| > people touch their faces less often with gloves on Is that true? I would assume people usually touch their faces because something itches or to adjust glasses/hair/a mask. I would expect gloves to have a minimal impact on this compared to just paying attention to never touching your face. I am open to seeing numbers on this, but don't know where to look for any. > every time you change gloves the probability drops back to near zero I think that's only true if you handle the gloves somewhat carefully (not that it's hard to do, but you do have to pay some attention). But washing your hands or using hand sanitizer also achieves the same. So the question comes back to "how often do people wash their hands/use hand sanitizer compared to how often they change gloves?", which is an empirical question I have no clear intuition for, but do expect for differences to not be that large. > That's why health care professionals use gloves even when dealing with respiratory diseases like COVID-19. I think healhcare professionals wear gloves for a number of reasons, chiefly because, if you're used to it, you can be more efficient when changing gloves than when washing your hands: medical professionals normally put on a new pair of gloves before touching you, then throw those away after they are done. Most people are not used to it, they do not constantly change gloves, and do not have to deal with moving from patient to patient. So just as I don't think it's useful to tell people to wear surgical overalls and change them every hour, I don't think we can tell them to use gloves the way they are used in a hospital. |