"It's the modern standard greeting for global politics and business, and has been around for thousands of years. But public health experts urge us to re-examine the ritual's safety."
So is the handshake thing over? Will we EVER shake hands again after what Covid has done to the world?
Well, to be honest, all this bonhomie stuff is just an eye-wash. What I notice is that there is no concept of friendship only self-interests so I realize that all this social interaction and friendship are just bullcrap. At the end of the day, you are on your own when the going gets tough.Not doing these handshakes or hugging is not a big loss. A verbal "how are you" is more than enough for me. It is the intention that counts. Every prayer starts with an intention then comes body movements.
I was reading an article last week where the writer reckoned the namaste greeting performed by Hindus might be the greeting best suited to a future without handshakes. You can see the logic, palms pressed together with a slight bow to the person you are greeting would be a safer way to greet someone, and less awkward than foot or elbow bumps.
Well, to be honest, all this bonhomie stuff is just an eye-wash. What I notice is that there is no concept of friendship only self-interests so I realize that all this social interaction and friendship are just bullcrap. At the end of the day, you are on your own when the going gets tough.Not doing these handshakes or hugging is not a big loss. A verbal "how are you" is more than enough for me. It is the intention that counts. Every prayer starts with an intention then comes body movements.
That's a relief. Once this lockdown is over, there are many I would like to elbow bump. Some I would like to elbow in the face, but that's a story for another day.
I have been looking out for them during my search lasting for 35 years. Finally, I found one in Germany. His name is Tommy. Problem is, he has four legs, though
I was reading an article last week where the writer reckoned the namaste greeting performed by Hindus might be the greeting best suited to a future without handshakes. You can see the logic, palms pressed together with a slight bow to the person you are greeting would be a safer way to greet someone, and less awkward than foot or elbow bumps.
The quality, enthusiasm and willingness of a handshake says quite a lot about a person in my opinion.
When someone does not shake hands, or even weakly shakes hands, for me it doesn’t provide that immediate sense of courtesy, respect, confidence and trust in that person which I am always looking for.
I’ve missed exchanging handshakes recently, and will definitely go back to doing so when we are able.
The quality, enthusiasm and willingness of a handshake says quite a lot about a person in my opinion.
When someone does not shake hands, or even weakly shakes hands, for me it doesn’t provide that immediate sense of courtesy, respect, confidence and trust in that person which I am always looking for.
I’ve missed exchanging handshakes recently, and will definitely go back to doing so when we are able.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It started centuries ago as a symbol of peace, a gesture to prove you weren’t holding a weapon, and over time it became part of almost every social, religious, professional, business and sporting exchange.
But the new coronavirus has forced a rethink of the handshake. No matter how friendly, it is an exchange of potentially infectious microorganisms.
“Hands are like a busy intersection, constantly connecting our microbiome to the microbiomes of other people, places, and things,” a group of scientists wrote in the Journal of Dermatological Science. Hands, they said, are the “critical vector” for transmitting microorganisms including viruses.
But if it is no longer automatically acceptable, what will replace the handshake as a fixture of post-coronavirus social etiquette? A fist or elbow bump? Maybe a traditional Japanese bow or hat doff? How about Spock’s Vulcan salute from Star Trek?
We are social beings. When we meet one another, we press flesh. We take our largest organ, skin, and mash it together with someone else’s - naked. In the middle of the coronavirus it has become clear just how intimate such a gesture is.
The human hand is fecund. We have hundreds of species of bacteria and viruses on our palms.
“Think about it,” says Charles Gerba, a microbiologist and public health researcher at the University of Arizona, who also answers to Dr Germ. “Every time you touch a surface, you may be picking up up to 50 percent of the organisms on that surface.”
Our hands can carry Salmonella, E. coli, norovirus and respiratory infections like adenovirus and hand-foot-mouth disease. And, given how frequently scientists find poop on our fingers and palms, our hygiene habits are far less fastidious than we think.
BACTERIAL EFFERVESCENCE
We can’t see any of this with the naked eye.
And so we rely on scientists with agar plates to make visible the arching, spiraling, exploding patterns of bacterial effervescence that show just what our intermingling of fingers risks, something so simple as a handshake rendered in terrifying technicolor.
Scientists can also show us viruses. Those must be studied in animal cells, in a mosaic of tiny semi-circles that scientists often stain purple or red.
The cells are lovely, says Gerba, “and then when they die, they become colorless.”
Gerba studies the movement of viruses. He’ll put a virus on an office doorknob or in a hotel room or someone’s home.
He says it takes just four hours for a virus on an office doorknob to reach half the hands and half the surfaces in an office building, or about 90 percent of the surfaces in someone’s home. A virus in a hotel often moves from room to room and sometimes to nearby conferences.
Gerba says he himself stopped shaking hands during the first SARS outbreak, in 2003. “I always say I have a cold,” he says. “That way I don’t have to shake their hand.”
Top U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci sees it the same way since the pandemic hit.
“You don’t ever shake anybody’s hands,” Fauci said this month. “That’s clear.”
LONG, HARD SQUEEZE
Handshakes have long been a way for humans to signal one another, and part of the ritual of seeking common ground.
“The handshake is what gets photographed at the time of any agreement,” says Dorothy Noyes, a professor of folklore at Ohio State University.
The long, hard squeeze of U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018 was a classic display of two males seeking dominance. Some handshakes, like the bouncing clasp of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, take months to negotiate.
Awkward or smooth, handshakes are a hard habit to break, even if we want to.
Minutes after announcing a ban on shaking hands to combat COVID-19, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte enthusiastically pumped the hand of Jaap Van Dissel, the head of the Dutch Centre for Infectious Disease Control.
“Sorry, sorry! No, that’s not allowed! Let’s do that again,” Rutte said, breaking into a laugh.
Handshakes are fine once this pandemic is over. But I’m totally against bro-hugs and kisses. Hugs are weird. Kissing each other’s cheeks which they do in some countries- Pandemic or no pandemic it looks embarrassing.
Around the world, humans are struggling to ignore thousands of years of bio-social convention and avoid touching another. Shaking hands might be one of the hardest customs to lose in the post-pandemic world but there are alternatives.
The humble handshake spans the mundane to the potent, ranging from a simple greeting between strangers who will never meet again, to the sealing of billion-dollar deals between business titans.
It is a "literal gesture of human connectedness," a symbol of how humans have evolved to be deeply social, tactile-orientated animals, Cristine Legare, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said.
"The fact we went for the elbow bump as an alternative shows how important touch is - we didn't want to lose that physical connecting," Prof Legare added.
And with a history tracing back thousands of years, the handshake may be too entrenched to be easily halted.
The quality, enthusiasm and willingness of a handshake says quite a lot about a person in my opinion.
When someone does not shake hands, or even weakly shakes hands, for me it doesn’t provide that immediate sense of courtesy, respect, confidence and trust in that person which I am always looking for.
I’ve missed exchanging handshakes recently, and will definitely go back to doing so when we are able.
Sure. Firm handshake and look the other person in the eye. It immediately conveys respect and lets you get a read on them. A weak handshake or failure to make eye contact makes me suspicious.
The handshake is performed differently around the world. Scandis do it closer in than Britons. Texans at arm’s length, but their handshake is bone-crunching.
