I constantly watch everyone eat with dirty hands. I feel like a renegade. Why don't people wash their hands?

My friend, the former head of the department of surgical dentistry, never washed his hands when entering a restaurant. I always ran to the toilet first. I was silent, then drew his attention, and he said: "a million microbes more, a million less - a matter of everyday life!" All the same, neither soap nor water can remove pathogenic microbes and viruses from your hands. Then there is nothing to try.

I also think that this is due to the upbringing and instilling of a habit by parents from childhood. Someone got it instilled, some didn't. Someone was vaccinated, but not grafted. Usually, children do this by inertia, not consciously, without thinking about why it is needed - out of habit, or they repeat after adults. By the way, I did not have such a habit and all the efforts of my parents were in vain and came to naught in an independent life. But with age, the habit appeared by itself, when the realization came that there are many disease-causing microbes in this world. That is, until there is awareness, there will be no such habit. Observations show that very few people think about microbes and their effect on human life. However, washing your hands has a downside - if you wash your hands too often and thoroughly, the quality of the skin deteriorates.

You are not the only one who thinks about it. Once upon a time (10 years ago) I read a cry of despair from a former Russian woman who went to her husband in Norway. Her relationship with her husband's parents did not work out precisely because of "cleanliness" - they did not wash their hands before eating and were offended when the girl washed her hands. Their complaint was: our apartment is not dirty and our hands are always clean .

Washing our hands, for example, before eating, was one of the mottos in the USSR. All sorts of "Moidodyrs" there also contributed to this. I think it was in the 1990s that a departure from this ritual began. And the problem isn't just about washing your hands before eating. Now at my work, about half of the workers do not wash their hands after using the toilet. And people don't really understand why they should behave differently. Probably domestic difficulties at the turn of the eighties-nineties are the main reason why many parents did not instill in their children the desire for cleanliness.

A joke from those times:

Away .
- Did you wash your hands with soap?
- With soap.
- Then you will drink tea without sugar.