Quick story: In 2021 I was shopping at an Office Max in Florida. At the counter, the checkout guy snuck two small bottles into my bag.
Me: Wait! I didn't buy that!
Him: Don't worry, it's free.
Me: Ok, but what is it?
Him: Hand sanitizer, we're giving them away.
Me: (Takes bottles out of bag, hands back to him)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
Please don't cite the CDC for anything, they're utterly discredited.
I see no reason to think that. Sure, mistakes were made (as is expected), but utterly discredited? That's a bit over the top.
Like from now on, if they say "its not airborne" assume "it can transmit in the air" (i.e. droplets or by insects). If they say "there's no evidence of X" assume "We don't think X is false".
I wonder how much of this could be explained by multiple day incubation times and an asymptomatic infection being spread to cabin-mates.
> This is only possible if it is able to spread long distances via the air
Or people infected others filtering in and out of the same close quarters that are poorly ventilated (e.g. elevators and public bathrooms). Doesn’t even require you to be in there at the same time if it can float around for a few hours.
My (still valid) joke about the pandemic is to always be upwind of whomever you’re in contact with. 6’/2M apart didn’t matter.
I'll give you that for vulnerable populations it might have made sense in the early days of the pandemic to follow the most neurotic guidelines in an abundance of caution, but again, it took government agencies far longer than necessary to update their recommendations. And let's not forget the flip-flopping about masks which contradicted the available data even at the time. The CDC was still peddling unproven and disproved claims as of last year at least, and that's how the United States was practically the last country on Earth to maintain pointless mandates, like vaccination for international travelers, far longer than even other countries that acted more aggressively prior like Canada and Australia.
The CDC was quick to make imprudent recommendations that led to authoritarian policies, and slow to retract them when they were shown to be presumptuous, so as far as I'm concerned that's grounds enough to consider them "discredited", in the sense that I'll be skeptical of what they publish in the future instead of taking their recommendations at face value.
I traveled freely internationally throughout 2020 before a blanket ban was implemented to force people to get vaccinated. Of course, by that time, the virus was circulating everywhere, so it already made little sense, but it's even worse when you consider that long-distance travel was not a significant vector for viral spread (at that stage). If I recall correctly, the Canadian government admitted in court that their own travel ban had no scientific basis. In the US, the health authorities issued recommendations based on weak or absent data and then refused to withdraw them until the amount of data disproving those recommendations became overwhelming. That's a double standard and can hardly be justified with "uncertainty".
I'll add that many people pointed out the inconsistencies between government recommendations/policies and the available evidence at the time, and in response, they were fired, hidden or banned from social media, attacked, and demonized. Now history is being rewritten, but "in hindsight" there were plenty of warnings at all stages of this crisis.
Does hand sanitizer stop other illness?
If yes, then it is still very useful in a pandemic. If you have to go to the hospital because you're shitting your brains out from something else, then you are at insanely high right from catching covid.
Do you have any information supporting this possibility? Because hand sanitizer also might have made children stronger and taller, but I don't think it did.
>Hand sanitizers are more effective than plain soap and water alone in preventing transmission of bacteria from the hands of individuals. They play a significant role and could be an effective alternative to hand washing to achieve asepsis for all the health-care professionals in outreach program, water scarcity areas, and in routine clinical practice. Hence, stressing proper hand hygiene is an important first-line defense against the spread of multiple infectious diseases.
Maybe looking up studies on this would be a good place to start...
Of course I'm sure that there is a wide range of different answers on this that vary over a huge number of factors and illnesses in question.
And non-enveloped viruses (like Noro) aren’t easily inactivated by time and sunlight like other viruses (flu, corona).
Makes me really worry about dependence on alcohol sanitizers when it’s the difficult to deactivate viruses that easily pass the stomach and cause you bigger issues.
The “wash your hands” was a great way to blame victims for catching these diseases and push the liability to them.
Easy to say to an employee “you got the flu because you didn’t wash your hands for 5 minutes” and disqualify their paid sick day.
Much harder to blame them for… breathing at work. If we admit its airborne, then employees (and customers) have claims against the the business for work-acquired injuries.
Thats my guess anyway.
They used hand sanitizer after picking up and eating a cookie. And I was probably a weirdo for not doing so. Greasy fingers are a problem, and I guess they see hand sanitizer as a substitue for hand-washing. But hand sanitizer doesn't wash anything away.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=samstave&next=361522...
Basically - hand sanitzer fucks up your gut-biome and kills bacteria that is important for your immune system.
STOP USING THEM.
EAT DIRT - or you will be under dirt a lot faster.
That's not a concern with hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is alcohol-based, not antibiotic based. Alcohol denatures proteins in germs, antibiotics are more biological (IIRC).
It's akin to building up an immunity to iocane vs building up an immunity to being shot
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aar6115
Not the same phenomena as antibiotic resistance, which is a bigger problem, but apparently this is a thing.
I don’t use sanitizer especially often, but I’ve definitely noticed a general, society-wide uptick in being cognizant of germs and cleanliness. I don’t have any figures to back it up, though I’d be curious to see them if they exist, but I definitely notice myself getting sick (cold or flu) _way_ less often, in fact, I think it’s just been once since the pandemic began. Maybe I’m just being optimistic, but I think a lot of the habits we picked up during Covid will serve us positively in the future as well.