Do you need to regularly disinfect your cell phone?

[EdelweissPirate]

@TruCelt

Because I don’t have access to testing which would identify the exact bug that made me sick, so I can’t be sure when it would be safe to use again.

Wait, what? You realize that it’s almost impossible to reinfect yourself that way, right, even if you had live virus on your toothbrush? Besides, rhinoviruses don’t vary all that much in how long they live outside the body.

I was operating under the assumption that you knew this and felt compelled to replace your toothbrush anyway, but maybe that wasn’t valid. Was I right in assuming that you know you can’t be reinfected this way?

Either way, I don’t care if you replace your toothbrush halfway through each brushing. I was just trying to understand your thought process, and I appreciate your answering my questions.

Because I brush my teeth at least three times per day, so who knows whether it’s been dry long enough to kill the bug, even if I knew how long that was?

Because such illnesses often come with higher levels of mucous and other secretions which are sticky and hard to clean from the tiny crevices between brush strands.

In all seriousness, why not store your toothbrush suspended in a bottle of vodka or something like that?

And honestly, with your argument we could dispense with dishwashers and even dish soap. Simply rinsing the dishes with water and leaving them out to dry would meet all of your criteria. But many of us are raised with higher benchmarks for cleanliness than “won’t make me violently ill.”

Easy there, tiger. I was going out of my way to make it clear I wasn’t judging you. I’m not sure why you needed to question my hygiene. I was explicitly not questioning yours. And I wasn’t “arguing” that anyone should do anything in particular with their toothbrushes. I was saying that the thing you said might be a problem was unlikely to be a problem. Frankly, I was expecting an answer along the lines of “I know I can’t re-infect myself, but changing my toothbrush makes me feel better, so I do it anyway.”

I liked one Doper’s characterization of mild germaphobia as “Germo-vision.” It’s not so much that I am terrified that there might be a germ, it’s more that I’m aware of where they hang out, and prefer to avoid contact with them whenever possible.

I can’t speak for others, but I’m not a germophobe and I’m aware of where microbes are (that would be everywhere). Avoiding contact with them is impossible. You might want to be careful in thinking that non-germophobes are only non-germophonbes out of microbiological ignorance.

I don’t think any less of you for doing what you choose to do; I was just trying to understand your thought process. If you want to respond constructively to this message, I’d be grateful for that. But I’d also understand if you didn’t want to explain any more.

[supposedly]

@Ulfreida

The first step to curing a phobia is admitting you have a problem.

If you can come up with a single instance of a human being contracting a disease – any kind of communicable disease – from their own phone, you have my apologies in advance.

Go away!

This topic is only for paranoid dopers.

[Bear_Nenno]

@cochrane

I’ve had cell phones for over 20 years, smartphones for nine. I’ve never felt a need to disinfect my phones. I’ll clean my phone’s screen if I get too many greasy smudges on it.

Agreed. And more often than not, I clean the screen by licking it. I’m still alive.