Nose picking is deadly serious.
“you can spread coronavirus to others from your nose-picking session, and you are also more likely to bring that virus, along with others like influenza or rhinovirus (the common cold), directly into your body.”
The following written content by Starre Vartan
Let’s be real, though. Most of us pick our noses — some 91% according to the only (small and old) study that seems to have ever been done on the subject, perhaps revealing how little even scientists want to think about it. Looking around the world, however, it’s not exactly uncommon to see someone with a finger up their nose, either discreetly or not so much, like Queen Elizabeth.
Jokes aside, nose picking is deadly serious.
Not only are people spreading their own bacteria and viruses onto everything they touch after a bout of digging for gold — but you also “transfer germs from your fingertips into the nose, which is the exact opposite of what you want,” said infectious disease specialist Dr. Paul Pottinger, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
That means that you can spread coronavirus to others from your nose-picking session, and you are also more likely to bring that virus, along with others like influenza or rhinovirus (the common cold), directly into your body.
How the coronavirus enters your body
The nose is one of three main ways that viruses can enter the body — the other two are the mouth and eyes. The nose has a number of defense systems to keep pathogens out, including hair at the front of the nostrils to block larger particles and the mucous membrane.
That moist lining of the nose “has microscopically small glands that can secrete mucus into the airway in response to foreign invaders. That includes big stuff like pollen and dirt and dust and also microscopic stuff, which would include bacteria and viruses,” Pottinger said.
Some mucus is a good and healthy thing, keeping most invaders out. But when it dries up, along with whatever it has caught, it turns into what most of us call boogers (scientists call them crusts). When you feel one in your nose, it’s easy to want to pick it out without thinking. Read more from CNN.
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