What’s missing for me here is a quantitative argument for why this is actually worth doing. Washing your hands more often would reduce risk, but is it actually worth the effort? (And for me there’s also the problem that my doctor literally instructed me to wash my hands less often because of a skin infection thing.)
Assume your productivity is halved (Mine is far worse, since ~90% of the value of my time is when I’m operating at peak, which I can’t do at all when sick.)
So handwashing would save an average of 0.2*8.5*3*0.5=2.55 days of productivity.
Cost:
30 seconds per handwashing * 15 times per day * 365 days / 18 waking hours per day = 2.5 days of time.
So as long as you’re completely neutral to the externality costs like making other people sick, don’t mind the physical unpleasantness of getting sick, and there’s no scary superbug going around, this seems like, well, a wash.
If you have kids, you’ll get sick more, and washing has correspondingly higher benefits. And if you come into contact with the elderly, very young, or the otherwise sick, the externality costs are far higher, and you’re a jerk for not doing this.
Bottom line: yes, it’s only marginally beneficial. But if 2019-NCoV is at all worrying, it likely tips the balance. Now instead of arguing about the exact numbers here, i.e. justifying your inaction by explaining to the world why the costs are higher and the benefits are lower, go wash your hands.
I notice that you only compare time spent hand washing to time spent debilitated by respiratory illness, but hand washing also reduces likelihood of other ailments, eg gastric infections due to fecal or other bacterial contamination, and intestinal parasites (especially threadworm if you have kids...).
Even without specific numbers on the time that these might rob you of, hat would seem to push the balance in favour of hand washing.
Apart from anything else, being ill or having a high parasite load is just plain unpleasant, and long periods of illness (even if few and far between) are more damaging to sense of wellbeing than short periods spent on a menial task multiple times a day.
We should take into account the welfare of others, too. Besides protecting me from disease, washing my hands prevents me from transmitting it to someone else. It’s pretty much analogous to vaccines.
Do they say which conditions are being compared? Is it no handwashing at all vs 30 seconds 15 times per day, or something else? (I would look myself, but I can’t find the quote with cmd-f.)
I’d guess that washing your hands has some diminishing marginal returns, so if washing your hands for 30 seconds 15 times a day is approximately as good as not washing your hands at all, you can probably do better than both by being somewhere in the middle (e.g. washing your hands for 20 seconds at the 10 points during the day when they’re most dirty).
I’d guess that washing your hands has some diminishing marginal returns, so if washing your hands for 30 seconds 15 times a day is approximately as good as not washing your hands at all, you can probably do better than both by being somewhere in the middle (e.g. washing your hands for 20 seconds at the 10 points during the day when they’re most dirty).
My personal guess would be that if you want to minimise the time cost of hand washing your best bet would be to really drill in (a) always washing your hands before touching food, and (b) not touching your face. If you can be very confident in those two things you can probably let up on the general hand hygiene slightly. I was going to say that this applies if you don’t care that much about externalities, but to be honest if you always wash your hands before touching communal food you’d already be doing much better than most people.
You mean this one? Yeah, that does suggest that there are increasing marginal returns to time spent per hand-washing session, at the typical level of effort.
Good post. I would actually argue that the cost of n many 30 second activities is much lower than the cost of one block of 30n seconds, because taking small breaks in between work isn’t zero value.
I agree. It is very common for field experts and authorities to issue directives without considering the associated time costs, especially when these costs are small when measured relative to the relevant behavioral unit (e.g. 30 seconds per hand washing). If you consider each directive individually, it often seems that the benefits justify the costs. But when both costs and benefits are aggregated over time, a different, more pessimistic picture often emerges. I wash my hands ~10 times per day, and so invest ~30 hours per year on this habit. Is this sacrifice worth it? It isn’t obvious to me that it is.
I am reminded of that satirical post where Rob Wiblin describes his “daily routine for maximum productivity”, comprised of dozens of activities many of which seem individually worth doing. Clearly, however, the routine as a whole is a net waste of time, since it would require a large fraction of the day to complete, thereby decreasing productivity overall. This suggests that our “micro intuitions” aren’t very reliable, and that we should check them by considering the big picture.
I’m not sil ver, but as a casual coronavirus watcher (in part because I live significantly closer to affected areas than most), my instinctive doubts are mostly 1 and 3. What numbers are you using for those to base the claim “ankifying this is probably among the most valuable things you could ever use it for.”?
Yep, as always context matters. Have you been doing something that puts stuff on you hands that is no already spread everywhere you are and will touch or for some reason has caused a significantly higher concentration on your hands versus the environment?
As the OP points out, after washing actions matter too. But it more than merely the act of drying your hands.
Last, to some extent your hands are well prepared to deal with a lot of stuff—that is exactly what our skin evolved to too: protect our internals from the external. So a good part of the hygiene is also about just where you put your hands on your own body. Rub your eyes a lot? Perhaps better than washing would be using a clean tissue, then throw it away. Byte your fingernails, or stick you fingers, hands on/in you mouth a lot? Stop or be aware of what you’ve been touching since the last cleaning (were you just cutting up the raw chicken that you will cook for dinner?)
Have you been doing something that puts stuff on you hands that is no already spread everywhere you are and will touch or for some reason has caused a significantly higher concentration on your hands versus the environment?
Don’t think so.
Bite your fingernails, or stick you fingers, hands on/in you mouth a lot? Stop or be aware of what you’ve been touching since the last cleaning.
That’s not at all practical, though. Changing a habit such as biting fingernails is extremely difficult, and definitely not worth it to reduce the risk of getting a virus.
Bite your fingernails, or stick you fingers, hands on/in you mouth a lot? Stop or be aware of what you’ve been touching since the last cleaning.
That’s not at all practical, though. Changing a habit such as biting fingernails is extremely difficult, and definitely not worth it to reduce the risk of getting a virus.
I was pretty surprised to see “definitely” here. If it significantly reduced your risk of getting a serious respiratory infection I’d expect it to be worth the effort.
Well, the “you” in the first bit was the universal “you” not Sil ver specifically. I think we’re in agreement that thinking about the underlying risks and the benefits matter regarding the “wash your hands”—but that is also a rather low cost prevention. But the point, which I think you were making and I was supporting, was that the policy should be understood in the contexts of what the underlying risk is and what risks the policy solution can actually address.
That type of question, is it worth it, seems to be more applicable to the get a mask, and particularly one of the type we always see in the media. It is my impression that the experience from SARS was that the direct contact was the largely transmission mechanism and hands are the primary vehicle that moved the virus to an entry point (mouth, eye).
I agree that habits can be very hard to break—reinventing ourselves is hard. That said, being aware of our habits and what the implication are just makes some sense in the context of getting less wrong I would suggest. Again, it gets back to the context. Are you in a situation where paying attention to your habits makes a difference? If so make an effort at least on some habit hiatus or take the extra steps of washing/sanitizing your hands, in the case of biting fingernails.
What’s missing for me here is a quantitative argument for why this is actually worth doing. Washing your hands more often would reduce risk, but is it actually worth the effort? (And for me there’s also the problem that my doctor literally instructed me to wash my hands less often because of a skin infection thing.)
This seems like an easy thing to do a rough cut on.
Benefit:
″ Adults average about 2 to 4 colds a year” - https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/common_cold_overview
″ People usually recover in seven to ten days” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold
Assume your productivity is halved (Mine is far worse, since ~90% of the value of my time is when I’m operating at peak, which I can’t do at all when sick.)
“Handwashing can prevent 21% of respiratory sicknesses”—https://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/why-handwashing/health/
So handwashing would save an average of 0.2*8.5*3*0.5=2.55 days of productivity.
Cost:
30 seconds per handwashing * 15 times per day * 365 days / 18 waking hours per day = 2.5 days of time.
So as long as you’re completely neutral to the externality costs like making other people sick, don’t mind the physical unpleasantness of getting sick, and there’s no scary superbug going around, this seems like, well, a wash.
If you have kids, you’ll get sick more, and washing has correspondingly higher benefits. And if you come into contact with the elderly, very young, or the otherwise sick, the externality costs are far higher, and you’re a jerk for not doing this.
Bottom line: yes, it’s only marginally beneficial. But if 2019-NCoV is at all worrying, it likely tips the balance. Now instead of arguing about the exact numbers here, i.e. justifying your inaction by explaining to the world why the costs are higher and the benefits are lower, go wash your hands.
I notice that you only compare time spent hand washing to time spent debilitated by respiratory illness, but hand washing also reduces likelihood of other ailments, eg gastric infections due to fecal or other bacterial contamination, and intestinal parasites (especially threadworm if you have kids...).
Even without specific numbers on the time that these might rob you of, hat would seem to push the balance in favour of hand washing.
Apart from anything else, being ill or having a high parasite load is just plain unpleasant, and long periods of illness (even if few and far between) are more damaging to sense of wellbeing than short periods spent on a menial task multiple times a day.
We should take into account the welfare of others, too. Besides protecting me from disease, washing my hands prevents me from transmitting it to someone else. It’s pretty much analogous to vaccines.
Yes, it was a quick and in some ways worst case / pessimistic analysis.
Cool to see that they’re in the same ballpark.
Do they say which conditions are being compared? Is it no handwashing at all vs 30 seconds 15 times per day, or something else? (I would look myself, but I can’t find the quote with cmd-f.)
I’d guess that washing your hands has some diminishing marginal returns, so if washing your hands for 30 seconds 15 times a day is approximately as good as not washing your hands at all, you can probably do better than both by being somewhere in the middle (e.g. washing your hands for 20 seconds at the 10 points during the day when they’re most dirty).
My personal guess would be that if you want to minimise the time cost of hand washing your best bet would be to really drill in (a) always washing your hands before touching food, and (b) not touching your face. If you can be very confident in those two things you can probably let up on the general hand hygiene slightly. I was going to say that this applies if you don’t care that much about externalities, but to be honest if you always wash your hands before touching communal food you’d already be doing much better than most people.
(ETA: Also see David’s other comment below)
You mean this one? Yeah, that does suggest that there are increasing marginal returns to time spent per hand-washing session, at the typical level of effort.
Good post. I would actually argue that the cost of n many 30 second activities is much lower than the cost of one block of 30n seconds, because taking small breaks in between work isn’t zero value.
I agree. It is very common for field experts and authorities to issue directives without considering the associated time costs, especially when these costs are small when measured relative to the relevant behavioral unit (e.g. 30 seconds per hand washing). If you consider each directive individually, it often seems that the benefits justify the costs. But when both costs and benefits are aggregated over time, a different, more pessimistic picture often emerges. I wash my hands ~10 times per day, and so invest ~30 hours per year on this habit. Is this sacrifice worth it? It isn’t obvious to me that it is.
I am reminded of that satirical post where Rob Wiblin describes his “daily routine for maximum productivity”, comprised of dozens of activities many of which seem individually worth doing. Clearly, however, the routine as a whole is a net waste of time, since it would require a large fraction of the day to complete, thereby decreasing productivity overall. This suggests that our “micro intuitions” aren’t very reliable, and that we should check them by considering the big picture.
Do you have a link to the post?
Here.
I don’t have a long reply to this yet since I didn’t get the chance to look up actual data (as opposed to recommendations) but I’d be interested to
Insofar as a health intervention is ineffective it could be for one of three reasons:
The base rate of the thing it prevents is low
The intervention is not good at preventing the thing
The thing is not that bad even when it does happen
Which is your main sticking point here?
I’m not sil ver, but as a casual coronavirus watcher (in part because I live significantly closer to affected areas than most), my instinctive doubts are mostly 1 and 3. What numbers are you using for those to base the claim “ankifying this is probably among the most valuable things you could ever use it for.”?
Yep, as always context matters. Have you been doing something that puts stuff on you hands that is no already spread everywhere you are and will touch or for some reason has caused a significantly higher concentration on your hands versus the environment?
As the OP points out, after washing actions matter too. But it more than merely the act of drying your hands.
Last, to some extent your hands are well prepared to deal with a lot of stuff—that is exactly what our skin evolved to too: protect our internals from the external. So a good part of the hygiene is also about just where you put your hands on your own body. Rub your eyes a lot? Perhaps better than washing would be using a clean tissue, then throw it away. Byte your fingernails, or stick you fingers, hands on/in you mouth a lot? Stop or be aware of what you’ve been touching since the last cleaning (were you just cutting up the raw chicken that you will cook for dinner?)
Don’t think so.
That’s not at all practical, though. Changing a habit such as biting fingernails is extremely difficult, and definitely not worth it to reduce the risk of getting a virus.
I was pretty surprised to see “definitely” here. If it significantly reduced your risk of getting a serious respiratory infection I’d expect it to be worth the effort.
Well, the “you” in the first bit was the universal “you” not Sil ver specifically. I think we’re in agreement that thinking about the underlying risks and the benefits matter regarding the “wash your hands”—but that is also a rather low cost prevention. But the point, which I think you were making and I was supporting, was that the policy should be understood in the contexts of what the underlying risk is and what risks the policy solution can actually address.
That type of question, is it worth it, seems to be more applicable to the get a mask, and particularly one of the type we always see in the media. It is my impression that the experience from SARS was that the direct contact was the largely transmission mechanism and hands are the primary vehicle that moved the virus to an entry point (mouth, eye).
I agree that habits can be very hard to break—reinventing ourselves is hard. That said, being aware of our habits and what the implication are just makes some sense in the context of getting less wrong I would suggest. Again, it gets back to the context. Are you in a situation where paying attention to your habits makes a difference? If so make an effort at least on some habit hiatus or take the extra steps of washing/sanitizing your hands, in the case of biting fingernails.