ELI5. Why does frequent use of soap and/or hand sanitizer not make the germs on our hands mutate?
In: Biology
Mutation like you’re thinking about only occurs when there’s a transitional change, and not a sudden one.
Both Soap & Hand sanitizer we use, are too strong for any bacteria to have any chance of survival, and since they are dead, they can’t create offspring anymore.
If you’d instead would use heavily diluted hand sanitizer, and lessen the degree of dilution over time, the bacteria on your hands will indeed mutate to the point of being resistant to pure hand sanitizer.
[A short video about bacteria mutating to resist antibiotics](https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8)
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