What did we do before hand sanitizer?

[LamingtonBear]

Just that really. I've noticed people using it, even where there are hand washing facilities.

No hand sanitizer to be had in the shops, still plenty of soap.

I know it has its uses out and about, but it seems to have replaced actual hand washing.

I always carry hand sanitizer especially to use when on public transport

Where are you watching people change nappies?

In the postnatal clinic.

I don’t use hand sanitizer. Soap does the job.

Soap and water is fine most of the time, assuming you wash your hands properly and not quick damp down and dash I see people doing in public loos.
Gel is handy for when you’ve been out but return, for example, to your car. You can’t wash your hands in your car but anything on your hands from trolleys etc gets transferred to your steering wheel.
In the usual course of things I don’t bother but when we have a local outbreak of something (Niro a couple of years ago, soon Coronavirus I’m sure) I’ll up the hand hygiene a bit.

People carried damp flannels in plastic bags no gave themselves a quick wipe down if they thought they needed to. Probably nit hugely effective in a germ-control kind of way, but to rid of muck.

No-one (aside from HCPs and maybe their families) knew how to wash their hands properly, And I'm still not convinced that people are really doing it to standard every single time.

Back in the 1950s, ladies and gentlemen always wore hat and gloves, including little white gloves for ladies in summer. Only taken off when eating. Reduced skin to skin contact, and of course left all the gunk of the outside world on fabric, not on the person.

(No greeting (except your very nearest and dearest) with kisses either)

There were still big (prevax) flu epidemics, but people tended to take longer off sick, and there was often a mother at home when DC still young.

People used cloth handkerchiefs, and put them away between uses

In the 1970’s very few people would eat out on a regular basis at all. Eating in the street was deemed exceptionally bad manners when I was a child in the early seventies. I wonder how many people would get a bus in to town, handle money, press buttons on a cashpoint, grab a supermarket trolley handle, nip in to a public loo and touch the handle on the way out having washed their hands and then eat a bag of crisps on the go. I think the way we live just spreads stuff around so quickly these days. Germs have never respected international boundaries but they can be here in a matter of hours instead of weeks or even months. People used to travel only when necessary now many think nothing of nipping on a plane just for a weekend away with mates.

Valkadin

Can you remember Bernie Inn they were considered very posh.

Some nostalgia for you. No hand sanitizer though.

www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02sUh59ZNW6TEW4OIbwKVAKEul_Kg:1583593771448&q=Berni+Inn&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjbwdzB0ojoAhVPZcAKHW34ATUQ7Al6BAgKED8&biw=1440&bih=705#imgrc=Hz5O6LlTsgFbhM

Soap and water. The only time I've used sanitiser is when I've visited someone in hospital and there's a dispenser on the wall by the door to the ward. I've used it again on the way out.

Another one for soap and water here .

I don't know, I don't know anyone who uses gel instead of hand washing, just in addition to. I guess it depends how clean you think the taps are, if I use public toilets I wash my hands with soap and water and then gel if I've had to use my hands to turn the taps off. I guess if you walked in and saw me just using gel it would look like I hadn't used anything else. I never know whether you can use the sinks in hospital wards, I got told off when I was in postnatally.

So tend to trapse to the loos. Also places run out of hand soap, not quite at the stage of carrying a bar of soap about.

I think people seem to be mingers nowadays. For as long as I can remember my mum would tell us to wash our hands as soon as we got home from wherever we'd been. It's just common sense, nothing new.

Never bought hand sanitizer and probably never will . Hand washing properly is sufficient for me .

I've been in two countries with major coronavirus outbreaks in the last month. On top of washing my hands whenever I've had the opportunity, I've sanitized the shopping basket handles, touch-screens in shops and at stations, the seat-belt on aeroplanes, and the table on the aeroplanes. I've santized my hands before and after paying for goods, and I've smeared sanitizer all over the goods which the shop assistant has just scanned and handed to me. When I use a public bathroom, I wrap my hand in tissue when I open the door to leave. I do the same when flushing the toilet. I press lift buttons with my elbow, and I use my foot or my elbow to lever doors towards me that are pull rather than push.

It's a hard, wearing way to live. You totally lose the flow of just being. It's also bad for my finger nails.

in the days before antibacterial this and that was all over the place ... we built up our immunity by exposure to germs.

Yes quite right that’s why so many fewer people dies of infectious diseases in the 1600s than do today. We should stop surgeons scrubbing up to further help.

Died not dies, sorry