Corona virus - to think that most people would be better wearing gloves than worrying about antibacterial hand-gel?

[FirewomanSamantha]

Prompted by having just seen a picture in a newspaper of a man on the tube wearing breathing apparatus but with bare hands, which seems a bit pointless because if he has small cuts on his hands could catch it through those anyway.

Use of antibacterial hand-gel in the quantities needed for it to be effective, will irritate many people's hands, meaning that they are then actually more likely to catch it though irritated skin.

It's winter and really easy just to put a pair of woolly gloves on when you go out.

Gloves (all types) are a bad idea because it's much easier to wash hands than keep gloves clean.
You'll touch things with gloves then touch your face, then touch other stuff and on it does. Wearing surgical gloves for too long really fucks up your skin too.

YANBU. I'm going to London tomorrow, and it struck me the easiest thing to do when going on the train and tube and touching everything I'll touch in the course of my journey would be to just wear gloves.

Gloves aren't considered particularly helpful, especially as they give a false sense of security. Good hand hygiene is important.
Soap is best but hand sanitiser (particularly high alcolhol content) is ok if soap not available.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/coronavirus-do-gloves-work-stop-virus-spread-symptoms-outbreak-a9362871.html

There’s a whole thread for this topic, doesn’t belong in AIBU.
However as @veryphishy said it’s harder to keep them clean, unless you wear ones you can throw away.

yanbu
my employer recommends that we all wear gloves, just ordinary winter gloves, to help reduce risk of infection.

What about wearing disposable gloves and disposing of them after the journey?

(If you haven't got hand gel and can't ti a sink to wash with soap).

You'd have to make sure not to touch your face but that's the same level of risk as not wearing gloves.

Coming from someone who works in a microbiology lab YABU.
We have to wash our hands just as much.

It's definitely harder to keep gloves clean so you'd have to wear disposable ones and bin them after the journey like pp said.

Surely it’s much harder to keep gloves clean than skin.

Reporting to move to correct topic, fgs!

Maybe just not touch your face or pick your nose, and then wash your hands when you get off.

How are you going to clean your gloves? How do you remove contaminated gloves without using your hands?

You can't catch it through your skin. You catch it through your mouth and nose.

Please do not do this.
Its not helpful in anyway.
There doesn’t need to be a shortage of gloves too so we can’t do our jobs.

I have been wearing my normal winter gloves when out and I find I don't touch my face as the gloves remind me not to.

I wear normal gloves for various reasons. Have done so all through winter. I avoid touching my face with them on. I constantly wash my hands also. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

Can you even catch the virus through a cut on your hands? It is not a bacterial infection. I thought the main problem with hands was that you touch your face with them.

There's a Coronovirus topic. Please use it, im so fed up of my Active Convos being filled with it.

What about wearing disposable gloves and disposing of them after the journey

I was going to do this when on the tube...obviously we would take them off and wash our hands afterwards and use tissues leaving the toilet etc

The london trip is a one off so we wouldn’t be using too many...literally on the tube and i will also try to do as little tube time as possible

ARGH.

It’ll be moved to Coronavirus in a minute

As soon as the reports start coming through

If you can wah your hands as soon as you get off, how would they help?

We're just moving this over to the right topic now.

Wash your hands, wear winter gloves to remind yourself not to touch your face and wash your gloves, then.

No need to buy latex gloves for Pete's sake.

Everyone's (rightly) focused on washing their hands but most people use their phones before and after making it all a bit pointless as the pathogen will just remain on their phone.

What about wearing disposable gloves and disposing of them after the journey

I thought as a society we were seeing the error of our ways when it comes to unnecessary disposable stuff?