There Is COVID-19, Consider Other Ways To Say Greetings Without Physical Contact

JAKARTA - The spread of the corona virus or COVID-19 is increasingly widespread from day to day. One of the reasons the virus can be spread is by shaking hands. Therefore, there are several traditions that we can adopt so that we can still greet people well, but not by shaking hands.

Indeed, giving up the habit of shaking hands is not easy. However, this needs to be done in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Several state leaders have urged their citizens not to make physical contact during greetings.

Yesterday, an interesting story emerged from the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. When he held a press conference to urge his citizens not to shake hands. But at the end of the event, he forgot and greeted one of the health officials in the windmill country. This then became media coverage as reported by The Guardian.

Apart from the Netherlands, several other countries also urge their citizens to avoid making physical contact when meeting. As quoted by The New York Times, the Minister of Health of Switzerland and France, for example, urged their citizens to temporarily abandon the "la bise" habit of greeting by kissing the right or left cheek.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Israel, advised to replace the habit of shaking hands with the greeting "namaste" or cupped hands. Apart from namaste greetings, there are still several alternative greetings that can be done without making physical contact.

For example, greetings bow or bow. This way of greeting is common in Japanese and Korean people. Usually this method is done to greet older people, but because Japan is very polite, age standards are no longer a problem.

In addition, another alternative that can be done to greet others is to imitate greetings like the Tibetans. They do their usual greetings by sticking out their tongues.

So don't be weird when you're visiting Tibet, there are people sticking out their tongues. According to them, greeting by sticking out your tongue is one way to prove that you are not the reincarnation of a despotic king, a very evil king. It is said that the Tibetans believe that a despot had a black tongue.

As is known in Indonesia itself as of Wednesday 11 March, the spread of the virus has reached 34 cases, with one person reportedly died. Meanwhile in the world there were 119,541 cases with a death toll of 4,292, while those who recovered were 65,972.