Coronavirus Benefits (?)

I thought perhaps one of the few possible benefits of this coronavirus (COVID-19) scare is that people would begin washing their hands more often. Apparently I was wrong. Instead people are hoarding hand sanitizers, leading to price gouging on the Internet and bare shelves at brick-and-mortar locations. Time reports: “Sales of hand sanitizers in the U.S. were up 73% in the four weeks ending Feb. 22 compared to the same period a year ago.”

Further along in this and several other articles we are reminded that washing with soap and water is superior. “If you’re not near a sink, hand sanitizer will do. But keep in mind that it doesn’t kill all germs, the CDC says.”

I reminded readers about this last fall in a piece about how the media insists on presenting old news as the latest discovery. Here is an excerpt from that entry.

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Here is an example of well-known information being presented as a new revelation: a study hitting the Internet and the airways recently revealed that “Washing your hands under running water may be a better way to stop the spread of infections than using a hand sanitizer.” The hand sanitizer can be nearly as effective as washing hands for removing flu viruses, provided both are done properly. It just takes longer.

In laboratory experiments “it took about 30 seconds for the sanitizer to eliminate all the flu virus in the saline samples, but more than 4 minutes for the sanitizer to get rid of flu in the mucus samples.” From the lab tests they moved to a more real-life situation by putting mucus directly on people’s fingertips. When it was given time to dry (for 40 minutes), the hand sanitizer killed the flu virus within 30 seconds. But in a more realistic situation where the mucus was still moist, it took about 4 minutes of rubbing for the flu virus to be completely eliminated.

Proper hand washing removed traces of the virus in both cases in about 30 seconds, whether the participants used soap or not. The benefit is not from the soap, but from the rubbing under running water. 

No one is likely to rub the hand sanitizer for 4 minutes or alternatively to let their hands dry after sneezing for 40 minutes, but neither do many people spend half a minute scrubbing under running water. When a sink is not available the alcohol is a good option. 

That’s what we know today, but we had substantially the same information 10 years ago. From Live Science in October 2009: “Hand washing with ordinary soap and water is the most effective way to remove germs. But when you're on the go, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are tremendously effective in preventing the spread of the seasonal flu.” They gave 20 seconds for washing and 15 for the sanitizer, so the latest study just worked a little on the details. It wasn’t really news.

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Relative to the recent hoarding, CBS News made a good point a few years ago when they asked: “Does hand sanitizer give people a false sense of security?”

Furthermore, earlier this year Fox Business reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent a warning letter to Purell about claims on their website pages and social media platforms, claims that were either totally erroneous or not supported by evidence.

Others fear that germs accumulating on bar soap negates the benefits or washing and believe that antibacterial soap is the better choice. Both these assumptions are faulty as I explained in “Thinking About Soap” in September 2016.

The question remains: Will Americans use the latest coronavirus outbreak as an opportunity to learn and grow, taking rational precautions and not flying into a panic, or will they continue to react to each intentionally scary news story as if the world is ending? Time will tell.