Twisted logic



Graphic: WeirdSpace


There's a piece in this week's American Medical News on the New York bill to mandate bare below the elbows. It includes this quote from Dr. P.J. Brennan, former President of SHEA:

It's not as though, by eliminating sleeves, you eliminate germs. The key thing to understand is that these environments are not sterile and are never going to be sterile. That goal is unattainable in a clinical setting. The real goal is to adhere to good hand hygiene, isolation practices, gloving, barrier precautions -- that's where we'd put our money.

I think Dr. Brennan's argument represents the conventional wisdom among hospital epidemiologists, but it doesn't make sense to me. He supports contact precautions, but doesn't support bare below the elbows, both of which are based on the same evidence and assumptions. So I think his logic is twisted. It seems to me that you either believe that clothing has the potential to transmit pathogens or you don't.