[michaelt]

> The answer's pretty obvious.

It's not particularly obvious to me how gloves are all that different to hand-washing.

In both cases, your hands are disease-free until you touch something that isn't disease-free.

[notacoward]

> It's not particularly obvious to me how gloves are all that different to hand-washing.

Only in the sense that hand-washing is more effective. In fact, most recommendations to use gloves also recommend hand-washing immediately after removal. However, it's not practical to wash hands every few minutes, literally hundreds of times a day. Gloves can provide protection between less frequent washings.