Paws and reflect
It’s Thanksgiving weekend. Is it safe to shake hands?
This weekend, people all across the country will be gathering with family and friends, many for the first time in ages. But how does one greet others without breaking pandemic protocol?
As Minister Frank McGee and his dog, Grundy, demonstrated in 1963, when this photo was captured by Star photographer Frank Tesky, touch — whether it’s shaking hands or hugging — is how many of us say hi. It’s a hard habit to break. But should handshaking become a thing of the past?
“Hand-to-hand contact isn’t likely to be a major risk (for COVID-19 transmission),” says Colin Furness, infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, “but coming in close to someone long enough to shake their hand is an issue, if the people involved aren’t wearing high-quality masks that are properly fitted.”
Still, Furness admits he’d like to see an end to handshaking. “Objectively,” he says, “hands are gross. Touch may not matter so much for COVID-19, but it almost certainly does for other serious viruses. The other reason is bacterial contamination. Most bacteria are harmless or beneficial. Our bodies are covered in bacteria, inside and out. But some types, associated with the ‘two Fs’ (food and feces) are very harmful. Between kitchens and bathrooms, our hands can get dangerously dirty.”
Even though people have been told over the past 18 months to wash their hands frequently, Furness says it hasn’t sunk in for many. After conducting extensive research on hand-hygiene behaviour of hospital patients, staff and visitors, he found that “all three groups had the same rate of hand washing in bathrooms: 30 per cent. That’s low.
“I’m not a germaphobe,” he adds, “but I’m a real fan of hand sanitizer. If we shook hands less, we’d sure need it less. And we’d get sick less.”
Throughout the pandemic, public figures have attempted to normalize elbow bumps, heel taps and the like. Furness, too, is open to exploring new ways to say hello and goodbye. “Handshaking is a deeply embedded social ritual,” he says, “but of course it’s not universal. A lesser change, like knuckle bumping, would be great.”
In an epidemiologist’s perfect world, the social moratorium on handshakes would continue indefinitely, though Furness isn’t sure what could ultimately replace them: “Maybe people who are younger and cooler than me can invent alternatives.”
When considering this photo of McGee and Grundy, Furness warns, “COVID-19 is unusually adaptable to different species, which is part of what makes it dangerous. That said, pet transmission does not seem to be very common at all. In this picture, the main risk is bacterial contamination from whatever Rover might have stepped in recently.” In other words, someone pass McGee the hand sanitizer.