My hands are super-clean. It’s the rest of me I’m worried about...
Virus hygiene sounds simple until you try to practice it with total rigour. Washing hands is the easy bit. What about all the other potentially contaminated items you bring home?
There is the water bottle I took to the gym. There’s my coat – I sat on the Tube in it and I think maybe I pushed open the door of a public loo using the sleeve. And for God’s sake, don’t even mention my phone. Is there any greater vehicle for transferring germs on to the face?
All of this has me wishing for one of those airlocks you see in footage of chemical spills or disaster movies, where the heroes arrive back at base in their hazmat suits and thrust out their arms while a big shower jets disinfectant over them. I thought of getting my husband to do the honours, but I’m not sure it’s a brilliant use of scarce sanitising liquids.
The upshot is that you just have to do your best and hope for the best. Certain locations require the full treatment: post-gym, a full wash of keys, bottle and phone is required. Other times, well, my coat probably isn’t going to kill me or any elderly people I know, is it? In the end, this is all a game of probabilities. The risk of infection is never zero, but every act of hygiene pushes it down a little more.
An awful lot of prominent people seem to have come down with the virus. There’s Tom Hanks, Justin Trudeau, the
I thought of getting my husband to spray me with disinfectant when I got home
health minister Nadine Dorries and the Brazilian president’s press secretary, who had dinner with Donald Trump last week. Either the virus is more widespread than we thought, or moving in circles with famous people is a risky business. With a pandemic on, all the gladhanding and jet-setting doesn’t seem quite so glamorous.