Originally Posted by
pptp
Hand touches faucet, pathogen can't transmit through skin, wash hands, pathogen gone. No chance of infection.
Face touches pillow, pathogen can spread to mucous membrane including the outside corner of your eye, wash face, too late, you're sick. You can't wash pillow before using.
Remember, a lot of people rest the side of their face on pillows, not just the back of their head. Plus, unless you wash your hands after touching the pillow, you can easily transfer germs to your face. With AC turning around sometimes in 20 or 30 minutes, any pathogen could easily live long enough in a moist fabric medium. At least with an armrest or tray table, the surface is hard and mostly nonporous. Pathogens can't survive long in that environment.
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I guess you just do what you can and try not to go too overboard. All this talk is making me a hypochondriac.
We could go on forever, and ultimately it's really more about how paranoid you are about it than anything else.
An armrest or traytable may be hard, but the fabric of seatback is not. When people sleep on their sides on those "wings" they have on the tops of airline seats now, they can just as easily drool into them as into a pillow.
At least those awful fiberglass pillow covers are replaced periodically. But an airline seat wing? It's there baby...
Again, you have to put it in perspective: How many people in nearly five decades of jet travel have gotten sick from an airline pillow, even if it is basically a "yucky" thing?
And, again, nothing is more dangerous on an airplane than the sick guy next to you coughing and sneezing inches from your face.