Opening a window is a joke. You will inhale bleach fumes before they get to a window.

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