How are we dealing with Gates

Seen quite a few signs asking people to wear gloves when opening gates. To me its all a bit pointless i’m sure gloves carry virus just as well as skin. I’m also a farmer who lives next to a bridle way with lots of gates. I’m also not going all neurotic about people opening gates on my land. Unlike some of my ranting Facebook friends

D

I’m not a virologist but I would imagine that the risk is pretty much negligible in the circumstances the op mentions. The spread in the community is likely to be low outside hotspots and by the time the sun had shone and time has passed most gate catches are pretty low risk.

Viroligists also say the risk is negligible. To get a large enough viral load from touching a gate in the middle of a forest in full sun shine is almost impossible. And that’s assuming the few other people who have touched the gate in exactly the same place all have Covid19.

I live in New Forest and there are A LOT of gates.

@kerley

Viroligists also say the risk is negligible.

Genuinely not being argumentative here,could you provide a link to the info regarding this please? I’m honestly interested.

Cheers matey.

Just think about when everyone goes back to work and all those doors you have to touch. I’ve been working in a hospital all through this touching door handles constantly, again just don’t suck your fingers, pick your nose.

I live with someone from PHE.

Wear gloves (as in your normal mountain biking gloves that aren’t as hard a surface as skin or metal), crack on opening gates as normal, try and not touch your face, take a little hand sanitiser with you if you want to stop and have lunch or eat food and do so after taking said gloves off. Then wash your gloves and your hands when you get home.

To get a large enough viral load from touching a gate in the middle of a forest in full sun shine is almost impossible. And that’s assuming the few other people who have touched the gate in exactly the same place all have Covid19.

This.
1. You need hundreds of viral particles in your eyes or breathing passages to be at serious risk.

2. Viruses cannot multiply unless they infect living cells. If an infected person sneezes on a gate, it’s unlikely the part of the gate you touch will have enough to be a major risk to you. If you touch it, you will not pick up all the virus particles, only a fraction and they will not multiply sitting on your gloves or clothes. If you then touch your bike and other things and spread the virus particles, they are constantly being reduced in concentration, so becoming less dangerous. Unless you go around licking random surfaces, there’s bugger all chance of getting infected from touching something outdoors. When you get home, if you park your bike overnight and put your gloves and clothes into the wash, your chances of infection are miniscule.

I always ride in gloves (sweaty bare hands and grips don’t work for me), but take off my glove to open the gates on my ride and hold the gate on places people are less likely to touch (where possible). Idea being ‘clean’ glove goes back on over ‘dirty’ hand. I’m always wiping sweat off my face when riding (try to use left hand if right hand opening gates) so although not ideal, at least the glove is not ‘dirty’ on the outside. Also carry some sanitizer which I do my hands with when I stop for a breather / admire the view / snack.

Genuinely not being argumentative here,could you provide a link to the info regarding this please? I’m honestly interested.

I haven’t got a link, it is what various virologists have been saying over the last 2 months in interviews/appearances on TV news shows.

I’ve got my gloves on wash – rotation after each ride, along with my other kit.

2. Viruses cannot multiply unless they infect living cells. If an infected person sneezes on a gate, it’s unlikely the part of the gate you touch will have enough to be a major risk to you. If you touch it, you will not pick up all the virus particles, only a fraction and they will not multiply sitting on your gloves or clothes.

How exactly does the virus spread anywhere, then? We’re constantly being told the virus spreads by contact with surfaces so the above information is surely incorrect?

Whilst I accept that number of viral particles on a gate is probably lower than, say, the lift buttons in a hospital foyer, it’s also the ONE point that every single person passing through has touched. That could easily be hundreds of people per day on some of the gates near me.

I’m choosing to avoid them where possible, and either use an elbow for the latch or climb over. This is bearing in mind that my gloves are pretty much always covered in my own snot. It’s just as much about preventing you from being the spreader as it is about avoiding catching it yourself.

Of course this is also why the rules were about not travelling to do exercise, as local gates were for local people.

Now that anyone can travel anywhere the risk for infection has definitely increased.

I just use my T-shirt for mopping sweat, blowing nose, hand for opening gates

D.

Avoiding my usual route. Partly because of the increased traffic which I can’t be bothered with, but partly because numerous people may have touched the gates in the minutes before me, and no matter how small, that does seem an unnecessary risk.

Further out in the wilds I’m not too fussed. Happy opening gates all day long knowing that there might not have been anyone through for hours. Everything I have read has suggested the virus does not last long outdoors.

Loads of gates around here but yet to touch one even riding everyday, I use a stick to lift the latch and my foot to pull/push it open.

I get that the risk is low. The gate I use is metal, in a dark shady spot. I would guess at folk using it every 5 or so minutes as it is one of a limited number of entry points.
My cycling gloves will always inevitably be wiping muck out of my eyes/face, be grabbing at the bottle, often the nozzle and generally being just like more skin. So went with the separate glove for gates as the risk of me transferring something from me to the gate seems slightly possible.

First ride out in ages yesterday. Only seeing this thread reminded me we’d not really paid any attention to the two gates we’d used.

However, glove off, open gate, sanitiser, glove on doesn’t sound too difficult to do going forward.

Especially if one person holds to gate for both of us.

again just don’t suck your fingers, pick your nose.

Thanks for the advice, I’ve stopped sucking my fingers and started picking my nose ;)

Wear gloves (as in your normal mountain biking gloves that aren’t as hard a surface as skin or metal), crack on opening gates as normal, try and not touch your face, take a little hand sanitiser with you if you want to stop and have lunch or eat food and do so after taking said gloves off. Then wash your gloves and your hands when you get home.

CV or not, this is what you should do, so it doesn’t matter what or how stuff gets on your hands when out riding. No fingers near mouth or eyes unless sanitized.

I’m fairly confident that Kerley and Hols2 are on the money here.

D. Then all kit including gloves goes straight in the washing machine when I get home (gettin’ nekkid in the kitchen, whoop whoop!).

To be honest it’s the same walking the dog; there are gates and the lids of dog poo bins that need to be negotiated. I just make sure I don’t touch my face and wash my hands when I get home.

Firmly D and trying not to touch face etc. Viral load and all that.

Big difference with say supermarket trolley handle where in direct contact and sneezing / dribbling distance for a prolonged period.

Out of interest, how many D replies have come from people that still had to go to work through all this, work day to day with risk assessments and distancing etc. And how many gate sanitisers have been WFH in a bubble of fear?

I understand the need to be cautious if you have vulnerable family members, but I’ve not given the gates I’ve encountered a second thought. Simply wash gloves and hands after each ride.

Don’t we all just bunnyhop the mo’fo’s? Ahem…cough….(not that kind of cough…)

D

If the average infected person infects 0.7-0.9 other people (current R value), think how many surfaces they will have touched, other people they will have been in contact with, household members that they could have infected during the ~2 week infectious period. The chance of that ~1 infection being attributable to a gate I used, as opposed to all the other higher risk situations that they will have put themselves in (grocery shopping), seems exceptionally small to me. I apply similar logic to passing someone closely on singletrack.

How exactly does the virus spread anywhere, then?

From what I gather, the major route of transmission is having people sneezing, singing, playing musical instruments, breathing heavily, etc. in confined spaces. So church choirs, hospitals full of infected people, gyms, nightclubs, etc are deadly. Yes, it is possible to get it through touching something then rubbing your eyes, but somewhere like a supermarket with thousands of customers sneezing and coughing on things indoors is massively more risky than a gate outdoors on a sunny day. And much more risky for the staff than for the customers, too.

D but with a “Partridge train toilet”-esque technique

My new riding attire is gate friendly!

jjprestidge
Member
This place seems to be full of weird OCD types.

Tell us again how to make coffee.

D.

Chances of contracting virus from touching a gate in the countryside is so infinitesimally small i give it little cause for concern other than to push gate open / close using my foot.

Not the least bit surprised by some the anxiety stricken extreme measures taken by the full time hand wringers.

i’d been using my teeth to avoid touching it with my hands but I now see that was wrong :-)

Serious answer, I either use a combo of elbow and foot, or use little and ring finger which are then not used for ‘clean’ things till I’ve washed my hand. I’ve had OCD issues for years though so this isn’t anything new. In fact I now just see it has having been in pandemic training!

D

I think the risk from gates and outdoor surfaces is tiny.

But crack on with whatever precautions give you some comfort, i’m not going to be a dick about other people perceiving a higher risk when there are arseholes everywhere who are just ignoring the lockdown.

From what I gather, the major route of transmission is having people sneezing, singing, playing musical instruments, breathing heavily, etc. in confined spaces.

Exactly. And in that confined space you don’t even have to be that close to people who have Covid. It is about being somewhere long enough. A person breathing in and out for 8 hours in an office is enough to provide a high enough viral load.

Worth reading this https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

D. Big pokey up lever jobs round here. Outside forearm to open, let them swing closed.

Can’t understand the special glove stuff. You get the special glove out of your bag, with your hands, put in on with you hands, use it to touch the gate, take it off with your hands and put if back in your bag? Lots of times in a ride. Can’t see how that’s any better than not doing it.

Even if it’s in a special pocket in the bag, do you wash the bag after every ride, too? Got be better to use a leaf, clump of grass, stick, stone and chuck it after, surely?

I think he’s to some extent redeemed himself, in my eyes anyway, with a very rational approach to significant philanthropy. Though he had quite a lot to redeem himself from with strangling of tech rivals through the 90s.

Sorry. Just I’m just another victim of random capitalisation. The annoying things you have to get through to get to the good stuff it’s very much a D based on the fact you’d have to lick a lot of latches to acquire any sort of viral load.(actually I just wear usual gloves, rather than the half gloves I’d be in by now, but more to assuage curtain twitchers as I go past farms/worried – with or without good reason – walkers than because I think this reduces risk of spread in any meaningful way. Personal sense of risk isn’t in the equation).

But crack on with whatever precautions give you some comfort, i’m not going to be a dick about other people perceiving a higher risk when there are arseholes everywhere who are just ignoring the lockdown.

Very much this, do you what you feel you need to do to keep getting out there and riding.

I’m avoiding off road completely just because there are miles more walkers about and it’s hard to avoid them. I’m enjoying road biking at the moment.

I’m struggling to get couriers and the postie to leave my front gate open so I don’t have it touch it. They all seem to instinctively close it.

From what I gather, the major route of transmission is having people sneezing, singing, playing musical instruments, breathing heavily, etc. in confined spaces.

Sort of. Those situations are high risk, but not for the reasons you say. It’s from droplet spread from those coughing / sneezing individuals landing on surfaces which you then come into contact with.

Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/886215/COVID-19_Infection_prevention_and_control_guidance_complete.pdf

TLDR: Droplets on surfaces = harmful, aerosol spread is rare.
At least that’s Kool-aid published by PHE which explains why all us front-line NHS workers don’t, in fact, need FFP3 masks near Covid +ve patients. Now, you may be slightly skeptical of that advice (I certainly am to an extent) but that’s the official line.

Skepticism notwithstanding, even if aerosol spread is non-negligible, it’s very clear that PHE believe the primary mode of spread is via surface contamination.

The armchair virologists (I am being one too I suppose) may wish to consider this before they blindly touch every surface in sight assuming they’re safe.

I’m avoiding off road completely just because there are miles more walkers about and it’s hard to avoid them. I’m enjoying road biking at the moment.

It’s the opposite for me – the roads round here are chocka with roadies breathing on each other! I feel like it’s much easier to maintain a 2m safe distance when MTBing.