When the Central Office of Information closed down in 2011, production of public information films ceased. These included Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases. This may be the reason why children no longer appear to be taught to put their hands in front of their mouths when coughing or sneezing. People passing you in the street cough, sneeze or just clear their throats at you: roughly one million micro-organisms per millilitre of fluid! It is not disgust that might have prevented infection (The long read, 25 July) but ignorance. At almost every shop and supermarket to which you care to go, assistants lick their fingers when opening carrier bags, in order to share their delightful saliva – and millions of bacteria, viruses and yeasts – with you, their grateful customer. Even in Nottingham City Hospital I have watched an official of some sort lick his fingers when turning the pages of some report or other. (I have complained about this happening in my local hospital, too.) These are supposedly highly trained people.
Revolting is the default condition of people, generally. Have you seen what they do when using public library computers? Since I started wiping down the keyboards in my local library’s IT suite, the frequency of chest infections (to which I am susceptible) have plummeted. Bee Wilson is right about one thing: in one of my local supermarkets, I have regularly noticed men leaving cubicles in the gents’ toilets and leave without washing their hands – having ignored any signage – and gone into the store proper, presumably to handle foodstuffs and pass on E coli, salmonella and campylobacter to unsuspecting fellow customers.
David Feld
Grantham, Lincolnshire
• It has always seemed to me that the failure of the admonishment “now wash your hands” in public toilets to affect people’s behaviour is because it is in the wrong place: above the wash basins, where it is seen primarily by those already committed to doing so. Far more effective would be if it was over the urinals and on the cubicle doors, especially if it included the kind of graphic images advocated by the article. Why this simple logical point has not been recognised has puzzled me for years.
Frank Jackson
Harlow, Essex
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
