Well, it’s
official: Shaking hands is bad for your health.
The British Olympic Association’s
chief medical officer said so. Infections are spread by shaking hands, he said,
adding that if we are Olympic athletes, we could lose out on a medal by
catching even a mild disease.
It was all Saffy could do not to
throw up as she read the article on her iPad. “It says here that dirty
hands can transmit infections such as noroviruses and salmonella that cause
diarrhoea and vomiting, rhinoviruses that can give you a cold, as well as viruses
that cause flu and chickenpox!”
Saffy looked up, her eyes slightly
crossed. “Oh my God, you can get chickenpox just by shaking someone’s hands? I
feel sick.”
She immediately posted the article
onto Facebook and for the rest of the day, would post extracts onto the walls
of random friends.
“Diseases that spread rapidly and can
be fatal, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and
Clostridium difficile, can also lurk on hands!” she said on Karen’s
wall.
“The bugs can stay on them for hours
and be transferred to surfaces and door handles for other people to share!” she
posted on Sharyn’s wall.
Sharyn picked up her phone to call
Saffy. “Ay, you don’t be so cheem on Facebook, can or not? I just wasted 15
minutes looking up the dictionary, you know.”
“I hope you’re not using someone
else’s phone right now, Sharyn,” Saffy said darkly. “Did you read the rest of
the article? It says that one in six handphones is contaminated by faecal
bugs!”
“Aiyoh!”
Of course, reading stupid articles
like this is a bit like listening to a Kylie Minogue song: You just can’t get
it out of your head. For days afterwards, everywhere I looked was a festering
hotbed of potentially fatal germs just waiting to explode and overwhelm my
weakly defended immune system.
Door handles have become Public Enemy
No. 1. As have lift buttons and toilet flushes.
Which reminds me of a friend I used
to have in my old office. Wen-ling was a medically diagnosed hypochondriac.
Which means that whilst the rest of us say
we’re hypochondriacs, she was officially
a hypochondriac. In a strange way, this made her normal. It’s like someone
who’s been diagnosed with arthritis is considered more normal that someone,
like my mother, who pretends to have it only when confronted with a mop or an
iron.
Anyway, Wen-ling arrived at the
office each morning and whilst the other lawyers sat down to check their emails
or make coffee, she would take out her wallet, empty all the notes and coins
onto a sheet of plastic and proceed to wipe everything down with a cloth and
liberal spritzes of lavender and orange scented Dettol.
Every four hours, she would hose down
her computer keyboard with antibacterial gel. “Keyboards are disgusting,” she
once told me calmly as I sat in her office and watched her diligently scrub at
the ‘A’ key.
Everyone thought Wen-ling was a few
files short of a full cabinet, but I thought she was the most normal person I’d
ever met.
“That woman is weird. I don’t know
why you’re friends with her. You need germs to build up your immunity!” Amanda
once snuffled as she snuggled deeper beneath her blankets and shivered from
stomach flu.
Of course, she passed the bug to
Saffy and me because a day later, all three of us were building up our communal
immunity by throwing up into the same toilet bowl every thirty minutes. Saffy
said that if she wasn’t so weak from a fever and dehydration, she’d kill
Amanda. “I had a hot date with Bradley tonight!” she gasped.
And according to the article we just
read, when researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
swabbed the hands of 308 public transport commuters in the UK, between four and
19% were contaminated with faecal bacteria.
“But why don’t people wash their
hands?” Saffy cried. “What is wrong with this world?
“Apparently, you’ve got to wash for
the length of time it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice before you’re really
done,” I said.
It all makes me think that it’s just
not safe to step out the front door at all. If the simple friendly act of
shaking hands can make you sick, or lose out on an Olympic medal, what is the
point?
Saffy says that the Japanese and the
Thais have had it right all along. “They just bow and smile. That’s what I’m
doing from now on. I’ll just bow and never have to touch anyone!”
“Poor Blad-ley!” Sharyn said.
1 comment:
I think what your friend Wen ling have is OCD + hypochondriasis. Same as what Emma from Glee is depicted to be suffering from.
But Amanda is right - what won't kill you will make you stronger!
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