I've recently become aware of several things:
1. Given any reason to panic, people will immediately hoard toilet paper. I can understand the domino effect, seeing empty shelves made me second guess whether my household had enough toilet paper. We did. I mean, we do. I mean, I think we do...
2. Wearing a mask is not the best protective measure for healthy individuals. Most people do not wear their mask properly, and increase face touching to adjust the mask. If anything buying up face masks is harmful, because supplies of masks become scarce. It is then difficult for people that really need masks to find them; such as health care professionals and people who already sick, and trying to limit the spread.
3. I have never wanted to touch my face so much as when everyone is telling me not to do it. My face is itching right now as I type these words, and luckily my fingers are occupied.
4. Hand washing, an activity that few of us think about on a regular basis, has become a hot topic....meme worthy in fact.
Most of us don't need to think about hand washing. We have the luxury of living in hygienic conditions, and only worry about hand washing when it comes to professionals that handle our health care and food preparation. A quick search on Google Trends informed me that most people weren't searching for hand washing prior to February 2020. In the past five years, there hasn't been a blip in hand washing searches in the US, but expanding worldwide I found a yearly October uptick in searches. October 15 is Global Hand Washing Day, started in 2008 to increase awareness of the benefits of proper hand washing. Awareness of good hand washing techniques is especially important to instill in those with less fit immune systems (young children, elderly, and immuno-compromised individuals), but also important to learn as healthy individuals. While those of us with a strong immune system may not be at the greatest risk for severe symptoms in response to pathogen exposure, it is important for us to not spread these pathogens around to potentially infect others.
It shouldn't come as a shock, but even when we aren't all worried about catching this new virus, hand washing has its advantages.
In a study from Burton, et al in 2011, 20 individuals were asked to touch objects normally in public places, such as door knobs, chairs, and hand rails.
A swab of their hand was then sampled after cleaning with either:
1. just water
2. normal (non-anti-bacterial) soap and water
3. or no washing at all
Washing hands with just water reduced the number of samples containing bacteria from 44% to 23%, and the addition of soap decreased it even more dramatically from 44% to 8%.
Most of the bacterial which grew from the hand swabs were fecal bacteria, again emphasizing the point of everyday hand washing practices, even when we aren't trying to prevent the spread of a COVID-19.
There isn't data yet looking at COVID-19 and hand washing, but I thought it would be interesting to look at the effectiveness of hand washing against another virus that also has an impact on public health, Influenza virus.
The Influenza A virus is the cause of seasonal flu. There are a number of Influenza subtypes which differ in two types of proteins they use to infect our cells. Hemagglutinin (H) causes red blood cell clumping and helps the virus attach itself to cells, and neuraminidase (N) allows the virus to escape an infected cell, so that it is free to infect other cells. The subtypes of Influenza are named after the H and N proteins used by that virus, such as H1N1, which was the cause of the 1918 Spanish Flu and 2009 Swine Flu pandemics, or H5N1, which is the cause of Avian Flu.
A study by Grayson et al in 2009 studied the ability of hand washing and sanitizing to eliminate the Influenza virus from contaminated hands. Twenty healthy volunteers were given a small volume of live virus to rub into their hands. After the virus was allowed to dry, a swab was taken to assess the amount of virus present after drying. Then the individuals washed their hands with either soap and water or one of three different brands of ethanol based hand sanitizer.
To compare how much virus remained on hands after the different cleaning procedures, swabs of the volunteers hands were cultured with cells that would normally be infected by the Influenza virus. The presence of H protein was tested by looking for clumps of cells, when red blood cells were mixed with a sample of the cell culture. This reaction was analyzed to determine the amount of virus remaining on hands after the different cleaning methods.
Hands that were not cleaned in either way still had a large amount of virus, although drying on the hands did appear to reduce the amount of virus remaining. Both methods of cleaning hands were very effective in removing Influenza virus. Hand washing with soap and water or cleaning hands with hand sanitizer both resulted in no detectable virus.
Currently hand sanitizer is sold out most places, or worse being sold for inflated prices. Though hand soap isn't as convenient on the go, and requires finding some water to wash up, in this study it also completely removed the dried virus from the volunteer's hands.
Like any protective measure, during times of panic, many of us are prone to over doing it. This should be apparent by all of the empty toilet paper shelves. While I hope I've convinced you of the benefits of hand washing, it is important to also remember that repeated hand washing can dry out your skin. Dry skin is prone to cracking, which will further break down the physical barrier that your skin provides. So in addition to practicing good hand washing techniques, it is also important to make sure you keep your hands moisturized and don't use overly hot water.
When I was thinking about writing this post, I initially wanted to include a doodle of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but at the end of the day, I don't want to make fun of anyone's impulse to panic. It is easy to panic when we get instant updates on world news, most with nightmare inducing headlines, many of these from dubious news sources.
Instead we need to be cautious, prepared, and follow the guidelines set up by valid sources.
And be kind to others, by remembering that even if you think you won't get too ill from this, you can't predict how the people around you will be affected!
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/global-handwashing-day.html
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/influenza-a-virus-subtypes.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
Burton et al, The Effect of Handwashing with Water or Soap on Bacterial Contamination of Hands, 2011, The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 8: 97-104
Grayson et al, Efficacy of Soap and Water and Alcohol-Based Hand-Rub Preparations against Live H1N1 Influenza Virus on the Hands of Human Volunteers, 2009, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 48: 285–91
Comments
Post a Comment