Actually, there's all of about 4 diseases you can catch solely from contact (IE handshakes). #1 is Athletes foot (occasionally some other fungal infections can

Actually, there's all of about 4 diseases you can catch solely from contact (IE handshakes). #1 is Athletes foot (occasionally some other fungal infections can spread similarly too) where an infected person can spread it to a susceptible person, however this is easily solved by not sharing towels and actually cleaning your bath/shower. #2 is HPV, aka warts, which usually most people would avoid shaking hands with someone covered in warts. The other way is similar to #1, so again good bathroom hygiene wins out. #3 is impetigo, commonly found in 2-6 year olds whom I sincerely doubt are in business meetings. The only other common way is close-contact sports (rugby/wrestling). #4 is syphilis, which in very rare cases can spread by direct touch with the chancer (ulceration of the skin). Besides those four, no infection worth worrying about is contagious. The next major worry for handshakes would be fecal-oral transmission. However, the reason public health officials espouse good bathroom hygiene isn't for hand shakes, it's for the fact that if this bacteria it has a chance to develop a large enough culture size to beat our immune system. The amount of bacteria actually carried on someones hand is so few and so exposed it cannot survive our stomach acid. I've taken several courses on all this and I'm certified for food safety, first aid (for all ages) and a few other courses I needed to work with people with compromised or weak immune systems (infants, elderly and immuno-compromised). Arrington has no fucking clue what he's talking about, he's an office worker spouting BS about personal hygiene. Unless you work in a hospital, you likely wouldn't make a single person sick if you only washed your hands when you showered. It's actually been shown repeatedly, that increased exposure to infectious bacteria increases your resilience(this is the whole purpose of the immune system) and can prevent you from getting worse infections. This is why health officials have been stock piling regular flu vaccinations in case of a H5N1 outbreak, because immunization against one type of flu strain can help against other flu strains. I know a lot about all this stuff. So please, don't call Arrington well-informed, because he's clueless. He's a programmer, he runs the best tech-news site on the web and should keep his opinions there where he is exceptionally clued in. This article lost Arrington a lot of respect from me because of how sheerly ignorant he is and how clearly he has a serious condition.