All your germaphobic habits are pretty much useless

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Don't want to get sick this season?

Sure, you've heard the basics: Carry hand sanitizer everywhere. Grab public-bathroom door handles with paper towels. Hold your breath when your unwell-looking subway seat partner starts coughing.

Bad news, germaphobe — your meticulous habits likely aren't doing much to protect you.

Here's a look at all the weird germ-avoidance behaviors that are probably useless:

You can stop kicking the toilet flusher.

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Sure, there are probably some nasty germs on the toilet flusher. But whoever used the stall before you and flushed with their hand also likely transferred that bacteria from their hand to the handle of the bathroom stall. So unless you're also kicking the stall door open, chances are you're going to touch the germs at some point. Which is fine, so long as you wash your hands after you do your business. 

...and opening doors with paper towels.

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Bathroom door handles and grimy subway poles seem like ripe breeding grounds for bacteria. One geneticist recently likened holding a subway pole to shaking hands with 10,000 people.

Not quite: While dirty hands can carry E. coli and other potentially harmful bacteria, most of the microbes you'll find on handrails and door handles are harmless.

Plus, if you're grasping handles with towels to avoid touching them and then putting the towels in your pocket or purse, you're merely transferring the bacteria to another spot where you'll touch it later.

You can also toss the mini hand sanitizers you carry in your bag.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Hand sanitizer doesn't kill all germs, so stick to soap and water when you can.

Norovirus, for example, a pathogen that's most often transferred via infected food and causes diarrhea, and C. difficile, which can cause deadly diarrhea and most commonly affects older adults, are immune to sanitizing gels.

So long as it's got a hefty amount of alcohol (the CDC recommends only using solutions with 60% or more), though, sanitizer will kill as much common bacteria as soap and water can.

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