It’s a familiar situation in a public restroom: You’re on your way in, and someone else is leaving without washing their hands. They see you, and wheel around toward the sink. They start whistling, as if to seem casual, and then give their hands a quick spritz with water.
Even among people who will never see each other again, there’s a compulsion to perform a tiny baptism of the fingertips: Not enough scrubbing or soap to actually remove a virus, just enough to signal civility. Accordingly many Americans’ standard of what constitutes a washing of the hands is abysmal. Studies have put the average hand-washing time at about six seconds, less than half of what is recommended by global-health guidelines. Only around 5 percent of us regularly wash long and thoroughly enough.
Our failures feel newly relevant as, for the past month, panic has gripped parts of the world over how to stop the spread of a deadly strain of coronavirus—a variant of the common-cold virus. So far, the virus is known to have killed at least 500 people and infected some 25,000 more, primarily in China, where the outbreak began. In response to the crisis, the country has enacted a historically unprecedented quarantine. Streets in the urban heart of Wuhan are seen empty, and people caught outside are berated by drones.
The U.S. government dipped its toe into similar ..
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