Here is a link to a totally ridiculous article that was posted to Expatica.com (someone on the German-Way Yahoo Group linked to it). To summarize, the author thinks Germans are bacteria infested slobs who will infect the rest of the world.
“On the contrary, it has become fashionable, even trendy to refuse to inoculate your children and to take the attitude that too much cleanliness is actually bad for you,” says Dr Martin Exner, managing director of the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health at the University of Bonn.
Ummm… I haven’t heard anything about this inoculation stuff, and I think studies done in the US *HAVE* shown that too much cleanliness is bad for you. I’ve heard, but maybe I’m wrong, that over-cleanliness in childhood can lead to allergy problems and that using too many antibacterial products just makes badder bacteria evolve.
“Kindergarten pupils are made to share forks and spoons and to use the same cloth and towels in the misguided belief that paper towels and disposable cutlery are bad for the environment,” Dr Exner says.
I don’t have a kid in kindergarten, so I can’t be sure, but this sharing utensils thing sounds ridiculous. Maybe the author means they have to reuse utensils, and paper towels and disposable cutlery ARE bad for the environment, ya know, they do eventually have to go in these big things called landfills…
“So as not to sully the environment with paper tissues, people will cup their hand over their mouth when sneezing, but then will not wash their hands before handling produce at the market or shaking hands with people,” Exner says. “And if they use a handkerchief, they neglect to change it often and launder it properly.”
Actually, I’ve noticed that most Germans sneeze into the crook of their elbows, not their hands.
“If you don’t wash underclothes at a temperature of at least 60 degrees Celsius, you aren’t killing bacteria. Washing towels and undies at 30 degrees is useless, especially if you don’t use proper detergents.”
Who is washing their underwear at 60 Grad (140 degrees Fahrenheit)? I don’t even wash my cotton undies in hot water, not to mention delicates, they get handwashed in lukewarm water. The only thing I wash in water that hot are bed sheets and only to kill the dust mites, if I weren’t allergic I wouldn’t even do that. Well, I guess my undies are bacterial wastelands.
Already, US health authorities have raised the red flag about Germans entering America,” Exner notes.”
Yeah, right.
In America, diseases like German measles have been all but eradicated. They don’t like to see unvaccinated Germans arriving on their soil. “After all, they don’t call it German measles for nothing,” Exner says.
If Americans are all vaccinated, it shouldn’t matter. Not to mention that Wikipedia had this to say:
The name German measles has nothing to do with Germany. It comes from the Latin germanus, meaning “similar”, since rubella and measles share many symptoms.
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What an idiot. I wish dumb people would just keep it to themselves.
my mother raised two perfectly healthy children — even though she never believed in surgologically clean. that’s her motto only when her work is concerned.