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I'm wondering more about the effects the increased cleanliness will have on people's immune systems --- all the masking, social distancing, constant hand sanitiser use, etc. is, in addition to reducing exposure to COVID, also reducing the exposure to the countless other pathogens that people are normally exposed to. Does the lack of exercising ones' immune system have a cost too?

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There is the Hygiene Hypothesis, which is the reverse: Decreased exposure to some pathogens, especially when young, can make the immune system overly sensitive and thereby increase the risk of atopic and autoimmune disorders.

On the (maybe?) reverse: I grew up on a farm and later moved to a big city to study computer science. It was only then that my allergy kicked in. I wonder if that would ever have happened if I had gone the farming route in life :P In any case, life in the big cities seem to mess with our immune systems.

This may be due to what trees are planted in cities:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/botanical-se...

A lot of people wonder this first part and the answer is definitively no because immune systems generally don’t work that way. It’s (mostly) not something general purpose like a bicep. Getting sick with one diseases mostly does very little for you with most other diseases.

You can lift weights at the gym and build your arm muscles, then use those muscles to lift or push other things more effectively, because muscles are general purpose tools.

Most of your immune system is more like a key. It’s specific to one thing. There are some exceptions but overall the fewer viruses you encounter the better.

As for the exercise: yes. There’s already preliminary evidence that exercise is highly coordinated with covid outcomes.

> As for the exercise: yes. There’s already preliminary evidence that exercise is highly coordinated with covid outcomes.

GP asked “lack of exercising one’s immune system” not “lack of exercising” in general.

Hi, I'm surprised by your "definitively no" as I understood this as still an open question - particularly with respect to autoimmune risks.

Do you have any resources to help me understand your position better?

Still lots of debate as to how the immune system works. If we understood it there wouldn’t be millions of people suffering from allergies (some who get it after moving to ‘clean’ western countries)

Are people still using lots of hand sanitizer? Why?

Some are - at least most doing COVID Vaccination administration are people that I can personally say are using "lots" of hand sanitizer each day. (yes, my hands still hurt)

No, not really. That died out rather quickly, as did singling “Happy Birthday” while washing one’s hands.

> Are people still using lots of hand sanitizer? Why?

We're still using lots of hand sanitizer here, because the combination of masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizer seems to work. Though, we could be mistaken about the relative effectiveness/necessity of the three measures. My office building has hand sanitizer dispensers in the entryway.

Yes, it's primarily a respiratory virus, but the cost of hand sanitization is pretty low and the virus remains infectious on most surfaces for several hours. Here in Hong Kong, we're one of the most dense cities on Earth, with a lot of public transit use, so surface contamination may be more of an issue here than in other places.

Businesses stock sanitizer because it's cheap and compatible with the status quo ante, not because there's any reason to believe it's effective.

Sanitizer is for more than just covid. We were washing hands long before covid, and I hope it continues

My kids have been coming back from school with the backs of their hands bleeding because they're so dry from being forced to constantly use sanitiser all day. This is because government guidelines have not been updated since it became clear that it's not transmitted by contact. We've had to tell them to use the smallest amount possible, and only on their palms.

As far as I'm aware the only reason to use hand sanitizer is because soap (which is more effective - again AFAIK but this has been told since the start) is even more damaging do the skin when done often.

Let's not forget the incredible "convenience" factor of waterless hand sanitizer. Who needs a pesky basin, soap & running water when you can just spray this magical liquid on your hands and be done in a jiffy.

The purpose of the sanitizer is not to prevent contagion by contact, it's for you to make sure that your hands are clean before touching your face (mouth, nose, eyes). That's how you get infected, the virus get onto your hands for whatever reason and you touch your face. So technically it's true it's not transmitted by contact directly but it does indirectly.

Yes, I understand that, but that's still a vanishingly rare route of transmission. The way you get infected is by inhaling aerosols.

Really? So... where do the guardians of these children draw the line? There's no line... just say it. The "gov mandate" conditioning is so well tested through history.

Kids, highest risk group for this flu virus... right?

Psychologically, they are, and I think you know that.

> [..] since it became clear that it's not transmitted by contact.

That'll need a reference. It's only a few weeks since a worker was infected in a one-person workshop[1], from the guy working there two days earlier. Testing showed that it was the exact same (rare) virus strain and the only explanation was that the second guy got infected from using the same tools as the first guy (not infected _through_ the hands of course, but presumably by touching his face afterwards. As one does).

(Keeping surfaces clean is the most important part, otherwise you'll have to clean your hands every time you touch something. As for myself I've become very self-conscious about what I touch.)

[1]https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https:/...

Very interesting, thanks. Though it remains exceedingly rare so far as we can tell.

Assuming they did good contact tracing here and found that it really was the only way this guy was exposed, we're talking about a vanishingly rare route to infection. The article calls it one in a million infections. I think it might be rarer than that.

Sure. When I said "not transmitted by contact" I should have said "rarely transmitted by contact". It has become clear that the overwhelming majority of transmisson is through aerosols indoors.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4

I like the way it makes my hands smell.

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