The world is on the brink of starting its second pandemic in as many years with the monkeypox virus spreading around the world in a slowing exponential manner. The basic mathematical growth for anything that spread from person to person is exponential. As we start to control the spread by quarantine, isolation, tracing contacts, social distancing, masks, gloves etc., we extend the exponential or try to make it linear. A good measure of how quickly something is spreading is how long the number of cases take to double.

Monkeypox started of doubling every 3 or 4 days and slowly has extended out to 15.5 days in the world (and 10.5 days in the USA).

Up until now monkeypox has largely been confined to men and in particular to men have sex with men but it is slowly spreading into the wider community, and the spreading-rate should increase when this takes hold. And as monkeypox can infect animals like pets we may see an re-escalation in the exponential growth.

Monkeypox is a DNA virus and so survives outside of a human or animal body for much longer than an RNA virus. Spread by fomites (droplets on surfaces) will be much more important and prevalent than it is for covid19. It can spread by skin contact with an infected person, or sharing clothing or bedding with an infected person, and from hand to face/body from and infected surface, as well as by aerosol.

You can also contract monkeypox virus by eating contaminated food, which is not the case with RNA SARS-CoV2 virus.

In this blog I want to tell you that soapy water will NOT ‘kill’ (destroy) the monkeypox virus, and you will need to clean your food before handling preparing and eating it. Strong enough alcohol and bleach can kill the monkeypox virus but you don’t want your food stinking of alcohol or bleach before you eat it. The other thing is that alcohol needs to be in contact with the surface for 5 minutes. So how on Earth are we going to stop the spread of this nasty virus. Many of us will need to wear gloves and masks and dispose of them after each use, and to be consistent to also sanitize the disposed material as well.

Gloves will be in hot demand and short supply, and so will hypochlorous acid.

Here is a list from the EPA (USA) of Disinfectants for Emerging Viral Pathogens.
The CDC seems to contradict itself in this link because soapy water does not kill the monkeypox virus. You will just wash some off. A good hand-wash, singing happy birthday twice would rub most MPXV virus off, but does not necessarily kill it.

Alcohol based hand sanitizer will work but requires at least 80% alcohol and rubbing it in for 5 minutes in theory.

Laundry washing will also not kill all the MPXV. Adding bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and even hypochlorous acid will not help as concentrations are too low. Never add alcohol to your washing.

On the EPA list of disinfectants for emerging viral pathogens you will see that there is also a required contact time for each of the disinfectants to kill/sanitize an object from the MPX virus. Hypochlorous acid requires 10 minutes of contact, so when you spray surfaces with hypochlorous acid you must let it sit awhile before wiping it away. The same goes with food. You will need to bath food for 10 minutes to be sure. High concentration of hydrogen peroxide will sanitize a surface in one minute but hydrogen peroxide is expensive.

Where do gloves come in? They are normally considered to be carry bags for viruses. You will need to wear gloves whenever handling or preparing food and then decontaminate gloves before removing them. This is why hypochlorous acid is so useful and convenient. You will not even need to wear gloves if you use hypochlorous acid to wash food and sanitize it before eating. Surfaces you prepare food on will need to be sanitized too. Spraying some hypochlorous mist and leaving it for 10 minutes is the best solution. No smells.

There are all sorts of other things you need to do with food, especially meat. Some suggest cooking for 10 minutes, which will make eating meat and fish impossible as it will be overcooked. As I noted above you can ingest MPXV and get ill.

Handling, cooking and eating food is going to be a MAJOR problem with the MPXV. You will not be able to have a medium rare steak or a fried piece of fish.

By the way, you can gargle hypochlorous acid too. The others you cannot.

Sunlight or UV light does not kill the monkeypox virus like it does with SARS-CoV2. UVC light does but most of that is absorbed by the ozone layer. You can but UVC lamps (ultraviolet radiation with wavelengths between 200 and 290 nm) which kills MPXV but is dangerous to skin and eyes, so I would suggest you avoid that one.

I believe chorine dioxide is also a good disinfectant and sanitizer but I do not know much about it, so will not comment now.

After food preparation all areas will need to be cleaned and sanitized.

There are lots of other procedures you will need to follow to make food safe such as heating it in a microwave for long enough. Even bread from a bakery will need to be put in an oven at 200F/93C oven for 5-10 minutes before it is safe to eat. I don’t know about factory made bread. Canned foods are safe if you decontaminate the outside first. Candy, chips, nuts and whatnot – I don’t know.

This is the best tweet thread on how to prepare and handle food safely with the MPX virus around. I am still studying it to get use to what I have to do with food.

UPDATED Monkeypox Prevention Hygiene IN THE HOME a 🧵

1. Any info in this post applies ONLY to preventing Monkeypox from coming into your HOME and DOES NOT APPLY TO PUBLIC SETTINGS such as schools.
The only thing that will keep you safe in a school setting is full PPE.

— Violet Eglantine Shakespeare (@VioletEglantine) August 7, 2022

So what is hypochlorous acid?

Hypochlorous acid ‘kills’ the monkeypox virus.

Hypochlorous (formula HOCl) is a weak acid that acts as one of the best disinfectants and sanitizers known to man that is on toxic to humans and it is basically water with some chlorine dissolved in it. That is how it was fist made in 1834 by Antoine Balard. Balard used a small amount of mercury oxide but nowadays is easily made by electrolysis of water with added vinegar and salt (NaCl, non-iodised).

How is hypochlorous acid made?
Technically all you need to do is pass a current through a solution of water (say 1 litre) add non-iodinated salt (NaCl), a teaspoon of vinegar (acetic acid CH₃COOH). The Anode (negative electrode) will pull Na⁺ and the cathode will pull Cl^– ions. The Na⁺ ions will combine with OH^– to produce NaOH which is caustic soda and is a powerful cleaner you find in soap etc., however, the vinegar neutralizes it somewhat so HOCl can form. The Cl^– ion will lose an electron to become a Cl free radical dissolved in water, and the OH- will also lose an electron to become OH which then bonds with the Cl to form HOCl. The product is HClO, hypochlorous acid, one of the best disinfectants, kills almost everything, including monkeypox. It turns out that our white blood cells produce HOCl too as a defence. Vinegar is required to stop the solution from becoming too alkaline, and the salt is required to add chlorine ions to the system. You have to measure the amount of free chlorine and the pH (acidity) of the solution to get the perfect mix for HOCl. You can buy small units that make HOCl for you, or you could connect 2 inert electrodes to one litre of water with added salt and vinegar. I will work out a home recipe for people soon and publish it online.

Why is hypochlorous acid such a great disinfectant and sanitizer?
This diagram basically tells you why. Bleach which is mainly sodium hypochlorite breaks down into ions that cannot penetrate the membrane of a germ or virus.

Why is it so effective and not toxic at the same time. The reason is connected to the fact that out white cells produce HOCl to protect us from bacteria and viruses, and fungi. When we have a wound the white blood cells produce hypochlorous acid to prevent infection by any pathogens. HOCl is commercially produced by passing electricity through the brine solution with a little added vinegar.

Unlike bleach, sodium hypochlorite, NaHOCl, which dissociates into Na⁺ and HOCl^– ions, hypochlorous acid consists on neutral HOCl molecules. When preparing hypochlorous acid its pH needs to be between 4 and <7. A Ph of 7 is neutral. Less than 7 is acidic. Greater than 7 is alkaline. If the pH of you hypochlorous acid is too high you have bleach instead of hypochlorous acid.

Some researchers call hypochlorous acid “magic water”, because it is one of the most effective disinfectants and sanitizing agents known to man (about 100 times more efficacious than bleach, yet is completely safe to humans and animals. It can also be sued in gardens to kill bacterial viral and fungal attacks. You can even drink it, or wash with it.

When monkeypox arrives in town you will be able to ( and will need to in fact) disinfect your food with it. You can soak your food in hypochlorous acid ir spray with a mist and leave it for 10 minutes.

Unlike sodium hypochlorite (bleach) which irritates skin, the eyes, the mucosa in your mouth, cause emphysema in the lungs, and allergies, hypochlorous acid is not only safe but about 100 times more effective at killing pathogens.  

It kills SARS-CoV2 as well. In fact if President Trump had mentioned hypochlorous acid instead of bleach he would have been closer to the mark.

Hypochlorous acid can also be put into a mist of fog and safely sprayed around people. In fact looking back at the trucks spraying disinfectant in the streets of China when the covid pandemic first started, I would not be surprised it they were spraying hypochlorous acid. They were also spraying people with some sort of mist before they entered buildings. I bet that was hypochlorous acid as well. And recently when China was invading homes to spray disinfectant, I think it was also hypochlorous acid. The West made it look like they were spraying their people with poison.

HOCl is surprisingly effective at very low concentrations. It takes only a very small amount of HOCl to effectively kill all bacteria and viruses.

Btw, hypochlorous acid kills acne too.

Can I buy hypochlorous acid?

The answer is yes, and you can also buy units that make hypochlorous acid for you (in small and large quantities) and even machines to make mists and fogs of hypochlorous acid. Here is one place that use to sell such stuff but seems to have closed up shop. I liked the video they had on the website.

What Is Hypochlorous Acid

How is hypochlorous acid preserved?

HOCl is stable under low temperature, at the correct pH and away from UV radiation/sunlight.