About those meat packing plants

[CatWoman]

can't the meat be infected by someone with the virus?

[SoonerPride]

1. No. The virus needs a live host. Plus cooking meat destroys viruses.

The meat would be safe.

The workers, not so much.

[Midnight Writer]

2. The meat itself should be OK as long as it is cooked, packaging may not be.

[Mendocino]

3. It's a ham-demic

or spam-demic.

[fleur-de-lisa]

4. I think coronavirus is considered a respiratory disease.

I heard a doctor say that if it is ingested, the stomach acids will kill the virus becasue it has a relatively fragile outer shell, which is made primarily of fatty material.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Doctor Was Right

Labile chlorine & viruses don't play well together. Protein denatures in a few seconds in strong HCl.
The lipid can't protect it, because the chlorine acylizes the chains on the backbone of the lipids.
It becomes more fluid and falls away. Then the protein is exposed.
There would never be a concentration limit because there's a LOT of available reactive chlorine in the stomach.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Heat, Cat

The virus denatures at 135F, in 5- 10 minutes. Damage to the virus is done almost the whole time, but just a lump of molecules in 10.
More importantly, we don't cook at 135F.
The denaturation is a first order reaction. (Some decomposition reactions are zero order)
These type reactions double in rate every 10 degrees C.
135F is around 57C. We cook meat at 400, let's say. That's around 204C.
So the complete denaturation is roughly 10x faster.
Cooking completely destroys the virus in a minute or less (once the surface of the meat is at temperature), and that is way faster than it takes to cook, even if you like it medium rare.
Cooking is the solution to most biological pathogens.

[CatWoman]

7. thanks Prof

but I'm still considering going vegetarian.

Oh wait -- not too long ago it was lettuce killing people

[ProfessorGAC]

8. My Wife's Leaning That Way

And she makes a killer melanzana parmiggiana already! (Eggplant parmesan)
And I love grilling vegetables.
We might be headed that way too.
And don't worry about the lettuce.
With PINO's immigration ban, there won't be anybody to pick it!