Washing Hands Is Useless Against the Flu

Just read this interesting piece on CNN.  It actually makes sense but still sucks.  I’ve have nothing but bones showing on my hands from washing them so much…Guess I will just walk around holding my breath!

“The flu virus isn’t very stable on the hand,” he said. “The virus has a lipid membrane that flattens out when it’s on your hand, and it gets inactivated.”

The rhinovirus, on the other hand, which causes the common cold, can live quite nicely on someone’s hand. “It has a different architecture than a flu virus,” he said. “It’s much more stable.”

The flu virus thrives in droplets of water, such as the kind that come out of your mouth when you sneeze or cough. “The lipid membrane stays intact when it’s surrounded by a droplet of water that’s ten times bigger than the virus itself,” Palese says.

Infectious disease experts and the CDC agree the flu is more likely to be transmitted through airborne particles than through hand contact. However, they disagreed on the extent to which flu is caused by hand contact compared with inhalation of particles.

Some doubt hand washing stops H1N1 – CNN.com.