I’d rather lose my dignity with a handstand on the toilet bowl than risk contamination

You want to know how to get through the rest of the winter norovirus free? Don’t handle anything. This advice, I accept, will be harder for some to follow than others. To me – because I grew up to be a universal non-handler, not touching other people, alien food, animals or myself – it’s second nature. That I was a precociously fastidious boy I ascribe primarily to a confused understanding of Jewish hygiene laws: if it was sinful to go near some things, but impossible to remember in the heat of living which, the most sensible plan of action was to go near nothing. Otherwise I put it down to my family’s revulsion, probably acquired over centuries of being treated like dirt in Eastern European shtetls, from refuse.