I know this to be true, and wash my hands often. My son prefers hand sanitizer and will get annoyed when I ask him to wash his hands, despite me telling him its better than hand sanitizer. He asked me why and honestly, I dont know. Killing 99.9% of germs seems like pretty good odds but its something to do with the scrubbing motion, right?
In: Biology
It comes back to the surprise finding that soap doesn’t kill bacteria either. (I know we’re talking about virii, bear with me).
Alcohol in sanitizer works to break apart the protein strings that make up virii. But if there’s too much water (i.e. alcohol % too low), it doesn’t work. If there’s too little water (alcohol % too high), it also doesn’t work. You need both water AND alcohol, in the right proportions, for sanitizer to work properly. And there’s always some in the nooks and crannies of your skin that will see a wrong balance of water and alcohol and will survive the sanitizer attack.
Instead, why try and kill/denature the proteins in the virii when you can wash it away entirely. Same thing with bacteria. Soap doesn’t kill bacteria, but soap DOES help organic molecules like virii proteins and bacterial cell walls adhere to water molecules and make it much easier to wash away. And typically when you’re washing your hands with soapy water the amount of soapy water you’re using is orders of magnitude more than some water and alcohol in sanitizer.
Sanitizer is like a surgical pinpoint strike with a guided missile. Hand washing with soap is like nuking the entire site from orbit. Only way to be sure.
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