NC Senator Would Not Wash His Hands Of The Matter

When Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) offered his opinion that food workers at public accommodations like restaurants should be allowed to opt out of the legal requirement that they must wash their hands, I thought he was joking, perhaps satirizing the anti-vaxxers. I should have known better.

As Jen Hayden at Kos points out, quoting the CDC:

The spread of germs from the hands of food workers to food is an important cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants. It accounts for 89% of outbreaks in which food was contaminated by food workers. Proper handwashing can reduce germs on workers’ hands and the spread of germs from hands to food and from food to other people. [Bolds mine. - SB]

In other words, a food worker's handwashing is all that stands between you and food poisoning.

But in these days of utter Republican insanity, the whole GOP seems as dependent on magic as the wizards at Unseen University, with results no better than many of those wizards achieve. Basic precautions known to health workers for at least two or three centuries are both necessary and sufficient to prevent devastating outbreaks of some kinds of disease. People who believe they have some sort of personal individual right to ignore the laws establishing those precautions in public accommodations like restaurants are themselves a danger to society. People who are both stupid and hostile make me sick: their liberties must end with their endangerment of the community's health.