After the measure of washing your hands with soap, in a particularly thorough way, the second most important thing to keep the coronavirus away is not to touch your face : nose, eyes, mouth …
That is why the use of masks, in fact, can in fact be counterproductive: if we touch them often to position them better or to avoid being disturbed, we will be touching our faces.
An ancient tic
Although touching your face is important when it comes to getting infected, we can’t seem to avoid doing it , according to this article from The Wired .
Apparently the ‘spontaneous facial self-check’ helps people regulate their emotions. ‘ Touching our faces is not only part of non-verbal communication , but it is a tic that we resort to for many reasons. Even when we are fetuses.
Not surprisingly, a recent study performed ultrasounds on 15 women from week 24 to week 36 of their pregnancies and found that fetuses were more likely to touch their faces with their left hands when women reported feeling stressed .
The temptation to touch our faces is so powerful that even professionals do it. One study found that medical students, who really should know better than anyone how harmful it is to touch their faces, touched their faces an average of 23 times per hour during a lecture, or once every 2.5 minutes .
Given the irrepressible influence that drives us to continually touch our faces, then, it is still possible to be even more exhaustive when it comes to washing our hands, and doing it regularly. Covid-19 is waiting for the slightest tick to enter our body.