Virus Transmission-Enabling Touch-Screens

"[The virus was] more stable on plastic and stainless steel than on copper and cardboard, and viable virus was detected up to 72 hours after application to these surfaces."
"The longest viability of both viruses was on stainless steel and plastic; the estimated median half-life of SARS-CoV-2 was approximately 4.5 hours on stainless steel and 6.8 hours on plastic."
Neetje van Doremalen and team, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Montana

"Touching an object on a screen is a direct visual metaphor for the act of touching content itself, similar to touching an object in the real world, when compared to the more indirect touch of using a mouse or trackpad to control screen content."
"Merely imagining touching an object activates imagery processing, which in turn cues mental simulation of that object's behaviour; in essence, simulated or imagined touch generates effects highly similar to actual touch."
S.Adam Brasel, associate professor of marketing
James Gips (since deceased), computer scientist, assistive technologies
Boston College researchers

Cleaning Ideum Touch Screens and Multitouch Tables to eradicate Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Touch-screen technology has it all; ease of contact, immediate response, emotional/sensual gratification, feeling of control, satisfying outcomes. They're everywhere from the pocket-handy little communication devices, ephones and a multitude of gadgets we're engaged with, to touchscreen kiosks used in hospitals, airports, and fast-food emporiums like McDonald's. You can arrange an edate, order hamburgers with all the fixings, respond to health questionnaires, check out of your public library, or the supermarket, no fuss.

It's efficient, it's reliable, it's 21st Century. And it's also, unfortunately, a great way for communicable diseases and even ordinary bacterium to transfer from someone else's unwashed, grimy hands to your own sanitized, scrupulously-clean hands. And never before has this been quite the issue as it now looms, when anywhere lurks the sinister novel coronavirus, ready to leap from surface to your interior, a nice cozy, moist and warm environment enabling it to replicate endlessly while making  you deathly ill.

Worse: dead. And even while it's been playing hell with your internal organs and congesting your respiratory tract, affecting your heart and blood pressure on the way to meeting your expiry date, it leaps from the factory-haven of your lovely, devastated interior to someone else's to begin the harrowing (for the victim) process all over again; repeat, and repeat.

Social distancing lines in operation on the floor and monitors reading “We’re open for takeaway orders only” are seen inside a McDonald’s restaurant in Birmingham in central England on the morning of March 21, 2020. JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images

Oh, of course, not just you. Anyone. Everyone. The old and the  young and all those between. Think playground equipment, think shopping carts, think gas nozzles, elevator buttons, door handles, park and airport seating arrangements, light switches, staircase rails, escalator rails, all touchy-feely, all potential harbours of the sinister novel coronavirus. So: be aware. Refrain from touching.

Not so fast. Because not so easy.

We touch because we instinctively reach out ... to inform ourselves, to steady ourselves, to conduct business, to play games (how many times is a tennis ball handled by all the players?) and because touching is inherent in the way we communicate. Given enough time the surfaces that have been smeared with the viral drops will clear themselves most certainly ... but until they do they are clear and present health threats.

Touch screen interfaces, according to consumer research, "can increase psychological ownership". Direct touch interface tends to increase the number of times people search websites. Modern commerce has been enhanced by the invention of touch-screen technology; the way it appeals to people, its ease of use and the satisfaction levels it conveys. So go ahead, in this age of viral infectious rates soaring with grave consequences, steel yourself to not touch that screen.

And while you're about it, don't touch anything else you cannot immediately disinfect. Much depends on it.