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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

wired.com

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#141

Post by pessimizer »

pixl97 wrote: post #132
purpleflame1257 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was clear early on that covid was not droplet transmission and that hand santizer did jack shit. But nobody would acknowledge this for ages, leading to other crazy shit like shutdown playgrounds.

> that hand santizer did jack shit. Does hand sanitizer stop other illness? If yes, then it is still very useful in a pandemic. If you have to go to the hospital because you're shitting your brains out from something else, then you are at insanely high right from catching covid.

> Does hand sanitizer stop other illness?

Do you have any information supporting this possibility? Because hand sanitizer also might have made children stronger and taller, but I don't think it did.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#142

Post by vxNsr »

rtsil wrote: post #37
globular-toast wrote: post #11

Interesting that everyone is talking in past tense in this thread. Where I live hand sanitiser is still everywhere and people still use it all the time. I don't recall ever seeing it outside of hospitals prior to the pandemic.

I still use them (and masks). I haven't had a cold, the flu or any of the usual seasonal sicknesses in 3 years, and this spring my pollen allergy was nowhere to be seen. My quality of life is significantly better ever since I started using them. Washing my hands for 30 seconds at least also helps.

I had a lot of coworkers say this all the time and yet they would still call in sick from time to time…there’s a lot of confirmation bias that makes people blind to their own experiences.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#143

Post by hedora »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #31

In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking' reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick, who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical c…

This has nothing to do with hindsight.

We've known for decades that hand sanitizer (and antibiotic soap) kills off the beneficial bacteria on your hands, and also dries out skin, increasing the percentage of pathogens that survive contact with skin, and also increasing the percentage that manage to get past skins' protective barriers.

We also knew that coronavirus was airborne well before 2019.

The medical and microbiology/virology communities provided advice that was the exact opposite of what the epidemiologists suggested, and were ignored.

Epidemiologies are closer to being historians or sociologists than doctors, so letting them run the show made no sense, and, in hindsight, what was obvious at the time turned out to be correct. The lockdowns were absurdly expensive, created massive secondary public health problems, and didn't save as many people as the approach dictated by conventional wisdom would have.

Conventional wisdom said we should figure out which people were most vulnerable (the elderly, obese and people with chronic medical conditions), and aggressively quarantine just them. That would allow covid to spread through the rest of the population in a month or two, and wouldn't require the entire economy to shut down. Instead, something like 5% of the workforce would call in sick for a month or two.

At this point, the excess mortality from the pandemic is above the expected mortality rate for low risk groups, so, in hindsight, we now know for sure that we should have listened to the medical community, and the findings of the (now retired) epidemiologists that studied the last pandemic.

Having more supporting evidence now doesn't change the fact that all of this was obvious at the beginning of the pandemic, but that it was ignored / actively censored by our leaders.

Anyway, at the end of the day, covid is a strain of the common cold, not some crazy alien pathogen that we have zero experience with. Also, humans have dealt with dozens of pandemics during recorded history. The whole "this was a brand new thing we had no experience with" argument just doesn't hold water.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#144

Post by whitemary »

jethro_tell wrote: post #60
jquery wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's akin to a master caution alarm on a plane and the engines just cut out. Until there's more data on exactly what the issue is, pilots should generally follow the checklists. Avoidable accidents happen when pilots make assumptions about what is wrong (e.g., "oh my instruments must be incorrect") instead of following their checklists/training. Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made…

But, also, until we knew that it wasn't transmitted through the air, we should have been recommending masking with high quality masks. That right there could have changed the vector of this whole thing. Instead, 6 months in when we knew it was transmitted through air, we continued to make businesses sanitize their checkouts while people walked around in ineffective cloth masks. Really fucked the dog there.

Quality masks require actual capital investments, so longer term commitments. Toxic hand sanitizer can turn a profit with practically zero capital investment. This is precisely how capitalism works. Socialism or barbarism.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#145

Post by pessimizer »

slily wrote: post #73
rtsil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use them (and masks). I haven't had a cold, the flu or any of the usual seasonal sicknesses in 3 years, and this spring my pollen allergy was nowhere to be seen. My quality of life is significantly better ever since I started using them. Washing my hands for 30 seconds at least also helps.

Neither have I, outside of COVID-19-delta, and I haven't followed any recommendation (outside of wearing a cloth mask indoors when required). How do you know it's not a coincidence?

I hadn't had a flu for probably 3 years before covid, so masking might have worked retroactively.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#146

Post by hn976827 »

dahfizz wrote: post #131
raverbashing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol > Wiping down every surface with a toxic chemical without knowing if it even helps against covid is much more of an emotional/fearful reaction No, it is a reaction grounded in the last hundreds of year of proper hygiene practice

> Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol You can't know that. The regulations and testing requirements were suspended, so companies were free to use benzene and nobody would know. We already know for sure that some companies did use benzene, and its not hard to imagine companies switching to a cheaper, lower grade source for their alcohol. In any case, the government simultaneously saying "Its okay to p…

Had this pandemic turned out to kill 10% of the global population then it would definitely have been the right move. Turns out, that didn't happen. Because we were lucky regarding lethality, regarding contageousness, regardin speed of vaccine development. In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time.

I worry about the real thing hitting someday. When the discussions start again and people refuse to do the most basic things (yes, some of them obviously nonsense and some of them perhaps in hindsight) and the conspiracy theories spreading and everybody being a hobby virologist, and when we realize that a significant fraction of us will die and society will collapse and we could have prevented it but now it's too late. Then it won't help me anymore to say "told you so". But at least society will deserve its collapse.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#147

Post by gumby »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be an uber driver, or someone moving their car a short distance while shopping. Otherwise, I do find that weird and I am an ardent masker. Actually, come to think of it, the other day I drove home that way because I just forgot to take it off when I left the supermarket. So there are non-weird explanations. I doubt they account for all the cases.

[flagged]

I’m fully vaccinated but Covid cases are still widespread (I’ve never had it). There’s no need to risk the ans yet not understood sequelae.

Plus I don’t get colds any more

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#148

Post by [deleted] »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #31

In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking' reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick, who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical c…

[deleted]

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#149

Post by acyou »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #90
acyou wrote: post #58

This issue is a wrecking ball being swung first this way, then the other way, to create division, hatred, polarization, radicalization and the feeling of being marginalized on all sides. Who benefits from consuming this article? Was it not mass media used as a primary vector to create the hysteria in the first place? And will the wheel not again soon turn, so that the criticized can criticize the criticizers from the…

This is one peculiarly shrill post. Can you explain your mention of "division, hatred, polarization, radicalization" related to this article? I'm not saying you're wrong but it's a very strange opinion and seemingly entirely disproportionate.

It's tough to explain. It's something to do with not standing on any particular side, but attempting to cast blame and start arguments. If you read through the HN comments, and think about the bigger picture and what will result from the publishing of the article, isn't the most lasting effect pitting one group against another? Hasn't the article done a great job of doing that, and is that not the primary effect of this article being published? It seems clear enough to me.

People who believe one thing are also reading this article in resentment and despair. You don't think about them, but they are out there. When the next crisis comes, they will remember how their world view was publicly shamed, and more loudly and actively assert their views. And the people who are on top now, or think they are due to the current media cycle, will build resentment in turn. And the cycle will continue.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to publish it and sow discord. They should. I'm saying that we shouldn't elevate it. Unfortunately, even me commenting on this probably goes against that idea.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#150

Post by NotYourLawyer »

acyou wrote: post #135
gowld wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is benzene in the Wired article?

I think that the source of the benzene and methanol might have been from hand sanitizer manufacturers buying raw input feedstocks (ethanol and glycerol) containing methanol and benzene from dubious sources. If that's the case, then making your own hand sanitizer by buying ethanol and glycerol from dubious (random online) sources (that Wired actually goes so far as to directly link to) would also put you at risk of in…

They recommended buying isopropyl alcohol. They did not recommend buying fuel grade ethanol.
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