If you think this is bad, I always like to remind folks that there’s an excellent chance* the hand you just shook just cleaned their ass, and you should hope they didn’t make any mistakes.
Oh, and WRT the toilet plume story, AFAIK, that’s accurate: when you flush, there is a plume that erupts out of the toilet like a volcano. Depending on the toilet, that plume can even be felt at times (I know I’ve gotten a little bit splashed at times, ugh). But the real takeaway is that at a minimum the plume spreads microscopic droplets of soiled water all over your bathroom: your sink, your comb, your scented candle, and best of all, your toothbrush.
BTW, the Master speaks.
*Cultural prohibitions on which hand to wipe with aside, of course.
This whole psychological issue can overwhelm you if you don’t keep it in perspective. We sleep on so-called yucky things, eat so-called yucky things, breath them and get them in our eyes, on our hands and face and so on.
Creatures poop on us all day, we breath poop, farts (methane, etc) and walk around with poop just hanging out in the colon waiting for a chance to escape.
Our E-Coli is responsible for keeping us alive, and our immune system doesn’t just show up to fight things, it’s on the job 24/7.
Everyone lives a life wherein we are balancing how we function with all these things going on, and how we stop short of over-exposing ourselves to dangerous levels of bacteria and viruses that could be harmful.
Most ‘stomach flus’ (no such thing) and other stomach viruses that people think/assume are just some bug they caught, are outright food poisoning from salmonella or e-coli infections. It is not uncommon for anyone reading this to have someone else’s fecal matter lead to a tummy ache and some diarrhea (never could spell that).
It is normal/common to experience such infections.