Dr. Fauci Says We Should Stop Shaking Hands
“As a society, just forget about shaking hands, we don’t need to shake hands, we’ve gotta break that custom.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he thinks we’ve got to stop shaking hands — for good.
During an episode of Wall Street Journal podcast “The Journal”, Dr. Fauci told host Kate Linebaugh, “I don't think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you."
"Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease — it probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country," he continued.
The prominent member of the White House coronavirus task force reiterated his stance on handshaking during a Wednesday interview with Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“As a society, just forget about shaking hands, we don’t need to shake hands, we’ve gotta break that custom,” he said, adding that the custom is one of the major ways respiratory illnesses are spread.
Dr. Fauci isn’t the only health expert who thinks that handshaking may soon be a thing of the past. Andy Slavitt, the former acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, said during a NowThis interview that, “I think handshaking is done. I think 100 years from now people are going to be like, 'Wait a minute. When you saw someone, you used to touch each other's hands? That’s weird. That’s so dangerous. Why would you do that?'"
During “The Journal” interview, Fauci said that lifting social distancing guidelines won’t be “like a light switch on and off” but that things will hopefully start returning back to normal soon.
“We hope that by the end of this 30-day extension that we will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel where we can say we’re pretty confident that we can gradually start approaching some degree of normality,” he said.