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How much do you fear "contamination"?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Not much. I had extensive courses on microbiology during uni. Generally the stuff you find at home or in nature (northen hemisphere temperate climates) is pretty tame and well avoidable.
As long as you wash your hand before eating, properly wash and heat sensitive food, and wash out and desinfact open wounds you are good to go.
Only thing i am concerned with is boreolosis or rabies from animals, but there you just gotta go to a doctor in time, if you suspect a transmission.
I understand though that this is the approach of someone with a healthy immune system, who never got more than a few days of shits from eating spoiled food occasionally.
It's not a perfect correlation, but I find most germophobes haven't taken microbiology, or even regular biology. One of those ignorance == fear things, I think.
As far as the "contamination" language goes, people interested in the purity vs contamination dynamic may want to check out Haidt's The Righteous Mind. It's imperfect but has real explanatory value, IMO.
I have the feeling for a lot of MINT topics lack of knowledge creates a stronger emotional response, both positive or negative.
Do you mean vs contamination vs purity that "99% pure" is considered as good whereas "1 % contamination" is considered as bad? These kind of number examples were given in "thinking fast, thinking slow" to illustrate the fallability of number interpretation and the general lack of statistical intuition in humans.
A moral/social judgement that The Other (out-group) is dirty, filthy, unclean, disease-ridden, gross, etc. Haidt suggests that is a distinction that aligns with a particular political leaning. It rings true to me (having been both in and out of that political group).
Haidt uses some novel examples in the book that make it worth the read for that if nothing else.