It’s totally unnecessary—and it may even be bad for you.
Source: You Shouldn’t Be Wearing Gloves to Go Grocery Shopping
This novel coronavirus doesn’t enter the body through your hands, so you don’t need any kind of barrier there. If you touch a contaminated surface with gloves, and touch something else, you’re as likely to spread it as you are if you touch things with your bare hands. Maybe even more likely: “The adhesive properties of viruses differ among viruses; it’s possible the coronavirus could adhere to the latex gloves better than it could adhere to your own skin,” says Reynolds. And hands can be effectively washed and used again right away.
The idea that gloves may actually increase the spread hit me like a ton of bricks! Our skin has evolved for Millions of years to protect us against these very viruses. In microbiology classes students are taught that the skin is a microbe defense system on many levels. Much is focused on the actual mechanical and structural components of the skin providing a chainmail armor type defense.
But our skin also extrudes oils and enzymes. The idea above fits in with the concept of the skin being a defense system. And my head exploded when I realized that the enzymes and oils your skin secretes could potentially destroy virus particles.
Therefore, gloves may protect virus smears from our own skin degradation systems and actually increase the spread. In addition many people would be far more careless since they believe that they are protected, and not follow good behavior patterns that would decrease the spread of the virus.
Simply washing your hands kills viruses. Washing your hands washes soap destroyed viruses down the drain. I’ll bet you nobody washes their gloves as often as they would wash their hands. In fact, I’ll bet nobody uses hand sanitizer on their gloves when going between stores or getting into their car. People wearing gloves are potentially making the problem much worse.
People please: slow down, quit thrashing around, and just wash your hands. And if you are me, stop putting your reading glasses in your mouth to hold them after they have slid off the top of your head several times in a row. Handle the ear pieces multiple time while shopping and then stick them in your mouth :-) sheesh, I can be an idiot too. Thank goodness I have an immune system that has spent half a billion years fighting for me.
Best to all.