SocraticGadfly: Coronavirus week 126: Contra Rochelle Walensky on hand-washing

November 03, 2022

Coronavirus week 126: Contra Rochelle Walensky on hand-washing

Editorial note: This got bumped back a week because of breaking news over the lab-leak theory.

People still concerned about the reality of COVID laughed and scorned a week or two ago when CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued COVID guidance that included vaccination and hand-washing but said nothing about mask-wearing.

If they were like me, they tapped a vein of schadenfreude when it was announced a few days later that Walensky "got it."

Well, not only was she wrong about not wearing masks, but, per the latest news otherwise, she's more and more wrong to tout hand-washing. And not just for COVID-19, but other coronaviruses and similar. You're somewhere between 99 and 99.9 percent likely to catch them from the air. Period and end of story.

As I see it, hand-washing, plus surface disinfection, is a neoliberal COVID indulgences practice. It's a way of absolving oneself from any nagging larger concern, just like the neoliberal environmental indulgence of planting trees, which really just creates phantom forests.

While we're here, to kick my hobbyhorse of the COVID-concerned who still won't mention the phrase "Big Pharma," when Walensky gets back to work, will she talk about us getting non-mRNA booster vaxxes? Because, per her critics on her CDC track record, which include a former CDC director, per Wiki, she often has been, along with the rest of Team Biden, about economy first, public health second. And, rightly talking about #BigPharma on mRNA vaxxes is "economy first," Bragman.

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