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I'm getting this strange vibe from your comment that somehow sanitizer-induced cancer might be a greater problem than COVID, which doesn't agree with common sen

I'm getting this strange vibe from your comment that somehow sanitizer-induced cancer might be a greater problem than COVID, which doesn't agree with common sense if you ask me. What am I missing here?

_red 6y ago
You better double-mask up to be safe!!!
DennisP 6y ago
They didn't say it's a worse problem than covid. They said it might be a worse problem than getting covid from touching stuff, since that turned out to be way less common than airborne droplet transmission.
tbabb 6y ago
I think the proposal is that sanitizer induces more risk than it mitigates, since it's now unlikely that hand sanitation is related to covid transmission. Nonetheless, other things are transmitted by unclean hands, which is almost certainly a greater risk than the benzene.
CivBase 6y ago
That's because it's not common sense to compare sanitizer-induced cancer rates to overall COVID rates. To determine whether the use of hand sanitizer is a net positive, you have to compare the deaths caused by hand sanitizer to the deaths prevented by hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, it would be pretty difficult to get accurate numbers for either of those figures, even if you just narrow it down to cancer and COVID.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  But problem is that people getting sanitiser cancer are maybe not the ones who would be dying because corona. If old people are at great risk you can not tell whole population for to do something risking cancers to protecting them. I am young enough and at very very low risk of deaths from corona so am not desiring for to use sanitizer and for to maybe getting benzene cancers.
RIMR 6y ago
That's not quite what they were comparing. Comparing deaths caused by COVID to deaths caused by contaminated hand sanitizer isn't a fair comparison. Comparing lives saved by hand sanitizer to lives lost to sanitizer contamination is what I'm reading here, though it seems pretty difficult to measure either.
xupybd 6y ago
Limiting action when things fly in the face of common sense is wise. Limiting the questions you ask to common sense is not always wise. Some times the world is counterintuitive, and the only way to find something out is to test it. While it probably is not the case there may be poor outcomes from hand sanitizer. Would they be worse than CoVid, probably not. However given the scope of CoVid all we have to do to test this is wait. If hand sanitizer was to cause that much trouble it would become obvious at scale.
VLM 6y ago
Common sense is usually wrong WRT statistics.
scottrogowski 6y ago
I agree with most of the other replies to your comment. The world is full of counter-intuitives and I'm genuinely curious about whether this is one. As I said, my guess is that the risk of surface-transmission of COVID is probably still greater than the risk of increased exposure to benzene. But I think given the low risk of surface transmission, it might still be worth a comparison.
krona 6y ago
What you're missing is relative risk vs absolute risk. Don't worry, this is a common mistake.

_red 6y ago

You better double-mask up to be safe!!!

DennisP 6y ago

They didn't say it's a worse problem than covid. They said it might be a worse problem than getting covid from touching stuff, since that turned out to be way less common than airborne droplet transmission.

tbabb 6y ago

I think the proposal is that sanitizer induces more risk than it mitigates, since it's now unlikely that hand sanitation is related to covid transmission. Nonetheless, other things are transmitted by unclean hands, which is almost certainly a greater risk than the benzene.

CivBase 6y ago

That's because it's not common sense to compare sanitizer-induced cancer rates to overall COVID rates. To determine whether the use of hand sanitizer is a net positive, you have to compare the deaths caused by hand sanitizer to the deaths prevented by hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, it would be pretty difficult to get accurate numbers for either of those figures, even if you just narrow it down to cancer and COVID.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
But problem is that people getting sanitiser cancer are maybe not the ones who would be dying because corona. If old people are at great risk you can not tell whole population for to do something risking cancers to protecting them. I am young enough and at very very low risk of deaths from corona so am not desiring for to use sanitizer and for to maybe getting benzene cancers.

RIMR 6y ago

That's not quite what they were comparing. Comparing deaths caused by COVID to deaths caused by contaminated hand sanitizer isn't a fair comparison. Comparing lives saved by hand sanitizer to lives lost to sanitizer contamination is what I'm reading here, though it seems pretty difficult to measure either.

xupybd 6y ago

Limiting action when things fly in the face of common sense is wise. Limiting the questions you ask to common sense is not always wise. Some times the world is counterintuitive, and the only way to find something out is to test it. While it probably is not the case there may be poor outcomes from hand sanitizer. Would they be worse than CoVid, probably not. However given the scope of CoVid all we have to do to test this is wait. If hand sanitizer was to cause that much trouble it would become obvious at scale.

VLM 6y ago

Common sense is usually wrong WRT statistics.

scottrogowski 6y ago

I agree with most of the other replies to your comment. The world is full of counter-intuitives and I'm genuinely curious about whether this is one. As I said, my guess is that the risk of surface-transmission of COVID is probably still greater than the risk of increased exposure to benzene. But I think given the low risk of surface transmission, it might still be worth a comparison.

krona 6y ago

What you're missing is relative risk vs absolute risk. Don't worry, this is a common mistake.