Every day there are articles in various mainstream media which purport to distill the sage advice of Scientists on the subject of hygiene. Not only how and when to clean one’s body, but also how often to wash your towels and your refrigerator and your dog, essential hygienic precautions while traveling, in the office, and so forth. Yet, with few exceptions, what is never discussed is what all this diligence is saving us from, besides perhaps public opprobrium and personal squickiness.
Even when such are mentioned, the statistical risks are never discussed. What can you catch from a public toilet seat? From a dirty sink? From going weeks without washing your hair? What exactly? Is this theoretical or does it actually happen?
I’ll freely confess that I live a quite dirty life compared to the majority of Americans. I live on a farm, I sleep with dogs, I drink raw milk (from my own goats), I eat fruits and vegetables without washing them. When I wash my hands I am often amazed at how much sheer dirt comes off. And yet, I’m apparently much less prone to contagious diseases than my peers – never had Covid, haven’t had the flu for years … which I attribute mainly to my lifestyle not being compatible with strangers breathing on me much. It certainly has nothing to do with cleanliness at all.
I can’t answer the question directly. But it’s great question to ask.
Broadly, human illness comes from ingesting things that are chemically incompatible like poisonous plants & fungi, heavy metals, etc. Or from encountering bacteria or viruses coming directly off other humans or the stuff they’ve touched or pooped in or whatever. The final source of human morbidity is dietary insufficiencies, like the “goiter belt” in the old USA where soil deficiencies in iodine meant everybody nearby was malnourished as to that one nutrient. This latter source of trouble isn’t really relevant to personal hygiene, so I’ll drop it right here.
My conclusion: If you (any you) live a substantially solitary life upstream of most sources of human disease-encrusted waste, you have nearly nothing to fear. Some diseases jump from other species to humans (COVID?) but the odds that any one of us will have enough animal encounters to get to be patient zero in a novel zoonotic disease are infinitesimal.
This came out in the very early stages of COVID and is still relevant today:
I’m not willing to be a test subject for public toity germs. I avoid as much as possible.
If it’s imperative I have a little can of spray in my bag and sanitizer wipes on me and wash my hands thoroughly after.
I’m not really afraid of my own germs. I’m pretty clean in the bathrooms anyway. 'Cause I just don’t like nasty.
I’m slightly afraid of the grandkids biological travelers. So bleach is my friend for clean up after them.
If you have created your own bio-life world that keeps you healthy, I give you props.
If you get COVID thru some virus you picked up in some odd way and haven’t been vaccinated, beware pharmacies are low on the COVID med that’s cheap.
Just to be clear, my point(s) were not about COVID specifically.
You catch all human diseases pretty much only from other humans or their poop / pee. Don’t hang around humans or their waste and you won’t get sick. You can’t catch what isn’t there to be caught.
Which works plenty well for rural folks as the OP can attest. Works less well for the rest of us who live dense urban lives hip deep in fellow humans.
That comic came out at the very beginning of the lock-down phase of COVID management when it seemed possible we could let it burn itself out then return to a COVID-free future just like the COVID-free past. A month later it was obvious the public at large had enough non-cooperators that that solution was doomed.
A lot of times it’s just scary stuff designed to get you to keep consuming media (so they can show you more advertising). Articles and news clips reporting that some scientist somewhere found germs on * (where * is usually some surface in your home) often don’t mention what kind of germs they are, how much of it there is, or what their presence means for your risk of actually getting sick.
Anyone wondering if they’re doing things right need only look at their own track record of infection. I probably violate some of the more rigorous rules of household sanitation and in-public-places hygiene that are recommended by talking heads in the media - examples, I probably don’t swap out the sponge near my kitchen sink as often as I should, and I’m sure I don’t take the full recommended twenty seconds to wash my hands…but I really don’t get sick very often. OTOH, I also do some things that most people don’t do, like washing my hands before eating a restaurant, and using a sanitizing wipe or two to wipe down all the touch points around me when I sit down in an airplane (tray table, seatback, seatbelt buckle, armrests, etc).
I think a lot of it is just hysteria about the generic “getting sick” without diving much into the “from what?” Of course, the average person isn’t going to sit on a dirty or wet toilet seat, and the risk from sitting on a clean and dry one is probably very small, but who wants to trust ANY public toilet seat that is used when someone, some stranger, did their gross bodily functions while sitting on it?! Even when one of those thin “ass gasket” things is provided. AIUI, women’s public restrooms fall victim to this fear more than mens’ due to “hovering” (which makes aiming more of a challenge).
You probably are more at risk of catching some pathogen from your kitchen sponge than from sitting and doing your business on a public toilet. As for personal hygiene, if you live a solitary life, only your own discomfort is at risk (smelly, itchy, or whatever), but if you spend any time around others, I think social norms dictate how smelly and unkempt-looking you are allowed to be, moreso than concern about cleanliness and germs.
If you’re dirty, stinky and offensive you get the added benefit no one will get close enough to breath on you. Win-win.
But if you’re so dirty you don’t notice skin rashes you’ve scratched with filthy fingernails and caused bacterial infections. Or skin cancers that have gotten outta hand. Then you have to face the dreaded clinic. Where we all know all the worst germs are. Your virgin immune system will attack you allowing every sickness and pestilence known to man to to grab ahold.
ETA: Overall I agree with the trust of @snowthx post 4 above. My reply got misdirected as a generic thread reply by accident.
Ref this snip:
But that (as you indirectly suggest) is purely an appeal to overweening squicky disgust, not a rational appeal to a risk-based approach to real health.
My new wife’s cleanliness standards are about 10x what mine were. To zero benefit to me (and I believe zero benefit to her), but clearly to massive benefit of the manufacturers of the many expensive branded products she consumes with wild abandon in a desire to live in a squick-free world. Each one of which she learned of after their advertising told her of something new to be squicked about.
I recently learned that for destroying norovirus on surfaces requires bleach and most wipes and hand sanitizers are ineffective at penetrating the virus. I’d still wipe down surfaces but a.so keep hands away from one’s mouth nose eyes etc.
Those germs can remain on surfaces up to two weeks, super gross.
My question (which so far has indeed garnered the expected but irrelevant ewwww gross! Germs!! responses) is that WHAT IS IT EXACTLY do you imagine will happen to you if you sit on a wet toilet seat or don’t wash your mouth out with patented mouth sanitizer or whatever? I want to know.
My hypothesis is that you have no idea what you are trying to prevent with these fearful devotions, in terms of diagnosable illness, but rather that you are fearful of generalized contamination, a cultural rather than reality-based fear, the same source of fear that isolates women in menstrual huts, makes lepers ring bells to warn of their arrival, and condemns whole castes to take on the burden of ‘contaminating’ labor.
I don’t think it’s possible to know exactly what you could catch without knowing if the bodily fluid dispenser had a transferrable disease.
Any thing catchy is possible.
I bought one of those branded products for a specific cleaning purpose. It’s labeled as “toilet bowl disinfectant.” Not sure who thinks their toilet bowl needs to be disinfected.
Dirt may hide a raised rash. You innocently scratch. Driving dirt into it. Infection could happen.
And believe me doctors offices are virus laden. Especially the waiting room you spend long minutes in. Sick people are not always aware they’re coughing without covering their mouths. Or if they use their hand then they touch many surfaces. The pen you sign in with totally freaks me out.
(I’m a bit of a germaphobe, no …I’m a serious germaphobe. I kinda have to be)
Anyway, I don’t have to imagine what I could catch from someone’s nasty leavings or innocent coughed out viruses.
I know what would happen to me. In my compromised health situation I could die from just the wrong infection or virus.
So I’m careful. I mask up, distance and sanitize/wash often. Stay out of public places as much as possible.
I have to visit the dialysis clinic 3 times a week and other hospitals and clinics regularly. Not avoidable, I watch what they do.
I clean my house and insist on cleanliness from family and visitors.
I did this before the pandemic, during and now.
If the rest of the world would practice even a fourth of what I do we would be a healthier population.
I totally believe a virus will end this world sooner or later.
