But What About the other 0.01%?

Did you know that 10% of ones body weight is bacteria? Gallup News reported that the average (self reported) weight of adult Americans holds steady at 181 pounds.1 That works out to be 18.1 pounds of bacteria. And the US census reports that there are 209,128,094 adults over 18 in the US.2

That means that the US is harboring 3,785,218,501 pounds of bacteria on their body, discounting the kids.

Notice that most disinfectants boast that they kill 99.99% of germs?

Estimates in the range that 40,000 different species of bacteria are found in 30g of common soil is felt to be conservative (By an order of 25. Meaning there might be 1 million different species of bacteria present if one includes rare bacteria.)

It is estimated that there are 320,000 different viruses.4 But, until December of 2019, or there about, there were 319,999 viruses that we knew about.

That leaves 36-132, depending on the estimates you choose to accept, species of viruses, bacteria, fungi and other germs that Scope, Crest and disinfectants do not kill. One of which appears to be coronavirus.

But that’s not the end of the story, my aspiring microbiologists. That 30g of soil is not universally the same, is it? Take, for instance Ebola, a virus found in west Africa and not very many other places on earth. And Dengue virus is found in 100 countries around the world. But, not every country. Plague, yersinia pestis, is widely spread across the globe, but not everywhere.

Just some trivia from your grumpy Uncle Dave.

  1. Americans’ Average Weight Holds Steady in 2020. Lydia Saad. 1/4/2021. Gallup News. Retrieved 8/18/2021 from https://news.gallup.com/poll/328241/americans-average-weight-holds-steady-2020.aspx
  2. Ask the Editors. Infoplease. 6 Apr. 2017. Retrieved 8/18/2021 from https://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-egg-consumption (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Summary File 1, Matrices P1, P3, P4, P8, P9, P12, P13, P,17, P18, P19, P20, P23, P27, P28, P33, PCT5, PCT8, PCT11, PCT15, H1, H3, H4, H5, H11, and H12.)
  3. Species Numbers in Bacteria. Daniel Dykhuizen. (Proc Calif Acad Sci. 2005 Jun 3; 56(6 Suppl 1): 62–71.) PMC US National Library of Medicine National Institute of Health. 8/24/2011. Retrieved 8/16/2021 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160642/
  4. A Strategy To Estimate Unknown Viral Diversity in Mammals. S.J.Anthony, et.al. (American Society of Microbiology vol4,No5. 9/3/2013.) Retrieved 8/16/2021 from https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00598-13?permanently=true&