"Bacteria is simply NOT killed NOR reduced in anyway at
That simply is not a wholly true, nor accurate statement.
Various bacteria, viruses, "germs", and so forth are affected at different temperatures. E. Coli, the most common germ found on laundry can be killed at temperatures of 160F held for 10 to 20 minutes. However there are so many factors affecting laundry practice that even if the laundry is done according to this method it still would have sizable colonies of E coli and other germs living.
Like washing one's hands or even hard surfaces, the purpose is more to sanitise than disenfect. The former is the process of reducing germ levels to a point where they are not likely to cause disease, the latter is totally eliminating (or near to as possible), all germs, bacteria, moulds etc.
Good laundry practices involve five parameters: water quality, mechanical action,temperature, chemicals, and heat.
Mechanical action, combined with proper chemical levels and heat (which activates chemicals), by and large will produce laundry that is sanitary for most purposes. Germs and such simply are removed from laundry and transferred to the wash and rinse water, where they are flushed away down the drain. True the germs are still living, but that doesn't matter for our purposes.
The above is why various posters, have stated so often that in tests done in their commercial laundries, temps of 120F to 125F were perfectly fine for clean and sanitary laundry. Telling is the fact that when machines are over loaded, remaining bacteria levels increased. One can assume from this that because of over loading the required mechanical,chemcial and other actions could not reach proper levels. What is more grime,filth and germs were not able to be rinsed away from laundry.
As things go, thermal disenfection is not the most accurate way, as there are too many variables and too many germs to account for. There are many chemicals that can and will disenfect in cool or cold temperatures, including chlorine bleach. Problem with chlorine bleach is one either must reduce germ levels prior to adding, or titre the level of product to soil levels, amoung other things. This is why commercial laundries use chlorine bleach as a different cycle.
In "olden days" the only time laundry was sent to the boiling pots before being soaked, and or otherwise cleaned first, is if it came from a known infected source. Indeed have several vintage laundry manuals from the 1920's or so through the 1950's, in several languages, that clearly tell housewives, laundresses and such that boiling of laundry went out when washing machines came in.
Boiling and or hot water washing is hard on textiles. It was back in the days, and is still true today. Persons compensated in the old days for all that boiling, beating and such by buying mainly pure linen and or other heavy and sturdy things which could withstand harsh laundry treatment. Even then housewives and such bemoaned the wearing out of their laundry from commercial laundries and or overly aggressive laundry workers.
One should also keep in mind, the mania for boiling and or doing laundry in very hot or at least hot water grew out of a period of time when the best defence against disease was not getting sick. While slowing people began to associate filth with germs and disease, there wasn't much anyone could do about infections until modern antibiotics came on the scene after WWII. Until then the best one could hope for was that one's own body's immune system would fight off the infection.
Housewives, mothers, nurses, and the lot got their marching orders, and the war on filth began. Everything was scrubbed, hosed down, boiled, bleached (with chlorine bleach), and so forth in the effort to protect one's charges from disease.
Aside from such infectious diseases such as smallpox, there is little to fear from not having boiled one's laundry to death.
