If you haven’t been keeping up with coronavirus health advice, you’re a moron who’s probably crunching on dry pasta on your toilet roll throne. But you can barter some rolls away to get a gadget designed to stop you touching your face, and, in theory, lower the chance of getting infected.
The main piece of health advice at this stage in the outbreak is to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, which has been made all the more fun with these hand-washing song lyric posters. The main reason for this is to prevent the transfer of germs (or in this case the virus) from your grubby hands to your face, which is full of entry points for the virus to infiltrate; namely your eyes, nose, and mouth.
It hasn’t taken long for a company to ride the coattails of the virus for a profit: enter Immutouch – a smartband that vibrates every time you touch your face. The idea is that the alert will make you more cognisant of when you’re absentmindedly jabbing at your face holes so that you can stop. According to the website, people touch their faces around 23 times per hour, and clearly just hand-washing isn’t cutting it on the coronavirus front as the virus is spreading like wildfire.
The bands are priced at $US50 ($77) each with international shipping available, and according to one of the co-founder, are being sold “nearly at cost.” While you can buy a band for each wrist, popping just the one on your dominant hand should be enough to do the trick, but you actually have to pay attention when it vibrates and stop groping at yourself.
At the moment, the Immutouch is on back order because of the “overwhelming response” so if you order today, it won’t ship until April 6. It’s not clear where this “facility” is based, but all three founders are based in Seattle.
Co-founder Justin Ith explains:
“We’re not looking to make money on this. We are selling each unit nearly at cost, accounting for cost of materials, fabrication, assembly, and handling. We built Immutouch because we knew we could do it quickly, therefore we had the obligation to. We all live in Seattle and we see our communities reacting to this outbreak with deep concern and fear.
“My father has an autoimmune disease that requires him to take immunosuppressant medication. Being in his late 60’s with a compromised immune system, I’m trying my best to keep the communities around him and my family clean and safe.”
So now that we’ve dealt with that, the global toilet paper crisis is next on the agenda, but luckily, we have some suggestions for alternatives if your local shops’ shelves are still bare. [TechCrunch]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.