Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

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Is there a particular reason you think that people shouldn't keep wearing masks everywhere literally forever, or is it just that it hurts your feelings?

Barely a century ago, it wasn't common for doctors to wash their hands, because it hurt doctors' feelings. Dr. Charles Meigs, an obstetrician, said, "Doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman's hands are clean."

But, of course, factually they weren't clean, factually they were full of germs, and factually Dr. Meigs was killing several of the people he operated on through his unclean hands. There was factual data that infant mortality dropped significantly in clinics where doctors were washing their hands.

But the response to hand-washing was much like yours. "You're saying society should keep washing hands everywhere literally forever? That's so insane I can't tell whether you're even serious." And in fact they sent the doctor who suggested hand-washing to an insane asylum, where he died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz...

Your example is incorrect, actually.

This scenario [1] is a specific instance of using chlorinated lime to clean your hands after dealing with cadavers, which is a totally different scenario. In fact, he apparently references this as an alternative to "normal hand washing". The mid-19th century is not the middle ages, we knew about washing hands.

> Semmelweis's key claim was that physicians contaminated their hands with "cadaveric particles" in the morgue while conducting autopsies. He pointed out that ordinary washings with soap did not remove these particles, because the hands could retain a stench for several days in spite of such washings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz...

It is very important for young children to be able to see one's entire face. Facial expressions such as smiles help them understand context when communicating.

Who in the world is downvoting a statement like this?

I think you should pretty much ignore voting in contentious political threads. People have it in their heads that the "side" with the most upvotes "wins", so people are reading comments to determine sides and then to vote appropriately.

All I can say is that people are going to be super upset when they go to cash in their HN karma and find that it isn't honored as legal tender ;)

I'm just happy HN is such a fringe community not representative of the general population. It's pretty sad when you reach a point where you make medical decisions to "own" the "other team".

Doctors washing their hands saves way more lives than masks do, and hand washing doesn't have negative side effects like masks do (e.g., constantly fogging up glasses, and keeping people who are hard of hearing from reading lips).

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