Crass consumerism wins again

An Oregon environmentalist decides to save the planet with reusable shopping bags instead of disposable plastic bags.

They instead end up giving seven girls on their daughter's soccer team the norovirus, which they got from eating cookies contaminated with said virus from the bag.

If the outbreak were limited to the parents who provided the bag, I could chug down a gallon of tasty schadenfreude without blinking, but unfortunately modish lefty causes tend to have negative externalities. (I know, right! Who could have seen that coming?)

The article is too polite to point out that the norovirus comes from 'fecal-oral contact'.

In other words, the bag was covered in someone's poo. Saving the environment one day, pooing on a cookie and offering it to your children the next!

What lesson can we learn from this?

"What this report does is it helps raise awareness of the complex and indirect way that norovirus can spread," said Aron Hall, an epidemiologist with the Division of Viral Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

His agency says the best way to fend off the virus is thorough hand-washing and cleaning contaminated surfaces with a bleach-based solution.

Lame.

Or, you could learn that it's not sufficient to avoid reusable shopping bags, you also need to avoid the children of trendy parents who are too busy reusing shopping bags to wash their hands after going to the toilet.

Enjoy your norovirus, hippies!