Reports of the Handshake's Death are Greatly Exaggerated

Life is different now, while we are in the midst, than it was before. We work from home; we wear a mask; we perform in our kitchens in front of the webcam; we get our groceries delivered; we cook a lot more.

And we don't touch other people. Not only because we need to stay away from their aerosols, but because the actual touch makes us a disease vector.

A Time magazine article* by Mandy Oaklander speculates whether we'll ever touch one another again. You should read the article and decide for yourself, but it seems like it's another one of those “we changed our behavior because of the virus and we'll never change back” articles that generates clicks, fills space but doesn't leave us significantly further along in our understanding of the new world than we were before we read it.

The handshake comes under particular scrutiny, with at least two doctors weighing in against it. I didn't know that there was anyone who was anti-handshake. “Hands are warm, they’re wet, and we know that they transmit disease very well,” says one. “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you,” adds no less a luminary than Dr. Anthony Fauci. One anti-handshake doctor, Dr. Mark Sklansky, a pediatric cardiologist, took it further:

In a 2017 study, he describes setting up handshake-free zones by posting signs depicting two clasping hands, crossed-out, and encouraging the doctors, nurses and residents to try different nonverbal greetings. While about a third of providers were resistant—especially physicians, and especially men—nearly all of the patient families were in favor of not being touched by their doctor. 

“Not being touched by their doctor?” Really? Is medicine ready to give up a fundamental diagnostic tool? These results were gathered in a study of handshaking, but it seems that the problem for patients was that, in the course of the handshake, the doctor touched them. Let me know if this makes sense to you.

As for me, I'm a handshake guy. I'm not a hugger, and not a toucher in general. A human touch researcher notes that the Me Too movement and cell phones have reduced touching so much that she was looking for a new area of human behavior to study. But I think that, in the new world, we need not be concerned for the handshake; the handshake will abide.

After all, without it, how will you know I'm not armed?

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* - The name of the article is “The Coronavirus Killed the Handshake and the Hug. What Will Replace Them?” What? The handshake is dead already? We're not in the new world yet, Mandy. Not yet.