The humble handshake — cornerstone of civilized behavior, ancient gesture of greeting among friends and strangers alike — is in trouble.
Politicians are avoiding it. Church officials are worrying about it. Business people are wary of it.
Shaking hands is slowly being transformed from a friendly icebreaker into a potential vector of life-imperiling contagion. The concern may be particularly acute during the flu season, given the well-publicized shortage of flu vaccine in some parts of the country.
Item: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen, N.J., has advised parishioners that they have the option to smile, bow or wave instead of shaking hands with neighbors during the "Sign of Peace" portion of the Mass if they are concerned about contracting flu. Church members also have been told they are not required to drink from the common chalice during Communion. "Don't hesitate to not shake hands," said the Rev. Michael Crummy, according to the Hunterdon County Democrat this month. "It might be prudent to tell your neighbors before the start of the Mass that you have a cold, and that you are not shaking hands only because of that."
Ironic, no? Shaking hands supposedly got started as a way to show another that you didn't have a weapon in your hands. As it turns out, we do have a weapon in our hands: the flu virus. Human influenza viruses — the genetically mutated descendants of bird germs — are extremely clever and resilient little bugs. They can live on hands and on surfaces like doorknobs, railings and computer keyboards for up to two hours.
Passed easily from person to person, they typically enter the body when a recipient touches his eyes, mouth or nose. Once inside, they explode, piling into cells like rampaging vikings. After a short incubation period, an infected person ends up with "so much virus inside / That her microscope slide / Looks like a day at the zoo," as the Broadway tunesmith Frank Loesser put it.
Flu is an inconvenience for most, but deadly to some — about 36,000 people in the United States die every flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 120,000 are hospitalized with flu symptons. Vaccines and antiviral drugs have prevented even worse numbers, but flu viruses are also notoriously creative, and mutate into new strains that defy human resistance every 20 years or so. (Be afraid: The World Health Organization said last month that we're overdue for our next pandemic-causing strain.) The apocalyptic "Spanish" flu of 1918-19 — it actually wasn't Spanish in origin, but most likely started in rural Kansas, according to historian John M. Barry — killed perhaps 50 million around the globe, making it the single deadliest human epidemic ever. Based on population growth since then, the equivalent death toll today would be around 170 million people.
Despite limited understanding of what caused the flu in that period, there was widespread awareness that it spread by human contact, says Barry, author of the recent "The Great Influenza," an account of the nightmare. Some cities passed ordinances making it illegal to shake hands. But that was only the beginning. The flu was so terrifying, its killing power so swift, "that in some places almost all human contact stopped," he says.
Barry cites the eyewitness account of a young medical student who had been placed in charge of a Philadelphia hospital; on the 12-mile drive to the hospital one evening, the young man counted just one other car moving on the streets of a city with 1.75 million inhabitants. In isolated locales where an outbreak had been reported, the fear was so raw that would-be rescuers let people starve rather than face exposure themselves.
Having spent seven years researching all this, does Barry still shake hands? He laughs. "I guess I'm a little more aware of things like washing my hands," he says. "Does it actually affect my behavior? No, but I'm alert to the fact that [handshaking] is one of the best ways to transmit infectious organisms."
Item: Mark Cooper, the top elected official in Southbury, Conn., has declared that he won't shake on any deals. Or on anything else until the flu season is over. Cooper said if anyone offers a hand, he'll politely decline and give the person a brochure titled "Don't Do the Flu," with tips on how to stay healthy this winter. He says he wants to set an example by limiting his physical contact with people.
In an interview, Cooper says his declaration of handshake abstinence was initially aimed at his constituents, about a quarter of whom are over the age of 65 — one of the highest-risk groups for flu complications. "I go to a holiday event and I shake 300 hands," says Cooper. "Those people are picking up food, and they're shaking hands with each other. If you come into contact with someone like me in that context, you might want to think twice about shaking my hand."
But Cooper, a former public health official, says this wasn't just about him. He was trying, he says, to make a larger point about hand hygiene. Since word of his handshake strike got out on Dec. 8, Cooper's story has been contagious in the media, hopscotching from the Associated Press to the Howard Stern show to the BBC. "People had fun with it," he says. But, noting that the serious point often came through in media accounts, he adds: "Mission accomplished."
A similar kind of handshake awareness briefly gripped Washington this fall when The Post revealed that people in Congress had access to their own stash of flu vaccinations. Despite some talk-show demogoguery about "special privileges," medical experts pointed out it might be a public service to provide inoculations to Congress, given the amount of gripping and grinning they do with constituents each day.
Indeed, down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Bush is in the middle of the traditional handshake season, pressing the flesh with thousands at holiday events, including the White House's annual media reception (and we know firsthand how germy those guys are). The White House's communications office wouldn't say what, if any, precautions the president takes to avoid germ transmission. We do know, however, that Vice President Cheney would sometimes rub his hands with sanitizing lotion after particularly vigorous handshaking sessions on the campaign trail.
President Bill Clinton, a man who loved to wade into a crowd to shake hands, used the germicidal hand wipes, too. But Clinton, according to an Associated Press account, was too hungry to worry about germs one night during the 1992 campaign when he stopped at a watering hole in Dorchester, Mass. On the way to the car, a woman handed him a home-baked pie. "He was hungry and he just tore into it with his hand,'' said a close Clinton friend who was there.
Item: In Vermont, Bishop Kenneth Angell has urged 130 Catholic churches with 148,000 parishioners to abstain from shaking hands during Mass until Easter Sunday, prompting priests to suggest "flu-free" greetings. At one service in Brattleboro, worshipers waved and smiled at each other, although a few spouses pecked each other on the cheek . . .
Perhaps the most famous handshake phobic of the 20th century was Howard Hughes, the billionaire inventor-filmmaker-aviator-entrepreneur-playboy and drug addict. Today, we recognize Hughes's bizarre behavior as a result of a cluster of mental illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, but in his time he was merely considered "eccentric" and, later, "reclusive." In his declining years, Hughes — the subject of the new Martin Scorsese movie "The Aviator," opening today in Washington — not only declined to shake hands, but insisted that any object passed to him be swathed in a tissue. He also used to bottle his urine and store it in cupboards (which probably squelched the desire of visitors to shake hands with him, anyway).
Hughes's germophobic contemporary may be real estate mogul and reality-TV caricature Donald Trump. In his 1997 book, "Trump: The Art of the Comeback," Trump wrote, "To me the only good thing about the act of shaking hands prior to eating is that I tend to eat less." During his short-lived run for president in 1999, Trump kept antiseptic wipes in his limousine, and passed out little bottles of Purell hand sanitizer stamped with his campaign Web address. He told an NBC interviewer that year that he wouldn't be doing much gladhanding on the campaign trail. "You catch colds," he said, "you catch the flu, you catch this, you catch all sorts of things."
It sounded a little odd then; nowadays, it just sounds prudent.
Taken to extremes, handshake phobia could prefigure a revolution in social custom analogous to the way the outbreak of HIV/AIDs in the 1980s affected sexual practices. The standard American greeting would be forever altered. But to what? The alternatives might include bowing, curtsying, nodding the head, saluting, patting each other on the back, or hugging. Other cultures, of course, are already there. The Hindu namaste greeting (a composite of the two words that means, roughly, I bend or incline toward you), for example, is simple, elegant and touchless: a slight bow with hands pressed at the palms near the heart.
On the other hand, you could simply follow the advice of the CDC, which sounds suspiciously like the same advice Mom and your kindergarten teacher gave you years ago. Wash your hands with soap and warm water, and do it frequently. Don't touch your eyes, nose and mouth unless your hands are clean. Stay home when you're sick. Use a tissue when you sneeze. If you don't have one, don't sneeze into your hands. The state-of-the-art method now, for adults as well as preschoolers, is to sneeze into the crook of their elbow.
It also pays to practice some defensive germ awareness. Consider this anecdote: Many years ago, a young enthusiast supposedly rushed up to James Joyce and asked, "May I kiss the hand that wrote 'Ulysses'?" Joyce allegedly replied, "No. It did lots of other things, too."
Or this "eeewwww"-inducing factoid: The CDC estimates that one in three people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
Try — just try — not to think about that next time you're shaking hands.