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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I was just at a pharmacy where I asked the cashier to use hand sanitizer because she kept touching her damn nose every minute or two and she blew me off and told me "I've been using hand sanitizer all day."

If you could smack a few million people upside the back of the head and get them to actually, in fact, practice the hygiene stuff that gets repeated all the time and utterly ignored, you could save thousands of lives.

Stop touching your face.

Train cashiers to practice actual germ control.

Don't let them lick their fingers to open bags. Fire them if they do stuff like touch their nose and then immediately handle money or lick their fingers to open bags.

The single biggest obstacle to germ control is the fact that most humans don't want to actually practice it. Making it a widespread habit would nearly put a stop to most epidemics all on its own, but we are too busy sticking our heads up our butts to do that.

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Wonderfully said. It's scarier to think that people like this work at restaurants and make your food. I recently left a job like that, where one guy would sneeze into the back of his hand and then keep working. I left that job recently but I'm pretty sure he's still there.

While coronavirus won't survive cooking, cross contamination between hot food and uncooked food happens, so it's best to not go out to eat in these delicate times. If you do, make sure to get something that comes out still cooking like a hot bowl of noodle soup or something.

You are right that people won't change :(. A lot of these people literally see nothing wrong with how they act because they aren't even conscious about when other people do it to them. You bet they'll be angered if they actually thought about it. If anything positive is to come out of this crisis, it's that people will become a little more self-aware.

The amount of people who do not wash their hands in any way while in the bathroom is sickening. I hope coronavirus helps raise awareness regarding the basics, so more people get into the habit of regular hand washing.

From your lips to God's ears and all that.

I'm not holding my breath. People are amazingly stubborn about clinging to their bad habits and acting like I'm just a bitch and meanie face for trying to foster positive change or even just protect myself from their horrifying behavior.

We are going to hell and most of us deserve it.

Some people get lung cancer rather than change bad habits.

There is a nonzero chance that my nosepicking habit kills me over the next couple months. Yet for some goddamned reason it doesn't stop me.

If you know of a way to get me to stop touching my nose that lets me keep my life and all my fingers, I'll pay you $470 for it.

A. Deal with your respiratory problems. You probably do it because your nose itches because it's low grade infected all the time.

B. Deal with your circulatory issues. Hands, feet, nose and ears get shorted first when you have circulatory issues.

C. Pick your nose in the shower while your hands are clean before sticking fingers in your nose and can be promptly recleaned afterwards without contaminating anything else. You probably have that nasty habit mentioned in another comment because of low grade chronic sinus infections. Mucus firms up like cement to trap stuff, at which point picking your nose makes more sense than blowing it.

D. Get better salt in you and stay adequately hydrated. Both salt and water are major components of mucus and mucus is your respiratory system's first line of defense against invaders.

E. Don't know how to fix your health issues? Try fasting. It likely frees up immune cells to address other issues while your gut is empty of pesky foreign invaders brought in via the food you eat.

F. While addressing all that, have something you can fiddle with to occupy your hands so they are doing something else. Let me recommend that your fiddle stick/toy/thingamajig be made of copper or silver because they are both antimicrobial.

G. You may also need to up your environmental hygiene. Dust everything or get rid of nasty carpets, etc.

I take PayPal and Venmo. I look forward to receiving payment in a month.

Do you have suggestions for:

Deal with your circulatory issues. Hands, feet, nose and ears get shorted first when you have circulatory issues.

Walk more.

You should walk at least thirty minutes a day. I recommend running errands on foot, stop circling the parking lot like a vulture looking for the closest parking space and just park in the cheap seats, and take the stairs occasionally instead of the elevator.

Also, make sure you are getting enough iron and b vitamins. Both are critical to production of red blood cells.

If you work at a desk all day, get up every hour on the hour and walk around. A trip to the bathroom or vending machine (or printer.. etc) is a good excuse. Sitting for hours on end does terrible things to your circulation. Get up periodically. It's important.

Also, stay hydrated. Blood is mostly water. Most people aren't adequately hydrated. They just aren't.

> Don't let them lick their fingers to open bags.

How else would you do it? I stopped myself when I was just about lick my fingers to open a plastic bag for fruit the other day, realizing maybe it's not good to do in these times, but I couldn't figure out an alternative and gave in.

I persist and wrestle with it. You eventually get better at it and figure out how bags actually work.

They actually have tabs built in designed to help you open them. If a bag is particularly stubborn, move on to a new bag.

Some cashiers have damp sponges or similar to help them open bags without licking their fingers because they aren't heathens. They are the rare exception.

You work at it hard. Like, really hard. Hard enough that you start to sweat. Then you've got moisture on your hands...

;-)

Non-germy moisture. The only acceptable kind.

Use a fingertip friction compound like SortKwik

https://www.amazon.com/10132-Sortkwik-Fingertip-Moisteners-P...

It seems like bad hygiene even without coronavirus. Most places I know use damp sponges. Experienced cashiers can open them fairly easily. Also it's 2020 and we've really cut down on plastic bag use in Asia.

I try to never touch my face while in public but what if your nose itches to pain and your eyes start to tear until you scratch it, then it's difficult

Go to a bathroom and promptly wash thoroughly with soap if at all possible.

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