Why does soap work so well on the SARS-CoV-2

twitter.com

10 points·laurentdc··5 comments

It works well because apart from washing the virus away, soap denatures its envelope, the little "bag" that actually contains the virus.

That envelope is made up of lipids. IE, molecules of fat. Soap+water dissolves the envelope, so the virus is inactivated.... to infect anyone, it needs the envelope to be present.

Link:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deadly-viruses-are-no-matc...

Does it? Or is it just all about washing the viruses away? I tried to get a definite answer and ended up with a whole lot of opinion.

Do you have a better source saying otherwise? Thordarson seems like an expert in this field.

Did you read his entire thread? There are 39 tweets that seem to cover the details pretty well, including the chemistry behind his statements. This link makes it easy to read the whole thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236549305189597189.html

It is fairly well known that the class of viruses that the coronavirus belongs to is fairly fragile. I think my question comes down to; does soap actually make any real difference in a case where almost everything destroys the virus? The only viruses that survive are pretty much only those that are embedded in some other substance. That would mean that the discussion on Twitter about soap coming intro direct contact with the virus was pointless.

One source suggested that the reason that soap is better was simply because it caused people to wash their hands for longer.

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