The reality is that we live in a germy world teeming with microbes including viruses, bacteria, fungi and the like. We are vastly outnumbered by these microbes which it has been estimated make up over half the living mass on earth. Bacteria are everywhere – in, on and around us. Fortunately, they were made tiny and invisible so as not to make us crazy. Many are actually beneficial to our health in ways we are only beginning to understand and appreciate. The vast majority are totally innocuous to us and only a tiny fraction are pathogenic. So most of us go through life with standard hygienic practices and we remain just fine for the most part.
Then there are the germaphobes. These are people who hate the thought of acquiring the unseen little beasties from the inanimate environment and from their fellow man. The list of famous germaphobes includes the billionaire Howard Hughes who finished out his life as a recluse shunning human contact. Another was Stan “the Man” Musial, the Hall-of-Fame baseball player who eschewed handshakes in favor of fistbumps which subsequent studies have shown transfer fewer bacteria between the two parties than the traditional pressing of the flesh. Howie Mandel of “Deal or No Deal” fame is another notable germ shunner whose “knuckle knocks” allowed for contact with even less skin of the greetee than full fistbumps.
The most notorious germaphobe in the news nowadays is Donald Trump, who almost 40 years ago in his book “The Art of the Deal” declared the handshake to be one of the “curses of American society.” To this day “The Donald” reportedly refuses to touch ground floor elevator buttons as he considers them to be the most germ contaminated surface in the building and he dislikes shaking the hands of teachers who may be carrying the germs of their students on their hands. David Owen of The New Yorker has estimated that US Presidents shake hands about 650,000 times per year in office. I’m just waiting for one of Mr. Trump’s debate opponents to play this handshake card to try and derail Trump’s presidential aspirations! In fairness it should be mentioned that our current President, Mr. Obama may be a closet germaphobe as in recent years he has notoriously taken to greeting with a fistbump in lieu of a handshake.
So the filthy rich may not be after all, but their money is. A study of dollar bills obtained from a Manhattan bank by NYU researchers in 2014 revealed that the bills cultured out over 3000 types of bacteria. Most were skin bacteria as expected but they also found the notorious MRSA as well as other bacterial species normally at home in the mouth or vagina. Filthy lucre is an expression for money or other ill-gotten gains more or less equivalent to “dirty money” but now we find out that all money is pretty dirty and could actually use some laundering.
The take home lesson is just what our Moms told us about washing hands before dinner and about other basic hygiene. But going to extremes may not be good either. It’s been found that children raised in super clean households have significantly higher rates of asthma. So some of the bacteria are our friends, the vast majority are innocuous, and a relatively few are our true enemies. Lest we wish they were all gone, remember that it was the lowly microbes, our viruses and bacteria, that killed off the Martians just as they were routing humankind in “The War of the Worlds”!
