Swine Flu just won't go away. President Obama just declared the virus a national emergency, allowing hospitals and local governments to set up alternate treatment centers to stem its rapid spread. (Swine Flu, or H1N1, has been reported in large numbers across 46 states.)

But whether H1N1 is the death knell the media's making it out to be or just this year's strain of influenza -- and not significantly different than any other -- plenty of people are still getting the nasty bug that, at the very least, will leave you bedridden for a week or two, and at the most can be fatal.

My question is: how are all these people still getting sick? After all, this isn't like 17th Century London, when the plague swept across that city due to primitive sanitation and cramped living conditions. Or is it?

In honor of Global Handwashing Day, which was October 15th -- don't worry, I didn't know about it either, but that may be because the US didn't participate -- a small research team in England decided to find out exactly who was washing their hands in public restrooms and who wasn't. Between July and September, they monitored 250,000 people who used the loo (it's British for restroom) at a service station in that country.

LED monitors at the entrances to both the men's and women's rooms encouraged users to wash their hands with clever or gut-churning advisories like, "Don't be a dope, wash with soap" and "Soap it off or eat it later."

The restrooms' soap dispensers were outfitted with sensors that monitored and recorded each time soap was used. It turns out that only 32% of men bothered to wash up, while twice the number of women did (64%).

This shouldn't surprise anyone who's ever used a public restroom. I've even seen the kitchen staff at restaurants use the bathroom and leave without so much as glancing at the sink. But aren't we more civilized than that? Don't we know better by now? Maybe not. It could be that people don't think it could happen to them, or that some part of them (or us, rather) wants to keep getting sick, or at least to be afraid of something. Perhaps, for whatever crazy reason, we need to have something to panic about. Regardless of the reason some people don't wash up, let's take a cue from history and commit to washing our hands. Our collective health may depend on it.

[Image: Mattes from Wikimedia Commons]