Personal Hygiene in Plague Time

Personal Hygiene in Plague Time

I’m kind of a hand-washing fetishist. I wash my hands repeatedly throughout the day, carry waterless antibacterial soap in my car/briefcase/jacket, and am just uncomfortable eating with my hands (or sometimes even with silverware) if I have not cleansed my mitts of potentially evil microbes.

Lately, though, I’ve started to wonder if this is the right approach.

Sitting at Yassa the other night, I watched a table of folks eating out of a communal plate with their hands. This is not something I’d be comfortable doing, but maybe, from a world health – and even a personal health – perspective, it’s not such a bad idea.

Sharing germs, getting sick, getting better, cyclically and forever, is maybe a good way to allow evil microbes into one’s body so that the human organism can defeat it, naturally, and move on. This approach may be better for building up one’s own immune system as well as humankind’s evolving resistance to new varieties of wicked bugs.

So as we enter a season when news sources tell us we may all be facing a powerful pandemic, this is something to think about. If you get sick, I hope you survive, and I (as well as future generations) congratulate and thank you for taking one for the team.

Me, I’m going to keep washing my hands.

Hammond

Hammond,

Unfortunately, the Desert Inn here in Vegas is long gone, so I can't go ahead and reserve the top two floors for you and your band of Mormon advisors.

Reb

David Hammond wrote:I’m kind of a hand-washing fetishist. I wash my hands repeatedly throughout the day, carry waterless antibacterial soap in my car/briefcase/jacket, and am just uncomfortable eating with my hands (or sometimes even with silverware) if I have not cleansed my mitts of potentially evil microbes.

David, that's not "kind of" but definitite fetishism. Also, by abusing anti-bacterials you are further increasing baterias' resistance. (I'm sure you know this though.)

I think the basic rules of culinary hygiene should be followed and I'd never preach anything wrong about culinary excellence -- but obsessing about hygiene is counter productive, and, in the end, a recipe for phobias and an invitation to more lethal pathogens.

-ramon

David, you also need to consider that however much you wash your hands, how can you control what your cooks and servers have done? Sure, those "employees must wash hands before returning to work" signs in the restrooms are reassuring in principle, how well are they enforced? I'll bet not so much. And the Maxwell Street Market? Let's get real. There is a reason we have immune systems.

Anyway, I also wash my hands 15 or 20 times a day, and I recommend everyone do the same. It's not a fetish, and while it seems like a lot, if you really add up all the normal "opportunities" for hand washing, you'll see it's not unrealistic (every bathroom visit, every time you handle food (before and after), every time you clean the sink or the toilet, every time you take out the trash, etc.) It's what doctors do (even if they are only in the office and not cleaning toilets or hauling trash), and it's how they keep from being constantly sick (especially the pediatricians). My mom the ex-nurse taught me that lesson long ago. So you are not nutso, David. At least not from that angle.

hungryrabbi wrote:Hammond, Unfortunately, the Desert Inn here in Vegas is long gone, so I can't go ahead and reserve the top two floors for you and your band of Mormon advisors.

Reb

Reb,

When I was in Vegas last month, I was so relieved to learn that I was staying at the same geographical location as the former Desert Inn (where I stayed the last time I went in the early 90s), the domicile of Howard the Ultra-Hygenic and Layer of Handkerchiefs.

Yours, cleanly,

Hammond

Oh, a sailor travels to many lands;
any place he pleases,
But he always remembers to wash his hands
so he don't catch no diseases.

-PEEWEE HERMAN-

"What does not kill me makes me stronger."

GOETHE

cowdery wrote:"What does not kill me makes me stronger."

GOETHE

Not Goethe, Nietzsche, and, yes, I know you hate Google.

Why don't you come to the Klas holiday party and bring some of that outstanding hooch you regularly refer to?

David "Beyond Good and Evil" Hammond

I thought it was Conan the Barbarian.

Eeewww! I didn't realize when I shook hands with you, you were a neat freak