Dr. Anthony Fauci said people shouldn’t go back to shaking hands after the coronavirus pandemic subsides.
Appearing Wednesday on a Wall Street Journal podcast, Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that he thought society should heed lessons learned about viruses following the health crisis.
“One of them is absolute compulsive hand-washing,” Fauci said, adding that another lesson “is you don’t ever shake anybody’s hands.”
“I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you,” the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases added. “Not only would [ending the practice of handshakes] be good to prevent coronavirus disease, it probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country.”
Fauci is part of President Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, led by Vice President Mike Pence. His suggestion of ending handshakes falls in line with an anti-handshaking philosophy that Trump has stuck to much of his life. A self-described “clean-hands freak,” Trump described handshaking as “disgusting,” “barbaric,” and “one of the curses of American society” before his presidency.
The president also recently suggested that the custom of handshaking could come to an end via the pandemic.
