Lessons Learned about keeping killer microbes out of your house

The people of the Americas are generally unaware that the Covid Pandemic created an apocalyptic army of anti-microbial bacteria, mycoplasma and fungi, which could soon overwhelm our healthcare systems. Since hospitals are usually sued, when a patient dies of an infection contacted in the hospital, administrators are now concerned that the private sector-based healthcare system in the United States could soon go bankrupt . . and for years, we could be seeing death rates that dwarf the peaks experienced during the Pandemic,

Yesterday, I took an online continuing education course, taught by a very astute lady, who is helping hospitals and educators improve the sanitation procedures in their buildings. We have almost run out of effective antibiotics for bacteria and anti-microbials for fungi. Improved sanitation seems to be the only means that we can stop a rapidly approaching biological tsunami. I am passing on the advice that she gave for making homes safer.

Things that my professors never taught me

Yep . . . that’s me in the frames at the top of the article . . . from a 1991 broadcast by NBC news. Highly respected NBC journalist, Barbara Harrison, led a film team out to our farm in the Shenandoah Valley and used seven rolls of film. She stayed much longer than planned, because she found the restored Colonial Era house and 240 year-old farm to be “enchanting.” She was especially fascinated that all of our milk was pasteurized in a pasteurizer that once belonged to poet Carl Sandburg and his wife, Lilian. All of our original goats came from the Sandburg Farm in Flat Rock, NC.

The video has been restored and you soon will get to see it on the People Of One Fire educational channel (Youtube).

NBC Reporter, Barbara Harrison, grinning ear to ear, as she starts to tell viewers about “the architect and urban planner, who makes goat cheese out in the Shenandoah Valley.” Barbara was one of the most likable and sincere journalists, whom I have ever met. She still is.

The story gets funnier. When I first moved here five years ago, a politically-influential matron stopped by to check me out. After hearing a brief summary of my adult life, she had a disturbed look on her face. She admonished me, “Richard, don’t tell people that you once worked in Sweden, had a Swedish girlfriend and then owned a nationally famous goat cheese creamery. No one will believe you and they will think that you are crazy.”

The Swedish girlfriend part was because the local Party Members were convinced that I had to be a Librul, Marxist homosexual or pervert, because I didn’t bow down and worship Donald Trump as the Messiah, sent by God to save our country from book-learning. Sure enough, three days later, a female Republican City Council member (total stranger) contacted me to set me up to a date with a male homosexual professor at Piedmont University. I kept on telling her that I was not gay, but she didn’t believe me. I guess the first matron was playing matchmaker.

The truth is that actually, I did not get enough book learning! During my six years at the Georgia Institute of Technology and two years at Georgia State University, I did not receive even one minute of education on how to make buildings safer from biological threats. It seems incredible, but true.

It is my secret past life that might seem to have no relevance to architecture, but actually made me a much better educated architect, far more able to meet my clients’ real needs. Of course, I learned how to design and build efficient farm buildings. However, to obtain the first ever federal goat cheese creamery license, I had to attend seminars on bacteriology, mycology and sanitation at Cornell University.

I also had to practically memorize the 78 page long US Food and Drug Administration’s “Regulations for the Design and Operation of Food-producing Plants and Restaurants.” There is nothing like having a van load of FDA or state inspectors show up at your plant without warning to make one very interested in sanitation.

The first thing they do is take litmus samples of all the floors in your food-producing plant. If they find, more than a minuscule number of any type of pathogenic or fecal bacteria on your floor, you are up the creek with out a paddle.

Thus, everything that I knew about biological safety in buildings, until yesterday, was learned the good, ole fashion way . . . by milking up to 125 goats, twice a day and producing immense amounts of cheese. Funny thing . . . when I was back in Atlanta, not one gal I met in the Roswell Methodist Single Adults Sunday School Class or at discos was impressed by my boasting of having profound, hands-on experience from 15 years of working with lactation glands. Actually, we used Westphalia milking machines from Germany, but I did have to wash the lactation glands first.

In contrast, my French soulmate, Vivi, who at age 16 had been elected Miss Dairy Princess of Normandy, frequently made me exceedingly embarrassed, when bragging to up-tight Washingtonians about the joys of being in love with a dairy farmer. She even pulled that stunt, while we were sampling cheese at a National Dairy Month events in the Senate Meeting Room of the National Capitol!

The coming storm

As I watched the lecture yesterday on techniques for stopping the spread of super-dangerous, pathogenic bacteria and fungi, I probably understood more of what she was telling us than most architects. I also quickly realized that this was information that should to be gotten out to the general public.

The lecture began with a very frank description of the current threat to our civilization. In 2019, approximately 100,000 people died of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, contracted in hospitals. The expert suspects that the annual number of deaths by the end of 2023 could be around 1,000,000 . . . exceeding the COVID peaks. The presence of anti-microbial resistant microbes has exploded, due to the COVID Pandemic. We will tell you why in a second.

However, you probably won’t see that in the statistics released to the public by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). She has found that hospitals around the nation, except those operated by the Department of Defense, are intentionally reporting many deaths from anti-microbial-resistant pathogens as “heart failure,” “kidney failure” or “liver failure.” In most cases, grieving relatives do not ask for the detailed autopsy and are satisfied with the cover letter and condolences from the hospital.

She admitted, what I already knew. For many, many months Americans were dying of COVID before the Trump administration admitted that COVID was in North America. As I young man, I had been trained to be an eagle-eyed intelligence asset by my handlers.

Beginning in mid-November 2019, I began observing white FEMA buses with blacked-out windows, escorted by US Army MP’s and US Army Medical Corps vehicles, turning into the entrance to a secret US government underground facility near where I live. I immediately smelled “epidemic.” I now know that Army Rangers and ROTC Cadets at the University of North Georgia had brought back the COVID virus from the Wuhan Military Games.

During the 5-6 months that COVID was kept a secret, thousands of patients were treated with vast quantities of anti-biotics, which of course, have no effect on viruses. The speaker added that even after COVID was identified as the killer, almost all doctors and hospitals in the United States continued to immediately administer antibiotics to new COVID patients. The result was hundreds of new anti-microbial resistant bacteria and fungus strains being created. She said it will be years before laboratories will be able to develop a complete list of superbugs . . . many now are also coming from other parts of the world, where antibiotics were also used on COVID patients.

Crowell House on Little North Mountain, Virginia (new construction)

Recommendations for creating safer homes

Stopping the spread of superbugs in hospitals is extremely complex and difficult, but there are several changes that you can make in your home, that can radically reduce exposure of you and your family to these new diseases. I strongly recommend that you purchase a high-powered ultraviolet flashlight (several available at Amazon.com). They will reveal the presence of fungal colonies, small insects and otherwise invisible biofilm (see below).

1.  No wall to wall carpets. Especially in humid climates, the bases of carpet fibers are as ideal environment for microbes as the Amazon Basin. Standard carpet shampoo machines merely increase the populations of microbes and fungi. Vacuum machines may remove most dust, but have no effect on biofilm on the bases of the fibers and in the carpet matting. (see below)

2.  Use acrylic base grout for tiles.  Conventional cement based grout is a tropical paradise for bacteria and molds.

3.  Use smooth finish cabinets and microcidal countertops in kitchens and bathrooms. Clean the interiors of cabinets regularly. Blood and meat juices can easily run into seams of conventional countertops, then support a wide range of pathogenic bacteria. The insides of kitchen counters, especially under the sink often harbor toxic molds.

4. Scrub surfaces, don’t just spray or wipe them.  Biologists have recently discovered that bacteria and molds create biofilm, an invisible, fibrous slime that protects them from most antiseptic cleaners. It literally anchors the bacteria into microscopic crevices. Only friction (scrubbing) removes the biofilm from surfaces. With some surfaces, even that has little effect.   

5.  Close lids on commodes before flushing 

It was found that standard commodes create a plume of invisible water droplets in up to a 15 feet radius from the toilet bowl.  These droplets contain bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma and human bodily fluids. 

6. Change shoes when entering the house and clean-sanitize the floor often.  In all buildings (including cheese creameries) floor surfaces are the most likely locations to find pathogenic organisms – other than in commodes.

7. Wash sheets and pillows regularly in a sanitizing detergent.   There is typically a bacterial “hot zone” extending about three feet around every bed.  This zone is created by the hundreds of millions of dead skin and blood (sweat) cells that humans expel year-round in their sleep. Many pathogenic organisms can survive indefinitely on dead skin and blood cells.

8. Clean and disinfect HVAC ducts at least annually.  Many pathogens can survive the environment within an HVAC duct. Most people have heard of Legionnaire’s Disease, but the most dangerous is aspergillus fungus. Aspergillus is lethal and thrives on the saw dust often left in HVAC ducts after a house is built. It is not a mold, but grows inside the wood fibers. Often invisible without ultraviolet light, it can then jump to dark, damp sections within wood-framed walls.

Have I gotten you sufficiently terrified?