Lift buttons

Maybe I was in the wrong place at the right time, or maybe not. But the fact was that I happened to be on the ground floor of a flat on Penang island about a fortnight ago, waiting for someone to come down from his apartment unit. So there I was, sitting on a bench and watching people go by when suddenly, a garbage man passed by me with his garbage bin in tow.

He walked up to the lift and pressed a button with his gloved hand. When the lift door opened, he walked in and pressed a button there. Came out, waited for that lift to go up and then he pressed the button again to summon a second lift. All within sight of me.

I was horrified. We know how clean garbage bins are, right? They are hardly the cleanest of containers. In fact, they are dirtier than dirty. Wearing gloves will make no difference to cleanliness and hygiene if they are also used to touch garbage and everything else. The same gloves being used to press on the lift buttons simply transfers the contamination from garbage bin to the lifts!

Really! This was something that I saw this with my eyes. Imagine those who are not aware of the invisible dirt that has been transferred from the lift buttons to their own hands. All the germs, viruses and bacteria. Users blissfully pressing the lift buttons with their fingers and then touching their faces, their food and everything else! That's how clean lift buttons are.

And that is why for several years now, I've been telling my family that public amenities are not the cleanest things in the world. You just can't see the dirt that's been transferred from one spot to another. But assuredly, the contamination is all around us.

So what are we going to do on a personal level? Granted that we can't change society's habits, we can only change the way we do things ourselves, especially at this time when the Wuhan coronavirus is spreading around the world. So what we do when we are at the lifts? Easy, at the very least, don't press the buttons with your fingers. Use your knuckle instead. I would prefer to have unseen germs on my knuckle than have the germs at the tip of my fingers. And secondly, disinfect your hands at the earliest opportunity. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water, especially after you exit from the lift. That's the easiest way to reduce the germs, if not ridding them totally.

By the way, I hear that in our southern neighbour which has been harder hit by the coronavirus than Malaysia, even condoms have been flying off the shelves at an unprecedented rate. Whatever for? So that people can use a condom-wearing finger to press on the lift buttons? Don't laugh. This may actually be an effective way to lessen contamination.

UPDATE (22 Mar 2020): One of the best advices I've heard in the past weeks since writing this story came from the TODAY newspaper in Singapore. The newspaper recommends using a capped ball-point pen with its ink refill removed. "Carry around a ballpoint pen with a cap," the newspaper said, "Remove the ink refill so you don't leave pen marks on the lift button. Use the inkless tip to press lift buttons and other things such as traffic light buttons. Recap when done."

UPDATE (22 Mar 2020): Initially, Singapore was harder hit than Malaysia but not now. Malaysia has overtaken Singapore in terms of the number of infections and deaths.