I’m in sales and despite the COVID19 hysteria was at a trade show last week and the VERY FIRST thing another sales rep does is come up and shake my hand.
Then there’s a meeting three days later and guess what everyone started doing: shaking hands!
It’s bad enough I have to touch something that was on your dick, in your mouth, up your ass, on your wives vagina, in your nose or who knows where but now you insist on passing a potentially lethal virus to me because of this stupid tradition.
Fortunately a couple events I’m attending are declared to be “handshake free”. Let’s pray the one good thing about this outbreak is that it once and for all eliminates this vile form of greeting and gets replaced with something more sanitary like a bow or a wave.
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I really dislike shaking hands because of arthritis in my thumb/wrist. I never know if the fellow is going to give a soft wimpy shake (which they’ve always been taught not to do) or an ironman grip (ouch!), so I try to avoid it whenever I can. It’s an awkward situation. I’d be delighted if no one ever offered to shake my hand again.
The worst, hardest handshake I ever had was from when I met my hand surgeon before carpal tunnel surgery. I accused him of trying to generate patients.
I mean, fine, I guess. But it’s such a normal part of daily interaction to me, that it would be weird not to do so. I have no issue with shaking hands.
The immune system works best if it is regularly exercised, Expose yourself often to the mild pathogens circulating in your community, and your immune system will recognize them and be alert to fighting them off. You are probably healthier exactly because you do have regular contact with threats.
You claim this shit all the freaking time, but you never seem to have a cite for it.
It’s one thing to “exercise one’s immune system”, and it’s quite another to just open yourself up to constant filth and disease. That’s how epidemics got started – people NOT practicing proper hygiene.
If you don’t think there’s such a thing as “too much exercise”, witness the case of Typhoid Mary.
People are not and never have been the most sanitary of creatures. That doorknob you just touched at the office? Probably pretty germy. Same for the hand sanitizer dispenser, the water faucet you used to wash your hands, the weight machines at your gym, and dozens of other surfaces you touch each day. During epidemics, it makes sense to be extra-cautious, but I hope we DON’T do away with handshakes. Those phobic or uncomfortable with shaking hands shouldn’t be expected to do so. For the rest of us, once the epidemic hysteria you refer to is past, I hope we go back to handshakes. Human touch can be important for wellbeing.
Yes, please. Adds name to voting list to abolish handshaking forever. However, if you’re someone who enjoys and accepts handshaking you can wear a button with an image of two hands which lets other handshakers know you’re one of them, and then the two of you can gleefully clasp and improve each other’s immunity.
Yes, yes I do. And try coming up with a better cite than some anti-vaxxer alternative medicine group.
(I read a book not too long about the history of how the germ theory came to be, and how it affected medicine as we know it. I’ll see if I can’t remember the name of it.)
Ah, here we go! The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
It’s pretty gruesome, mind you. Not for the weak stomached.
Doesn’t look very credible to me. Seems highly irresponsible, considering a time like this, a thread like this, a board like this and a response like that.
