An opinion on germs

After seeing extended newspaper and television alerts regarding our current challenge in dealing with a pandemic caused by a virus, I decided to revisit an article I wrote several years ago and to adapt it to the current situation. The topic is germs, and I’m using the word as a general term for any microscopic organism that potentially causes illness.

Germs aren’t only present during the winter season. They are with us throughout the year. They don’t go away. Germs remind me of the Gary Cooper classic High Noon when the bad guys ride into town to practice some of their usual rampant and nasty shenanigans. In the movie, Cooper finally throws his sheriff’s badge on the ground and rides out of town. We humans have the same attitude about fighting terms. As long as we don’t see them, they just can’t be there.

I imagine this scenario:
I’m in a local grocery store and observe a woman walk past the dampened, germ-killing wipes intended for use in cleaning the buggy handle of the last customer’s potentially deadly germs and she makes this comment: “I usually don’t use these wipes until the winter months when germs are back in season.”

I am busy wiping away the dreaded germs from the handle when she made the comment, and I had to offer a response: “Oh, but you’re dead wrong about germs. They don’t take a three-season vacation. In fact, there are millions of them on your buggy handle right now.”

In my scenario, she gives a mournful sound of disgust, grabs a wad of the friendly wipes and starts removing those thousands of germs with a vengeance. Good for her! They might not have been deadly germs, but she’s removed a risk she didn’t need to take.

Media has been on a crusade to help educate us about a deadly coronavirus known as COVID-19, but we should consider that one of the primary controls they continually remind us of is also one that would keep us healthier all year long, regardless of a pandemic. And that one simple thing is the act of proper handwashing. We should be doing this one thing always.
Most germs are not pathogenic, in that they don’t cause illness. But we should do all we can to minimize the chance that one of the potentially deadly ones, such as Staph, Norovirus, or this new coronavirus, isn’t lurking on our hands, ready to infect us.
Germs latch on to filthy hands like metal to magnets, and they hide there under fingernails and on the epidermis until they are spread across the kitchen table, the counter tops, the entire bathroom, and from there they invade and conquer within their unseen world. Some are airborne, and pass from person to person with a simple cough that isn’t contained in a Kleenex or the crook of an arm.

When housewives rush into the battle with their paraphernalia of strong-smelling orange scented liquids, potent bleaches, soaps, mops, and assorted sprays, their kitchens become battlegrounds where the invisible enemy is temporarily anesthetized, incapacitated and sent, although briefly, scurrying to other places to bivouac and to reemerge with new recruits.

Germs fight back in their incalculable numbers, and they never negotiate. They are masters of camouflage, which allows them to spread their offensive, malicious and abominable sickness as they please.
Imagine another scene featuring Toby, a young boy in the prime of childhood. Toby comes in from playing in the mud, romping with his dog, digging for lost treasurers, and pulling the tails of every lizard left in the neighborhood. His mother instructs him to wash up before having his peanut butter snack.

“Toby, don’t come out of the bathroom until you have thoroughly washed those filthy hands.”
Toby runs a few drops of water over one dirty hand, and then he retrieves a clean towel with the other verminous hand and makes a few swipes across his wrist.
“Young man, did you use soap and hot water to clean those hands?”

Toby mumbles a questionable and inaudible yes, then he proceeds to spread peanut butter over two slices of bread. When he finishes, he runs a dirty finger deep into the jar and pulls out an extra bite before leaving the kitchen to resume his play.
Hopefully no one will become sick, but it’s an unnecessary risk to this family that has just been taken, and one that would have been easy to minimize. If there is a silver lining to this current pandemic it’s that we’ll pay attention to this one simple personal hygiene activity each and every day…throughout the day.

Soap and warm water are two enemies of the bad germs. It’s as simple as that.