All my other drafts are a bit anodyne at the moment, whereas you, dear reader, are undoubtedly tuned in The Virus. I thought the following was quite useful, and I haven’t seen it in detail elsewhere: The way to wash your hands.
”Many people don’t wash their hands correctly. They may think 10 seconds is enough. No. They may just rub a little soap between the palms and ignore other parts of the hand. And if you do a slipshod job, the coronavirus pathogens will still be on your hands when you’re done. And if you touch your hands to your face — as humans do about 200 times a day — those pathogens can infect you via eyes, nose or mouth.
”It doesn’t matter whether the water is warm or cold, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains on its website. And antibacterial soap works just as well as regular soap. But running water is key, since standing water could be contaminated.
”You need to clean the areas between your fingers, as well as your thumb and the backs of your hands, Dr. Mark Gendreau, the chief medical officer at Beverly Hospital in Massachusetts, told NPR: Scratch your palms in order “to scrub the fingertips and to get some soap under the initial part of the nail,” he adds.
”Wash for at least 20 seconds — singing the “Happy Birthday” song twice or the alphabet song at a reasonable pace will usually get you to that benchmark. (Maxwell Posner & Elena Renken, NPR News, March 7, 2020).
If you feel like singing at all.