I’m talking about germaphobia/mysophobia.
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Not much. I had extensive courses on microbiology during uni. Generally the stuff you find at home or in nature (northen hemisphere temperate climates) is pretty tame and well avoidable.
As long as you wash your hand before eating, properly wash and heat sensitive food, and wash out and desinfact open wounds you are good to go.
Only thing i am concerned with is boreolosis or rabies from animals, but there you just gotta go to a doctor in time, if you suspect a transmission.
I understand though that this is the approach of someone with a healthy immune system, who never got more than a few days of shits from eating spoiled food occasionally.
I had extensive courses on microbiology during uni.
It’s not a perfect correlation, but I find most germophobes haven’t taken microbiology, or even regular biology. One of those ignorance == fear things, I think.
As far as the “contamination” language goes, people interested in the purity vs contamination dynamic may want to check out Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It’s imperfect but has real explanatory value, IMO.
I have the feeling for a lot of MINT topics lack of knowledge creates a stronger emotional response, both positive or negative.
Do you mean vs contamination vs purity that “99% pure” is considered as good whereas “1 % contamination” is considered as bad? These kind of number examples were given in “thinking fast, thinking slow” to illustrate the fallability of number interpretation and the general lack of statistical intuition in humans.
Do you mean vs contamination vs purity that “99% pure” is considered as good
A moral/social judgement that The Other (out-group) is dirty, filthy, unclean, disease-ridden, gross, etc. Haidt suggests that is a distinction that aligns with a particular political leaning. It rings true to me (having been both in and out of that political group).
Haidt uses some novel examples in the book that make it worth the read for that if nothing else.
Even though I’m a raging hypochondriac, I am not a germophobe. Funny how that works.
Not at all. Germs make you stronger.
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My dad would frequently trot out “You’ll eat a peck o’ dirt before you die.” - where peck would be the UK version of the volumetric measure: a little over 9 ltrs.
He had a very laid back approach to contamination due to his old-school farming background. I had a rather more strict approach when young but, with age, I have become much more relaxed and do use the phrase myself at times.
I am a healthcare professional with some public health and sanitation training and worked/traveled in Africa, Asia quite a lot, especially in the lesser known destinatios. So for regular life? Not much. I do adhere to basic sanitary rules (cook it,peel it or leave it) and make sure the water I use is clear when I am in these areas. But otherwise just the normal stuff like washing your produce before eating it, washing your hands after having a leak,etc. In my daily life it is rather unlikely to come in contact with the really nasty shit. (okay, only when you work with raw chicken…that stuff is nasty)
But work-wise? I am an extremist in that regard. I still wear a mask when seeing patients (more out of fear that I might infect them unknowingly), I absolutely desinfect my hands as often as required, I adhere to sanitation rules (e.g. for putting in iVs) religiously and make my students do the same. And when I am a patient I absolutely make sure that staff does the same when treating me.
The reason for that is quite simple: I saw too many hospital acquired infections and had a minor one myself. And that is unnecessary - and the stuff you get there is the one to truely fear. That will fuck you up badly.
I avoid it a fair amount. I won’t eat anything sticky that I’ve dropped, I try to avoid touching hand rails and door knobs. I’ll dodge people that are coughing or sneezing, especially if they’re children. I’m also very peculiar about eating food from potlucks made by people I don’t know.
I’ll eat a chicken nugget off the floor, but not lunchmeat.
If someone is sick, I’ll try to avoid touching them or getting in their face.
I avoid public hand rails and will open bathroom doors with a paper towel.
I’m not afraid of getting sick, but I’ll avoid it if I can readily do so.
The year of quarantine, I didn’t get sick, I like that a lot.
I consider myself a rather hygienic person. Wash my hands perhaps more often than I should. But I’m not exactly stressed when I don’t, partly because I know perfect hygiene isn’t best for your health either. I’m just very conscious about it, especially when preparing food for somebody else.
More now than I did two weeks ago. I just recovered from a bout of Typhoid Fever / mystery bacterial infection in Cambodia.
Probably not enough
Thought you were talking about Facebook Threads for a second XD
