Germs and Greetings!

Do you bump or shake someone’s hand when you meet them?
In sports you often see players bumping each other’s hands with a closed fist on a successful play or goal. They are not getting ready to fights. Michelle and Barack Obama bumped fists in Minneapolis and now regularly exchange bumps all around the meetings they attend.
With leaders from around the world Barack opens his hand to shake a hand.
But what is safer, a closed fist bump or and open hand greeting?
Through the history of man, the open hand greeting has always shown a feeling of trust and welcome. But today’s virologist would tell you that your are creating all kinds of opportunities to spread germs between each other. We have to worry about those germs. The open hand greeting lasts far longer than the bump. The open hand greeting has more skin to skin touching. All of this potentially could lead to a greater transfer of germs between friends.
I still prefer the open hand greeting. I don’t want to change my ways.
Mothers and fathers are being told that they should not allow their kids to kiss them. You can’t trust your toddlers and school children to not pass on some dangerous germ that they have acquired outside the home. They could potentially cause you to be sick. Those same virologists would caution you to even refuse hugs from your children after all you don’t know if they have hugged a friend at school or day care. That too could make you sick.
And heaven help you that you should allow your spouse, or significant other to kiss you. That is just asking for danger. You just can’t take any chances today in showing affection for one another. Yet for centuries man has taken those chances.
You can’t even trust your spouse, when in bed, that they might sneeze or cough at night passing aerosol mists into the air that could land on you.
Given all of this worry by virologists, what are we supposed to do? If men and women really shouldn’t share beds and exchange bodily fluids; how will we be able to continue as a population?
I can already hear, “I am sorry, I can’t kiss you or hug you or marry you because you might make me ill even though I love you”.
I can’t hug my baby or kiss my child or greet my adult child with a hug or kiss on the cheek because I can’t trust them to be germ free. Who knows what germs they might have acquired in travel on planes or in a restaurant or from their children in coming home for Christmas.
I can hear a grandmother telling their grandchildren, I can’t hug you or see you because you might have some germs that I don’t and you would make me ill.
It is not going to happen. Sometimes the more we know, can make us all paranoid. Somewhere common sense should step in.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher