The goofy cleanliness of the modern world.

The other day, I posted a thread here with this Leslie's magazine cover:

On the same day, the same cover was posted on Reddit's 100 Years Ago today subreddit, but not be my.

I posted a link to this in the comments:

As you can see, there's a Salvation Army Rest Room posted there, which caused some Reddit wag to post:

Great, now I want to see if the S.A Restroom had any hand sanitizer.

Not a good idea really. From Time Magazine, regarding hand sanitizers.

But that zeal is hurting us. According a recent World Health Organization report, our obsession with germ killing has resulted in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in every corner of the globe, thanks in part to our willy-nilly use of wide-spectrum antibiotics and, yes, our love of hand sanitizer. [Update: Many hand sanitizers, it has been rightly pointed out to us by the makers of Purell, are alcohol based and have not been named as a cause of bacterial resistance; those of documented concern are the ones that contain triclosan or triclocarbon.] But we’re not even the main problem. In the U.S. the overuse of antibiotics in farming to prevent animals from getting sick and to fatten them up is also widely fingered as the No. 1 source of drug-resistant bacteria. And every year, 2 million Americans get infections not treatable with antibiotics — and 23,000 of them die. The animals get slaughtered, but we get sick.

Yup, they're making the world more dangerous.

Now, I know that I'm swimming upstream on this one, but I absolutely despise hand sanitizers and the way they absolutely stink.  This probably reveals something to do with my upbrining and roots, but not in the way you might suspect.

Now, let me note what I'm not saying.  I'm not saying that you should eschew soap and water.  Nope, not at all. Wash your hands, normally, before you eat. Brush your darned teeth too (indeed, it might help prevent you from getting Alzheimers).  But had sanitizers . . .bah.

When I was a kid I can recall my mother, if somebody obviously sick had come over, washing this or that with Lysol, which reeks.  The theory was that this was going to kill germs, and it probably does, but it also stunk up the place and in my youthful logic I figured that whatever killer germ had come in from the sick person was now there and I'd probably breathed it in already.  Engaging in chemical warfare wasn't going to help.

And to make things plain, being a rude primitive who has hunted my whole life and who has ranched as well, I know darned well that I've injested quite a bit of raw blood of various animals simply accidentally at one time or another.  Indeed, I hvae hovel hand scar I acquired when a sage chicken scratched me and my wrist was already bloody and I didn't realize our blood had co mingled.

Don't believe me?  Here's the fresh wound after I discovered it:

I didn't die from the wound and I didn't go to the hospital or get a tetnas shot or anything. Maybe I should have.  It infected and I put idodine on it pretty early on. Probably as soon as I washed up and found it.  It's healed into a nifty looking scar in my mind.

Hey, German aristocrats wanted dueling scars. . . . I have one that I came by honestly.

Anyhow, the point is that it seemed obvious to me, perhaps because of a scientific bent at an early age, that while we don't want everything swimmiing in bacteria and cleanliness is really important in preventing infection, sterilizing the planet achieves the opposite.  Cleaning is one thing. . . soap and water is good. . . but treating our hands like we're characters in The Andromina Strain or Outbreak is over the top.

But we've become manic about in a way that's a little freaky.

One of the compulisons that Howard Hughes develoepd was to constantly wash his hands.  They were clean, but he washed them and washed them.  This was rightfully regarded as odd.  But now I see people all hte time who can't pass by a hand sanitzier dispenser without glopping it on their hands.  I've been to the hospital to visit people and been there with others who pass by one, and then another, and then another and use it every time.  I don't use it at all.  I don't intend to use by bare hands to do exploratory surgery on a person infected with ebola.  Yes, I know that I might touch something in the hospital.  If things seem to me icky enough, I'll wash my hands when I get home.  But I'm not going ot use the hand sanitzer.

For that matter, I see the stuff in offices now and during cold and flu season I'll see people use it again and again and again. I go through most flu seaons without getting the flu.  I cna't take the shot for it as I'm allergic to one of the constituents, so I'm out there just risking it old school style.  If anyoen should be using the hand santizer in a paranoid fashion, it's me, but I'm nto going to.

Just give it a break.  You're making it worse.  You need to be exposed to some regular bugs in order to have a functioning immune system. And bugs evolve a lto faster than you do, so they're outstripping any hand sanitzer on the market pretty quickly.

So say no to hand sanitizer.  Do your immune system and the planet a good turn.