Fist bumps spread germs
The fist bump is filthy, bro.
A recent study by researchers in Cleveland shows that greeting others with a fist bump, although cleaner than shaking hands, doesn’t stop germs from spreading.
Handshaking was a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, but fist-bumping seemed a cleaner alternative. You weren’t grabbing another person’s grimy palm, you were merely tapping knuckles.
But did it really keep germs from spreading?
Dr. Curtis J. Donskey, of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a team of researchers set to find out.
Donskey is an infectious disease physician and chairman of the infection control committee at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.
“We’re interested in all types of studies that we can do to look at how bugs are transmitted and how we can reduce that risk,” Donskey said.
Usually, that means fighting the spread of viruses such as influenza or drug-resistant bacteria. Then came along SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“With the onset of the pandemic, a lot of the same principles hold for SARS as hold for these other pathogens,” Donskey said.
The researchers already knew that a person with a cold could easily spread a virus by shaking hands, and even before the pandemic, some doctors discussed banning handshakes in hospitals, not that the idea got much traction, Donskey said.
To find out if fist bumps were a safer alternative to handshakes, Donskey and his fellow researchers ran two experiments using volunteers whose hands were contaminated with a harmless virus.
In the first experiment, five volunteers put the virus on their hands, then shook hands and bumped fists with non-contaminated volunteers.
The second experiment was larger. The researchers had 22 volunteers use a virus-contaminated keyboard and mouse for two minutes. Then, the volunteers shook hands and bumped fists with 22 non-contaminated volunteers.
During both experiments, each volunteer performed one greeting per hand.
Samples from the volunteers’ hands showed that handshakes transferred the virus 91% of the time during the experiment.
Fist bumps spread the virus 59% of the time – less often than a handshake, but still pretty grubby.
“The fist bump is better, but certainly not good enough,” Donskey said.
And using a cruise-tap – a modified fist bump where contact is with a single knuckle – transferred the virus 70% of the time, the researchers found.
“So, it wasn’t safe to even do a very minimal hand-to-hand contact,” Donskey said.
The results tell him that whether it’s a handshake or a fist bump, any type of hand-to-hand greeting is out for the moment. Hands are just too good at spreading germs.
“The elbow bump that everyone is doing, I think, is a good alternative,” Donskey said. “But anything that doesn’t involve direct contact with the hands, I think, is going to work.”
The doctor said he was primarily a hand-shaker before the pandemic, but he doubts the greeting will be as common after COVID-19.
“The handshake may come back a little bit, but I think we’re kind of in a new era where we’re going to be greeting people with elbow bumps and things like that in the future,” Donskey said.
The results of the fist-bump study were published by Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
Greg Kaley, 47, of Canton, said he’d tried for years to keep his greetings to a fist bump, unless the other person insisted on a handshake.
“I just think handshaking is a disgusting habit,” said Kaley, who works as a delivery person. “You can go to any public restroom and you see that half the men in this country don’t have the sense to wash their hands when they leave the restroom.”
Kaley said he was surprised by the researchers’ findings, but would probably stick with the fist bump. Unless someone wants to bump elbows.
“I’m fine with it, but that’s not really my thing,” he said.