What percentage of germs are spread through the touching of surfaces?

Answer 1

No one can give you a proper answer to that question as a percentage.

For one thing, we do not know all the kinds of germs.

For another, apart from the germs that we keep discovering, new kinds of germs keep developing in the process of evolution that is going on around us all the time. Some of the new germs we discover are bad and some are not so bad, or even important and good for us.

Thirdly, a germ that is bad in one place can be good in another place; for example some useful, or even essential, germs on your skin or in your gut, could be very bad news indeed if they got into your blood.

What is more, germs that are good at one time could be bad at another time.

However, we can say that the germs that we definitely do not want, such as some that cause some of our most dreadful diseases, either in human beings or in useful plants or in our animals, are only a tiny, tiny percentage of all the germs on the planet. There are perhaps a few thousand of the harmful kinds, while nobody knows how many millions there are around us, in the air, in the soil, in the see, and most of these have very little to do with us.

Apart from the really harmful germs, there are many more kinds of germs that either are very important to us, or that do things that are mostly useful, or things that can be useful if we deal with them the right way.

And apart from those there are even more that have very little to do with us and our concerns at all.

Still, we must generally assume that those germs that seem to live lives that have nothing to do with us, really are on balance good to have.

First of all we do not know how many useful things we might discover in a creature that we have not yet studied. That sort of thing happens all the time.

Secondly, whatever they are doing, they are doing something, something that is important to the world around them at least. They are keeping part of our world going, just by being there.

Looking at it that way, almost all germs, apart from perhaps a few hundred disease germs that attack us and attack things that matter to us, should be seen as good for us in one way or another. Even some disease germs really are very useful, such as Bacillus thuringiensis that we use for killing harmful insects, and the myxomatosis virus that has helped to control the rabbit plague in Australia.

Answer 2

something % :/