It's... not an option. I live in a slum in Vietnam. This is actually quite nice in many ways, it is overall quiet and safe! However, flooding, weird plumbing, humidity, and general low-level chaos make it impossible to keep particularly clean.

It would be like being afraid of air.

Like, I used to be afraid of spiders. Then I immigrated here and spiders were just common enough that after a period of discomfort I just had to give up and accept them.

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.

Not at all. Germs make you stronger.

Even though I'm a raging hypochondriac, I am not a germophobe. Funny how that works.

I am a healthcare professional with some public health and sanitation training and worked/traveled in Africa, Asia quite a lot, especially in the lesser known destinatios. So for regular life? Not much. I do adhere to basic sanitary rules (cook it,peel it or leave it) and make sure the water I use is clear when I am in these areas. But otherwise just the normal stuff like washing your produce before eating it, washing your hands after having a leak,etc. In my daily life it is rather unlikely to come in contact with the really nasty shit. (okay, only when you work with raw chicken...that stuff is nasty)

But work-wise? I am an extremist in that regard. I still wear a mask when seeing patients (more out of fear that I might infect them unknowingly), I absolutely desinfect my hands as often as required, I adhere to sanitation rules (e.g. for putting in iVs) religiously and make my students do the same. And when I am a patient I absolutely make sure that staff does the same when treating me.

The reason for that is quite simple: I saw too many hospital acquired infections and had a minor one myself. And that is unnecessary - and the stuff you get there is the one to truely fear. That will fuck you up badly.

My dad would frequently trot out "You'll eat a peck o' dirt before you die." - where peck would be the UK version of the volumetric measure: a little over 9 ltrs.

He had a very laid back approach to contamination due to his old-school farming background. I had a rather more strict approach when young but, with age, I have become much more relaxed and do use the phrase myself at times.

I'll eat a chicken nugget off the floor, but not lunchmeat.

If someone is sick, I'll try to avoid touching them or getting in their face.

I avoid public hand rails and will open bathroom doors with a paper towel.

I'm not afraid of getting sick, but I'll avoid it if I can readily do so.

The year of quarantine, I didn't get sick, I like that a lot.

I consider myself a rather hygienic person. Wash my hands perhaps more often than I should. But I'm not exactly stressed when I don't, partly because I know perfect hygiene isn't best for your health either. I'm just very conscious about it, especially when preparing food for somebody else.

I avoid it a fair amount. I won’t eat anything sticky that I’ve dropped, I try to avoid touching hand rails and door knobs. I’ll dodge people that are coughing or sneezing, especially if they’re children. I’m also very peculiar about eating food from potlucks made by people I don’t know.

More now than I did two weeks ago. I just recovered from a bout of Typhoid Fever / mystery bacterial infection in Cambodia.

Probably not enough

I don’t care. The way I see it, it strengthens my immune system to be exposed to some germs once in a while

Thought you were talking about Facebook Threads for a second XD