They don’t “just” wipe em clean. Yeah, me and you might think they do, but there’s a bunch of steps they have to perform. Because if they don’t, people literally die. And here’s a study that emphasizes that being a risk with such a innocuous device. I mean, the WHO guidelines for cleaning them are literally 10 steps long.

And as I was finding the who guidelines again, I found another article that states that oximeters should be disposable when more than one patient is hooked to a machine. Guarantee a field hospital doesn’t have dozens of those devices on hand, so we’re back to disposables anyway.