A Touch of the Flu
Think of all of the things you touch in a single day. Doorknobs, Wawa touchscreens, desks, etc. all have the one thing in common: germs. Watch out this flu season!
This year, more people than ever before have had the flu. Chances are, you or someone you know has been out sick recently – sometimes for days at a time. The flu vaccine this year hasn’t seemed to help. A handful of solutions are being used, such as going to the doctor, taking medicine, and getting lots of sleep. However, there’s no easy solution for the thing that spreads the flu the most: touching things that other people have touched.
From the moment someone wakes up, a person touches something – whether it’s an alarm clock or their phone. Did they think about how many people they may have lent their phone to the previous day? No. Then, during a morning routine, various things are picked up and used.
In public, it’s even worse. At school, door knobs are used by over 3,000 people, and students use them without a care. The second worst thing is the keypad at lunch. Thousands of people use it every day.
An easy solution to disinfect something is to clean it, but can someone really wipe down the keypad with a wipe in between every turn? It would take a lot of time, time that people in a hurry to eat just don’t have. Door knobs are even worse, there can’t be someone at every door knob using a wipe every time someone uses it.
Each time someone touches something in public, they’re receiving the germs that thousands of people have left behind. Chances are, many of those people had some kind of sickness, whether they knew it yet or not. The sickness latches on to the given student, and the virus starts spreading.
Unfortunately, there’s no direct solution that’s a foolproof way to prevent the spread of germs. Some other things that can be done are using hand sanitizer, washing your hands frequently, and not touching your face as much.
People don’t realize it, but they’re constantly touching their face. Every time someone touches their face, they are spreading the germs from whatever their hands have picked up. An easy way to fix this is to make sure your hands are really clean. Or else, you’ll get a “touch” of the flu.
