How important is it to avoid touching your face if you are also washing your hands regularly?
As a practical point, I think this is somewhat hard to avoid for some people. I feel I touch my face more than wanted and even though this occurs in social situations where it may be mildly unacceptable, I have problems breaking the habit (I do have weak symptoms of body-focussed repetitive behaviour disorder and it’s probably related to this). I don’t think the somewhat abstract threat of reducing infection risk will be enough to stop me touching my face much as I mostly do this without think about it, although that may change when the virus spreads to my region and I feel under more personal threat.
This made me recall the Pavlok, which is a wrist-band that uses aversion therapy (vibrations and electric shocks) to break bad habits like nail biting. Although I cant find this described as a use case on their website, I suspect it could also be used to break a face touching habit quickly. Alternatively, you can probably get most of the aversion from snapping a rubber band on your wrist whenever you notice you’re touching your face.
I was happy to see that I’m apparently not the only person who touches their face a lot and the BBC noted that many people even touch their face while giving official advice not to:
The main tips for how to avoid face touching were:
-Wear glasses on your face so you touch them instead.
-Make an effort to keep your hands clasped most of the time, so that touching your face is more of a conscious act that you’ll notice and and can choose to stop.
If you are in public it seems very important? If you touch something that someone infected coughed on in last 2-9 days and then touch your face that’s a likely infection event. Washing your hand “resets the clock” on the surfaces you’ve touched, but doesn’t protect you if you touch something new.
Its obviously ok to touch your face right after thorough hand cleaning- I practice hand sanitizing before I feel the need to touch my face. I think it is really worth practicing that habit, keeping hand sanitizer on you at all time etc, if you can.
You could also wear latex gloves as a reminder not to touch your face (works for some people)
Face, sort of. The major vector of infection is getting virus into your noes/ mouth/ eyes etc, not really by touching your forehead. But instrumentally, I think full face is what makes sense here. Once you have touched your forehead, your face is not a clean zone anymore; when you go to bed and put your face on your pillow, you’ll (possibly) be transferring virus there. Likewise once you thoroughly wash your hands once home and let yourself rub your face, you could be recontaminating your hands and spreading the virus from your forehead to some mucus membranes. Even if this wasn’t the case, I think it is also easier to self control a “no-face” rule than make a judgement about exactly where your mucus membranes are every time you have a face itch (that itchy place near my eye is still skin, right?)
My first also implies avoiding touching your hair, but I haven’t followed up on this (I avoid it myself and think it would be prudent in general but don’t know what standard practice is among e.g. health care workers)
I get frequent muscle pain in my head and face and I normally believe that by massaging them. I’ve started to use use a part of my shirt or maybe another object as a barrier to let me do this without touching my hands to my face, but I guess my shirt could also pick up some of the virus, and I could be infected that way. Not sure what my other options are.
Carry hand sanitizer and do a quick hand sanitization before you touch your face?
Clothes can pick up virus but are much less likely to come into contact with surfaces then your fingers.
You could also keep a pocket full of latex gloves and either wear all the time then remove (carefully without contaminating your hand) before touching your face, or carefully putting on before touching your face.
How important is it to avoid touching your face if you are also washing your hands regularly?
As a practical point, I think this is somewhat hard to avoid for some people. I feel I touch my face more than wanted and even though this occurs in social situations where it may be mildly unacceptable, I have problems breaking the habit (I do have weak symptoms of body-focussed repetitive behaviour disorder and it’s probably related to this). I don’t think the somewhat abstract threat of reducing infection risk will be enough to stop me touching my face much as I mostly do this without think about it, although that may change when the virus spreads to my region and I feel under more personal threat.
This made me recall the Pavlok, which is a wrist-band that uses aversion therapy (vibrations and electric shocks) to break bad habits like nail biting. Although I cant find this described as a use case on their website, I suspect it could also be used to break a face touching habit quickly. Alternatively, you can probably get most of the aversion from snapping a rubber band on your wrist whenever you notice you’re touching your face.
I was happy to see that I’m apparently not the only person who touches their face a lot and the BBC noted that many people even touch their face while giving official advice not to:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-51879695/coronavirus-why-we-touch-our-faces-and-how-to-stop-it
The main tips for how to avoid face touching were:
-Wear glasses on your face so you touch them instead.
-Make an effort to keep your hands clasped most of the time, so that touching your face is more of a conscious act that you’ll notice and and can choose to stop.
If you are in public it seems very important? If you touch something that someone infected coughed on in last 2-9 days and then touch your face that’s a likely infection event. Washing your hand “resets the clock” on the surfaces you’ve touched, but doesn’t protect you if you touch something new.
Its obviously ok to touch your face right after thorough hand cleaning- I practice hand sanitizing before I feel the need to touch my face. I think it is really worth practicing that habit, keeping hand sanitizer on you at all time etc, if you can.
You could also wear latex gloves as a reminder not to touch your face (works for some people)
To clarify- is it face or mucous membranes? I’ve seen ‘face’ everywhere, and I can’t really understand how touching my forehead would infect. Thanks!
Face, sort of. The major vector of infection is getting virus into your noes/ mouth/ eyes etc, not really by touching your forehead. But instrumentally, I think full face is what makes sense here. Once you have touched your forehead, your face is not a clean zone anymore; when you go to bed and put your face on your pillow, you’ll (possibly) be transferring virus there. Likewise once you thoroughly wash your hands once home and let yourself rub your face, you could be recontaminating your hands and spreading the virus from your forehead to some mucus membranes. Even if this wasn’t the case, I think it is also easier to self control a “no-face” rule than make a judgement about exactly where your mucus membranes are every time you have a face itch (that itchy place near my eye is still skin, right?)
My first also implies avoiding touching your hair, but I haven’t followed up on this (I avoid it myself and think it would be prudent in general but don’t know what standard practice is among e.g. health care workers)
I get frequent muscle pain in my head and face and I normally believe that by massaging them. I’ve started to use use a part of my shirt or maybe another object as a barrier to let me do this without touching my hands to my face, but I guess my shirt could also pick up some of the virus, and I could be infected that way. Not sure what my other options are.
Carry hand sanitizer and do a quick hand sanitization before you touch your face?
Clothes can pick up virus but are much less likely to come into contact with surfaces then your fingers.
You could also keep a pocket full of latex gloves and either wear all the time then remove (carefully without contaminating your hand) before touching your face, or carefully putting on before touching your face.