Comment by gehsty

To be blunt you do not get it from eating cookies in sand. You get it from ingesting pinworm eggs, you ingest them by someone touching their bum (where the worms lay eggs) and then touching something that you then touch and touch your face/mouth, or scratching your own bum in your sleep then scratching your face / mouth.

If you don’t think it’s super commen in Europe it’s generally a lack of diagnoses. Literally 1/5th Of British kids have it at any given time (and I imagine that tracks across Europe and USA at least)