Touche!
It’s been noted that there are no toilets on the Starship Enterprise, or at least not by the time of TNG. There are bathrooms, of course, but only versions of showers, sinks, and the like have been shown. (Some of the other series, especially those set in earlier periods, do have toilets or at least imply that that they do.)
Obviously this means that the act of defecation is accomplished through special purpose embedded transporter units. This is of course the most obvious solution to the problem of aerosolized waste in our own world and all necessary research to develop this technology should be undertaken immediately. How could we possibly prioritize anything else over this issue?
Make it so.
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Where do you think they get the raw materials for the replicators?
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That’s accurate even without the solution I proposed. It’s a closed system (for macro purposes, at least,) so everything would be recycled.
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Maybe it doesn’t need to be implanted! I mean, there’s a lot of staff in the transporter room, but they hardly ever need away teams. What else are they doing all day?
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For those who wonder what’s the big deal? The “magnetic toilet seal” website linked to in the article states that fecal-oral transmission of COVID has been proven, & cites a case of COVID transmission between two people who used the same bathroom. So they’re saying the toilet plume can aerosolize Corona virus.
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Ok, I cannot resist:
Is the transporter room on the poop deck?
Incorrect. We’ve got the nasty norovirus which only takes 18 individual viruses for its infectious dose, and just ask anyone who had been on a cruise which had an outbreak if it was dangerous or not.
How much is emitted in a toilet flush? It’d be nice to know.
Until we study and quantify this we just don’t know how risky this can be.
Then we’ve got good ol’ salmonella which is in everyone’s gut right now and it’s not usually making us sick. Yet if I eat a hamburger with a high salmonella count I will get poisoned.
If I then use the toilet while I’m sick there will be a higher aerosolized count if salmonella when I flush. What’s the count in the aerosolized toilet water? Enough to make some of us sick? Potentially, maybe we should study it.
Anecdotally I can’t say I’ve ever gotten sick from a toilet flush, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been infected and successfully fought it off. Maybe as I get older and my immune response wanes this may be something I have to be more mindful of.
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This sounds like it would be a simple experiment to try at home.
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But what about my wife? And the reverse?
If “at home” means your home I’ll be right over.
So I close the lid and flush the toilet, all those germs are then coating the underside of the lid. I guess it’s all in one place but it certainly doesn’t keep the germs in the toilet.
Even for germaphobe bordering on needing therapy me this is very low on my list of things I worry about at home.
In public though, especially with those commercial toilet flushes, it does concern me. Which is why I avoid public bathrooms as much as posible.
One other thing, don’t toilet seats need a gap so we don’t get suctioned on to the seat, won’t there alway be a gap even with the lid closed.
Also, I’m one of those rare guys that cleans the toilet after each use, I also clean the sink after shaving and teeth brushing.
I try and keep my germs to myself.
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Well, I wash my hands after & wasn’t planning on eating dinner off the bathroom floor, so screw it. Another nano-harm in a world full of nano-harms.
Isn’t he usually saying that to Number 1, though?
We’re talking about #2 here 
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If you live together you’re constantly highly exposed to each other’s bacterial biomes, even if you happened to use separate toilets.
When Mythbusters tested this, they kept a control set of toothbrushes in a kitchen next door, covered under a jar. Those toothbrushes still had traces of faecal coliform bacteria. Shit’s literally everywhere.
Compared to most people in human history (and a lot of people alive now), just having a flushing lav is a luxury, worrying about possible splashes from your bog is the very definition of a 1st world problem.
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the best one is surely to just stop cease your defecations entirely. How hard can it be?
Well, as part of my ongoing treatment for bowel cancer, I’ve ended up with a colostomy, so I no longer poop in the regular manner, I just have to dispose of a literal bag of shit once or twice a day.
I wouldn’t really recommend it, though it does free me from the ‘OMG I need the loo right now’ events that were a previous feature of my life as I’m a vegetarian who eats a high-fibre diet.
According to a post by Ken Fishkin on Quora, Gemini 7 astronaut Frank Borman did try and go without pooping for the entire two-week mission.
Fishkin writes:
“Apollo 8” by Jeffrey Kludger has this story about the 14-day Gemini 7 mission. Astronaut Frank Borman (partnered with Jim Lovell) didn’t refuse to eat, but he did nevertheless try not to use the poop bags:
In his view, if a man couldn’t control his own bowels, he couldn’t control anything at all, and if that meant controlling them for 14 straight days, that’s what he would do. Through sheer will and orneriness, Borman made it through the first week and and then through an 8th day. Partly out of self-interest, even Lovell was beginning to root for him. But no man can hold out forever.
“Jim”, Borman said on day 9, “I think this is it.”
“Frank, you have only 5 more days left to go here,” Lovell joked. But 5 days was 5 too many, and Borman, who believed that any obstacle could be overcome, learned in a new and very primal way that no, not all of them can be.
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And now I know why “Pooping is not an option!” didn’t make make it into NASA lore.
All the best for your ongoing treatment, hope everything works out and is over soon.
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The magnetic toilet seal website - whose raison d’être is to, surprise, sell magnetic toilet seals - lists a lot of facts that are correct - in the sense of “Well, this is what we think what’s what based on the data and reasoning we have so far. But keep in mind that this bug is still brand new and really weird. A lot of further research is needed.”
So far, so good. (Webdesign not withstanding. Maybe this is how the cool kids are doing it these days.)
But - and this is a big but - then they cap it all off with their closing argument which is, and I quote:
“It’s just plain Common Sense our toilets make Covid-19 airborne! Again….”
I know I shouldn’t skip the peer reviewed by actual experts stage, but I’m willing to bet my air fryer that what we’re looking at here is the waste matter of a cow’s husband.
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