COVID-19 has separated us from the world in surprising ways. Yes, we all miss our friends and loved ones, and we miss going to restaurants and stores and movies and concerts. But there’s another pastime that COVID-19 has deprived us of, even if we don’t realize it: the simple pleasure of subconsciously touching our own faces and sniffing our hands.
As COVID-19 spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people against touching their faces — and for good reason: A 2006 study suggested that nearly 25 percent of respiratory disease transfer could be attributed to people touching their faces.
But avoiding it is easier said than done. We touch our faces all the time; several behavioral studies have put the numbers at more than a dozen times per hour. And, oftentimes, that face touching is accompanied by increased airflow into the nostrils: sniffing. Many researchers, including a team led by Noam Sobel at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, argue that we sniff our hands so much in part because we’re picking up chemical signals (sometimes referred to as pheromones) that tell us about the people around us.
