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You have soap and water with you? When you leave a store? At the gas station after pumping gas? After you leave ANYWHERE that has a doorknob you had to touch? You do?? Well that's cool. I don't, nor does anyone else I know.
Again - NO ONE IS SAYING THAT SOAP AND WATER IS NOT BEST!! But without that option, it's just stupid to NOT use hand sanitizer.
You want to take risks - fine. Just stay away from everyone else.
You had one last chance to stay off of my ignore list and you blew it. Good day.
Look, I'm a compulsive hand washer....with soap and water. So by no means am I undervaluing keeping your hands very clean.
But when do you have no soap and water? I'm not a camper, but camping out in the wilderness miles from anywhere is about the only setting I can think of where you can't easily access soap and water.
Hand sanitizer is a gimmick that does little but make you feel better. Psychologically. Like so much other needless nonsense that fills the shelves of retail stores (at least in normal times), it is a product of successful aggressive marketing. Better than nothing? Sure....a little. But I've never used it in 70 years simply because there's no need to. Soap and water is never far away....and is far superior.
Well said, successful marketing, and I can think of other foodstuffs in the arena too. I've never bought into this "gimmick" and I've got 10 yrs on you CrownVic.....I rinse my hands in hot/warm water during the day and I'm the dishwasher so hands are in soapy water enough. I don't have a germ ridden house.
And as far as the handles on carts and other buttons etc...how the heck have we gotten this far without sanitizing just about everything we touch. I've used the wipes outside the markets a couple times but otherwise I don't even bother there. I just keep my hands away from my face/mouth......
The normal bacterial count on our fingertips is 5,000,000 colony forming units per cubic per sq cm. Each fingertip is ~2cm^2, and we each have (except for careless punch press operators, I suppose) 10 fingers, so our finger tips (we're not even talking about the rest of the hand) have about 10^8 CFUs.
Hand sanitizers are said to kill 99.999% of all germs, so that means 10^-3% are left alive....Over your 10 finger tips, you will still be contaminated with 1000 CFUs....How many does it take to cause an infection?...And living bacteria reproduce themselves about once every 20 minutes, so you're back to where you started in an hour or so.
This all is tempered by the lucky fact that almost ALL bugs on your hands are NOT pathogenic-- Even in high numbers, they don't cause disease, so who cares if they're there?
I'm not so sure about the claims being made about hand sanitizers on viruses. As we said earlier, the main benefit of washing hands in regard viruses is not that you're killing them, but that you're rinsing them down the drain along with your natural skin oils dissolved in the soapy water.
Most people don't wash their hands regularly, and yet, it's not like people are dropping dead on the sidewalk from infectious diseases.... Washing (in usual times) is over-rated. QED.
Reading all these comments I almost chuckle about the obsession with washing and sanitizing. Being around this earth for over 80 yrs I never had that obsession nor did the generation before me and they all lived long long lives and I think of the use of antiobiotics being taken today. This modern world has made more people sick and when I think of even my grandparents who worked hard and hands were always dirty soap and water is what they used if that.
Last edited by jaminhealth; 03-20-2020 at 12:41 PM..
The normal bacterial count on our fingertips is 5,000,000 colony forming units per cubic per sq cm. Each fingertip is ~2cm^2, and we each have (except for careless punch press operators, I suppose) 10 fingers, so our finger tips (we're not even talking about the rest of the hand) have about 10^8 CFUs.
Hand sanitizers are said to kill 99.999% of all germs, so that means 10^-3% are left alive....Over your 10 finger tips, you will still be contaminated with 1000 CFUs....How many does it take to cause an infection?...And living bacteria reproduce themselves about once every 20 minutes, so you're back to where you started in an hour or so.
This all is tempered by the lucky fact that almost ALL bugs on your hands are NOT pathogenic-- Even in high numbers, they don't cause disease, so who cares if they're there?
I'm not so sure about the claims being made about hand sanitizers on viruses. As we said earlier, the main benefit of washing hands in regard viruses is not that you're killing them, but that you're rinsing them down the drain along with your natural skin oils dissolved in the soapy water.
Most people don't wash their hands regularly, and yet, it's not like people are dropping dead on the sidewalk from infectious diseases.... Washing (in usual times) is over-rated. QED.
Alcohol kills SARS-CoV because it essentially dissolves the viral envelope. It is not just a matter of mechanical removal.
"The use of alcohol-based hand rubs after contamination of the hands with SARS-CoV, e.g. by respiratory secretions during patient contact, should be effective to prevent further transmission of SARS-CoV by healthcare workers' hands."
Reading all these comments I almost chuckle about the obsession with washing and sanitizing. Being around this earth for over 80 yrs I never had that obsession nor did the generation before me and they all lived long long lives and I think of the use of antiobiotics being taken today. This modern world has made more people sick and when I think of even my grandparents who worked hard and hands were always dirty soap and water is what they used if that.
You do realize anecdotal evidence is worthless don't you?
My grandmother lost her first husband and child to the Spanish Flu.
Viruses have always and will always be around. Right now we have a novel virus meaning we have never seen it before. So we don't have a vaccine or remedy and it is actually killing people. Do you think the powers that be would collapse the economy on some benign bug? We need to use everything at our disposal to flatten the curve in this pandemic. So along soap and water, sanitizer is needed, along with sheltering in place.
Your 80 years of good health doesn't mean squat if you are susceptible to COVID -19. In fact being 80 is a huge risk factor for death. I sincerely hope you are not leaving the house.
Because you can't sterilize your fingers, and even if you could, it would be just a split second before they got contaminated again...Don't bother cleansing-- Just keep your fingers off your face--THAT you can do with 100% effectiveness. Cleansing isn't 100%.
Some people have itchy faces.
Some people have long hair that they have to get out of their face.
Plus, it is far more effective if people are washing their hands regularly when they do not use hand sanitizer. The studies have generally shown that hand sanitizer is ineffective if your hands are filthy, but hopefully people should be cleaning their hands thoroughly enough during the rest of the day that they aren’t in regular situations where their hands are filthy when they need to use hand sanitizers.
And when would your hands be filthy unless you were working in the garden (not likely here in CO where there is snow on the ground as we speak) or on your car or the like without wearing gloves? Yes, if you have dirt on your hands try to find a place to wash them with soap and water.
Yeah I'm gonna have to go with the medical experts who have been telling us daily for weeks to sanitize over a message board posters citing an article from over 5 years ago.
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