Chest bumps. High fives. Hugs and handshakes. Glen Cove Middle School students Ali Slaughter and Hannah Seltzer say that’s what friends do on the first day of school. But when students in the Nassau community return to school next week, the superintendent will be urging abstinence. Everyone from the tiniest tots to the biggest high school football players will be asked to limit skin-on-skin contact in an attempt to prevent the spread of swine flu when it re-emerges this fall.
Glen Cove isn’t the only school deciding the best way to limit the spread of flu is by keeping students from touching each other. It just happens to be the most recent example I’ve run across. It’s a completely silly plan, of course, because someone is just as likely –if not more so– to catch the flu by touching desks, chairs, doors, sinks, toilets, walls, hand rails, and all the other millions of non-porous surfaces to be found at schools and elsewhere†.
There are really only two ways to avoid catching the flu (or anything else): never leave your house or wash your hands after touching anything (or anyone) in your environment.
I am far more grossed about about touching the handle of a shopping cart than I am touching any human on the planet. I am convinced the super-bug that will kill us all will be born on the handle of a shopping cart.
Footnotes- † And don’t even get me started on the utter grossness of paper money and coins. You really don’t want to know, and I do have stories I could tell. Let’s just leave it at this: you can catch things from handling money. This is actually one of the top reasons I use my debit card for everything. I used to be locked in a small room with large quantities of cash on a daily basis, and if that experience taught me anything, it’s that money is disgusting. [↩]