The End of Hygiene Theater | Hacker News Reader

The End of Hygiene Theater

theatlantic.com

19 pointssamizdis14 comments

Same topic discussed here a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26752497

I definitely hear his argument about opportunity costs, and in terms of dollars and time (particularly human effort), I agree we should be focusing on the most important efforts to combat COVID. It's the most critical threat right now, so it's more important to spend time and money on ventilation solutions than more bleach.

On the other hand, some of this is disinfection that should have been happening already and will hopefully cut down on the spread of other diseases. Just as a practical example, my wife's school has not had a single outbreak of norovirus in over a year thanks to obsessive surface-cleaning and hand-washing, and that stuff spreads like wildfire. It's not (usually) a fatal disease, but it does result in hours of lost time for everyone involved annually. Food poisoning cases, hepatitis transmission, and things like RSV are all hampered by better surface sanitation, so it's not just a tummy-bug problem. In the places where we can develop better automated sanitation solutions, that's a good side benefit—especially if we can turn around and spread those more universally.

Yeah I hope some of this show continues and there's more of it. Most already know in most SE Asia countries the etiquette is to put on a mask whenever you're sick... We need more of this education. We need etiquette like in Japan - every restaurant serves a wipe (not disinfectant tho) to clean your hands before eating.

I wonder if we’ve caused any significant increase in the strength of viruses and microbes just by absolutely obliterating the surfaces around us for the past year. This was the whole concept behind not over-using antibiotics right?

You know how you can develop a tolerance to poison but not to lava?

Bleach/soap are like lava, triclosan and other antibiotics are like poison.

The only problem with this metaphor is that tolerance to poison/lava is an individual tolerance whereas the parent comment refers to a species' tolerance over N generations.

A species isn't going to develop a tolerance to lava over N generations. Bleach/soap are like lava, there's no developing a tolerance to it. Soap has been working for thousands of years and will continue working for thousands of years to come.

There are extremophiles, I guess, but once you've adapted to living in that environment, you aren't adapted for normal existence any more!

I wouldn't describe it as theatre. It's more an abundance of caution while we deal with something new and dangerous. Thats totally sensible. There's no real benefit in jumping the gun and getting it wrong, particularly when washing your hands and wiping down surfaces is a minor inconvenience.

The "theatre" element this misguided focus on the surface cleaning which does not impact/reduce COVID-19 transmissions. That's the theatre he (and the scientists) are trying to expose and eliminate for the last 6 months

But it impacts/reduces the transmission of several other viruses. The number of people getting flu was substantially reduced this year and anecdotally the number of people getting colds and having "tummy troubles" have been dramatically reduced.

It probably helped to save few lives (from not getting different infections).

I think it goes beyond theater. This pandemic has made everyone an expert, and once an opinion is formed, there’s a strong obtuseness to changing it. Very few are willing to critically reassess what they know and their conclusions, so what it looks more like to me is a steadfast refusal by the scientific community to stick their necks out and possibly be wrong.

The pandemic made the author an “expert”. The whole article amounts to “see, I was right all along!”, says the writer of articles on “economics, technology, and the media” (and not anything related to medicine) who read one article last year that supported his view. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The author, turns out, isn’t wrong. But they are arguably right for the wrong reasons.

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