1
In flu season, what price prevention? That's a question the Philadelphia Inquirer is asking as religious and medical leaders discuss the ethics of the handshake. While there is medical debate about avoiding the gesture -- some doctors say a ban is only minimally effective, others carry hand sanitizer in bottles with them -- some people fear a moral contagion. One mother whose family had swine flu last summer called avoidance
There's a sinister side of anti-handshake campaigns. Mussolini cited hygiene in officially banning the handshake in favor of the "Roman Salute," a gesture that has its own scholars. (Some historians think the Duce just wanted "excuse to avoid one form of human contact.") And Youtube hosts a virtual festival of conspiracy-theory handshake videos like this.
Despite hygienic reservations, the handshake, like the chair, is a Western custom that has made its way around the world. Influenza did not reverse the trend even after the 1918 pandemic, so it's not going to do so now. Some alternative gestures like elbow bumps make as much sense (outside their original cultural contexts) as rituals of safe blood brotherhood. In fact the small risk makes the clasp even more meaningful. So handshakes, perhaps followed by discreet private disinfection, are here for the duration.
(Photo: Flickr/star5112)
Results tagged “influenza”
In flu season, what price prevention? That's a question the Philadelphia Inquirer is asking as religious and medical leaders discuss the ethics of the handshake. While there is medical debate about avoiding the gesture -- some doctors say a ban is only minimally effective, others carry hand sanitizer in bottles with them -- some people fear a moral contagion. One mother whose family had swine flu last summer called avoidance"extreme. . . . That's who we are as human beings. We do shake hands. We do hug each other. We do kiss our friends on the cheek. If we let go of all that, then what do we have left? We're just walking by each other as strangers."Philadelphians' concerns on such questions have deep historic roots. Handshaking was once a common form of greeting in Europe, then displaced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by hat doffing and bowing, only to re-emerge as an allegedly English innovation. But it was the Quakers, first settlers of Philadelphia, whose founder George Fox promoted the gesture as a symbol of the equality of believers -- at a time when authorities considered refusing to doff a hat to magistrates something between heresy and treason. Philadelphia even has a handshake historian with a classics Ph.D.She still shakes hands, kisses cheeks, and refuses to use hand sanitizer, even though Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley, where her husband is the rabbi, recently installed dispensers after a member made the request.
There's a sinister side of anti-handshake campaigns. Mussolini cited hygiene in officially banning the handshake in favor of the "Roman Salute," a gesture that has its own scholars. (Some historians think the Duce just wanted "excuse to avoid one form of human contact.") And Youtube hosts a virtual festival of conspiracy-theory handshake videos like this.
Despite hygienic reservations, the handshake, like the chair, is a Western custom that has made its way around the world. Influenza did not reverse the trend even after the 1918 pandemic, so it's not going to do so now. Some alternative gestures like elbow bumps make as much sense (outside their original cultural contexts) as rituals of safe blood brotherhood. In fact the small risk makes the clasp even more meaningful. So handshakes, perhaps followed by discreet private disinfection, are here for the duration.
(Photo: Flickr/star5112)
Ted Anthony of the Associated Press interviewed me for his provocative analysis of the American spirit in a time of troubles. My take:
In a world of multiple threats, boldness and caution can lose their meaning. President Gerald Ford's decision to follow expert recommendations and immunize all Americans against the last feared swine flu pandemic in 1976 led to hundreds of cases of paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome and more than 30 deaths from the vaccine, versus only one from swine flu itself. Today, voluntary and imposed travel limits and government-ordered destruction of pigs can create economic, social, and political disruptions rivaling all but the most deadly strains. But how do we know how virulent the current swine flu virus will become? As Faye Flam reports, researchers still have a lot to learn about its complex ancestry and possible new forms. But the strain that caused the 1918 pandemic is definitely on its family tree.
So while we should be doing more to prepare for disruptions -- I remember how few people in my area had enough bottled water on hand when flooding in central New Jersey disabled a pumping station for a week or so -- it's good and healthy that we're not more concerned. We have learned to delegate our worrying.
If people had a vivid enough imagination of the threats they really face, the reactions that might occur could be almost as severe as the threats that we're anticipating.The dark side of the attention economy, in which human time becomes the scarce resource no matter how much content on the Internet is free, is competition among our anxieties, from emerging viruses to suitcase bombs. We probably worried too much about cyberterrorism in 1999 (and in general about computer failures in the date transition to the year 2000) and not enough about supposedly old-fashioned hijacking.
In a world of multiple threats, boldness and caution can lose their meaning. President Gerald Ford's decision to follow expert recommendations and immunize all Americans against the last feared swine flu pandemic in 1976 led to hundreds of cases of paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome and more than 30 deaths from the vaccine, versus only one from swine flu itself. Today, voluntary and imposed travel limits and government-ordered destruction of pigs can create economic, social, and political disruptions rivaling all but the most deadly strains. But how do we know how virulent the current swine flu virus will become? As Faye Flam reports, researchers still have a lot to learn about its complex ancestry and possible new forms. But the strain that caused the 1918 pandemic is definitely on its family tree.
So while we should be doing more to prepare for disruptions -- I remember how few people in my area had enough bottled water on hand when flooding in central New Jersey disabled a pumping station for a week or so -- it's good and healthy that we're not more concerned. We have learned to delegate our worrying.
« Previous 1 Next »
Edward Tenner
