Hi I have a few techniques I am using to help keep the virus away from myself, friends and family which are not being shared.
I’d avoid people who “I read somewhere” and trace back to scientific thinking.
If any of these bad I’ll edit or add any better ideas.
Muscle Memory technique
In some countries this is already too late, but here in the UK I began a few weeks ago to assume the virus was at its peak, it was everywhere, and then used my hands and arms with that assumption, knowing I’d be imperfect, flawed, make mistakes but learn so practised for when its most required.
I figured either we all get ill around the same time, so half the population not well for a 3 period, or we spend months in distance from each other and operating for months in a more isolated manner. They both get to a known minimum of 3 weeks of in-house supplies for all inhabitants, as either you’re all ill and cannot go out for 3 weeks, or most people are not ill, so little real supply-side disruption but you have to last months of infrequent contact. Neither of these is made any better with panic or hoarding more than 3 weeks of supplies we pre-built up without causing harm to others. We began this in January so no shelf was made any empty by me.
So I have learned to not touch surfaces touched by others outside.
Leave house ready to clean hands on return
Don’t have door handles on the inside of the house you must touch when entering. So handles with levers you can press down on with elbows and door props so you can just keep walking to the sink.
Have clean tissues already out by the sink.
Shopping with elbows.
I walk up to the shop with an empty bag. I do not use a basket nor trolley as they are surfaces touched recently. Food is unlikely to have been touched recently, and ironically people who hoard just cause shelves to have more recently touched and so are making the pandemic worse.
I put items into bag. Note this means just a bag’s worth so this can never be greedy.
I then go to shelf checkout tills, I touch only with elbow. This works in some stores not others, so I found out which do it well, which don’t and stopped using the later. For example here in UK, Morrisons till do not work with elbows, so I stopped shopping there.
Stop using phone contactless payment
During this “imagine the worse, plan for best” learning period where I was causing the least harm to others while learning myself, I figured the phone will become the problem.
It is hard to use a phone to pay without the phone itself becoming the virus surface. It’s anything being touched many times has little time to naturally disinfect.
So I moved back to using cards and not touching the tills with phone.
Two phones
So you enter the house, go to the pre-ready sink cleaning area you prepared (tissue out loose, turn on tap, wash hands, dry hands, tissue in bin, turn off tap).
So hands clean. Then you use your phone you used outdoors, well then you just touched something not clean.
So two phones technique. Outside the house away from the Wifi you do need a LTE type smart phone to look things up, answer/make calls. But that phone is unclean and cannot be used inside.
So you have your outdoor items and home items, the phone is the outdoor one.
So you have a device, like a tablet, or a spare phone, which you use in the house, and one outside. The outside one is best left near an open window.
Call forwarding. You have a phone number people ring you on. If that is your outside phone, then have conditional call-forwarding to your inside phone. Your inside phone then makes calls via other means like Skype, Hangouts, etc. Phone settings, call-forwarding. There is one setting of forward on no answer.
Google Messages via Web. Replace the default SMS message app with the one from Google called Messenges. It has in settings Messages for Web. You then on other devices go to
https://messages.google.com/web
And it has a QR code, you point your outside phone device to the screen of the inside phone device and they then pair. This means texts all appear to come from your outside phone device, even though you physically touched your inside phone device to send it.
Google Hangouts, Google Voice
In USA, you can have one Google voice number which works on all devices via the Google Hangouts app. So the call forwarding type becomes easier. Just use Google Voice, it forwards to your real phone number outside, and is just a VOIP calls inside the house.
Lots of chargers
(Anker specific)
It would be a good idea to spend most of the time in the house not sharing space with others, as there will be that moment you sneeze / cough and when you’re infected and you didn’t catch in elbow, tissue.
So less shared things. Particularly, no shared chargers, no shared cables. Have a charger and cable for each person.
Anything wrong or I miss?
I can edit out bad ideas, improve on them, add to them.
