This damn global pandemic is claiming many social customs along with the human beings it is sickening and, tragically, killing.

I refer to one of them: shaking of hands when you greet friends.

Doctors and assorted other medical experts tell us that handshakes are being put aside while the world fights against the global viral infection that has killed 110,000-plus Americans.

This disturbs me. I am a hand-shaker. I enjoy greeting old friends and making new friends with a hearty handshake. I consider my handshake to be firm, but not crushing. I expect the same from those I meet for the first time or those with whom I reconnect.

We’re left now with “fist bumps” and “elbow bumps” and waving at each other from across the room. My wife and I ventured to Amarillo recently over the Memorial Day weekend. I had hoped to see old friends while we were there. I got cold feet. The instances of viral infections in Randall and Potter counties made me jittery. Thus, I was unwilling to see old friends, offer a handshake or an embrace.

This fist- and elbow-bumping ain’t my style, man.

The latest edition of the AARP Bulletin arrived this week and it tells us that the custom of shaking hands, which dates back to ancient Greece, is a goner … at least for well past the foreseeable future. AARP quotes Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage, who recommends we greet each other with a “sanitary Star Trek salute and a hearty ‘Live long and prosper.'”

The pandemic, says Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, has created the “single greatest disruption of our lifetime.”

So, you thought it was only a handshake, right? Hardly. Get ready for the “new normal.”