Coronavirus ~ COVID-19

[cathexis]

Originally Posted by Cin

People with gloves scare me. I'm not convinced they get it. Once you put on gloves they will shortly become as dirty as your hands. I have always hated seeing people with gloves. I am terrified imagining the things they have touched with those gloved hands. And gloved people often act as though those gloves somehow keep their hands sanitary. When just the opposite is the reality. Some stores here in my neighborhood won't let you come in to the store with gloves only masks. Weird but true. At least with this particular virus, it doesn't matter as far as gloves or people touching stuff, unless you touch your face with the virus they have on their gloves or with the virus they just deposited with their gloves or hands on some object that you touched and then touched your face. Just DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. Viruses can't jump into your mouth or up your nose or into your eyes. You need to give them a ride. Just don't touch your face. However, droplets, aerosols, airborne or not are problematic, but wear a mask and keep your distance. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. This is what I say to myself while I am out and about. It's easy to get complacent.

Fear of people with gloves on is reasonable. I would recoil from a person who walked up trying to touch me nor would I go around touching random patients, but the one being touched does not know that. The only acts a worker can perform in my room with already donned gloves would involve possibly contaminated items. What I would wear the gloves for include door handles, faucet handles, elevator buttons, trash, bodily fluids and the like. I would not touch my face with a gloved hand (30 years as a Critical Care RN).
Gloves would be changed frequently with brisk hand washing. It's difficult to maintain, but know I can last 16 hours in isolation, and rarely away from home base that long recalling the days of private duty of HIV before anyone knew what it was and what precautions to take. I consider everything in home base somewhere on the clean end of my clean/contaminated scale.
Indeed aerosol, droplet contamination is a problem. The sclera is exposed unless one also has a face shield on. Pretty soon we will have people walking around gowned for full isolation. I want my shoe covers and hat too.lol We had better get a vaccine or herd immunity soon.