What happened to "wash our hands"?

Respiratory viruses like coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread when mucus or droplets containing the virus get into your body through your eyes, nose or throat. Most often, this happens through your hands. Hands are also one of the most common ways that the virus spreads from one person to the next.

During a global pandemic, one of the cheapest, easiest, and most important ways to prevent the spread of a virus is to wash your hands frequently with soap and water.

Here in the UK we are still being reminded quite often in our media that we should wash our hands frequently for at least 20 seconds.,

I'm living proof that masks work. I thought I had COVId 2 months ago. Took me some time to convince my insurance to cover an antibody test. I'm COVId free. Out of wanting to protect people I wore a mask. Now I bought 2 high quality masks and wear a paper filter mask underneath and change it. I do agree they should encourage handwashing. My building put up hand sanititizer stations all over the complex, that's a start.

Science changes all the time.  We find out new information all the time.  

We initially thought that covid was spread on our hands and items we touch.  This is why it is important to wash our hands, because it is spread on our hands.  

But now we know that it is not spread like that.  This is the new information we have, so the things we do to stay healthy have changed.  We now know that it is spread through droplets in the air from when we talk.  This is why we wear masks, so we don't spread our germs to other people we come into contact with.  

I have no idea which experts you are quoting, but medical experts and scientists all agree that wearing a mask is effective and safe.  

Where have you been since March? Are you a returning college student? That may explain the rise in cases in the US.

Wash your hands and wear your mask.  There we go.

How many times do you need to be told, to do the exact same thing?

The told me it was a good idea back when this started, nothing has changed.

"Experts have said washing hands is more effective that wearing a mask."

Wasn't that enough for you

I got high blood pressure and take pills, i don't need my doctor phoning me daily to remind me  :)

What is happening is that more information has been gathered.  The Covid-19 virus spreads almost entirely by inhaling infected respiratory droplets.  Every time we cough, speak and breathe we are ejecting respiratory droplets.  That's why social distancing works; stay out of other people's air space and don't breathe their droplets.  That's why masks works, it keeps your respiratory droplets to yourself.  The dosage is also relevant.  The dosage (amount of respiratory droplets) that you inhale is magnified by the time you spend sharing droplets with an infected person

Covid-19 can spread by touch but it is highly unlikely.  Once again the dosage comes in to play.  Let's say an infected person coughs in to his hand and 1 second later you shake hands with him.  Then 1 second later you lick your palm.  While it's possible to get Covid-19 that way, there is probably not enough exposure (dosage).  Thus hand washing is not as important as once was thought.  It's still a great idea to #1 keep your hands clean and #2  don't lick your palm!