Why is washing your hands still an issue?

It is somewhat astonishing — inconceivable, even — that in the year 2025, with humanity having made astounding strides in so many areas that testify to our intelligence and resourcefulness and ingenuity and capabilities, we still need to talk about washing our hands.

After centuries of health advances, recent bouts with all sorts of flu and a pandemic, countless grade-school lessons in proper hygiene, and all the admonitions from parents and teachers, you'd think that the need to regularly wash our hands would be inscribed in our DNA. 

Apparently not. And that is much to our detriment.

You can measure the ick factor in many ways. The paltry 30% of adults who said they are likely to wash hands after coughing or sneezing, according to a new national survey by the nonprofit National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. The nearly half who said they don't wash after a visit to a doctor's office, hospital or restaurant. The 31% who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom. The 61% who don't wash when handling human or animal waste. And the 20% who say they don't wash their hands because they think it's not necessary or important.

Seriously?

Not that we need any, but here's more squirm-worthy context: We humans have a history of underreporting our own bad behavior. It's called social-desirability bias — the desire to leave a positive impression. Or, in the vernacular, outright yuckiness.

If there is good news in the survey, it's that 62% of us say we know that washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds is the optimal way to kill the germs that can turn our fingers into mini science experiments — a belief backed by studies which show that 80% of infectious diseases can be prevented by good handwashing. The disconnect is between what we know and what we do.

Education is not the culprit. We've been taught about clean hands ad nauseam in and out of school, via posters and ad campaigns and public service messages. Signs implore us in public bathrooms. And yet there seems to be some libertarian streak that rears its germy little head when it comes to surrendering our hands to soap and water.

Perhaps we need some version of a car interlock device for public bathrooms — and even our own home bathrooms. Picture a door that swings shut and locks behind us after we enter. And the door will not unlock until we hold up our thoroughly washed hands in front of a special electronic germ-detecting sensor built into the door. Ridiculous, right? So is our refusal to commit our mitts to a thorough cleansing.

There is nothing partisan about washing hands. It might be careless, lazy or ignorant, but not partisan. And it's one of those rarities that is all upside — except for the 20 seconds you'll lose. Here's guessing that by the end of the day you won't miss them or the germs you shed.