Small discussion (23 points, 1 day ago, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228814

Actually you should never kiss adults either. Would you really kiss someone knowing that you could spread HSV to them, which in rare cases could kill them? Not to mention all the other disease which are spread by physical contact between adults. Can you really say that kissing someone, or shaking their hand, is worth that small risk of DEATH?

We should start with changing the culture in Mediterranean countries like Italy and Spain where completely unhealthy level of physical contact take place. Strangers kissing babies, and more! This is why they have such a high infant mortality rate, 2.2 per 1,000 births. Compared to places with more safe norms around kissing infants, like the US (5.6) and the UK (4.0), they are putting their children in incredible danger. Oh wait, sorry, it sounds like the incredibly high dangers of kissing babies are not showing up in that statistic.. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find a statistic that supports the complete cessation of all physical contact with infants soon enough.

Slightly related, I'm concerned seeing average folks saying "hygiene hypothesis" and acting like their immune system needs to be calibrated to avoid allergies/autoimmune disorder by chance exposure to real pathogens.

While our immune systems need some natural tuning to keep them sane, there's no evidence that comes from combat, but rather from benign or commensal "old friends" [0] we co-evolved with. (Some of which pre-fill niches to exclude bacteria that are less friendly.)

In other words, there's a right (and wrong) kind of "dirty."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414441/