- I've always thought if we could somehow just see the germs around us, everyone will be a lot more careful and we'd get sick way less. Unfortunately, that's still not possible. So I did the next best thing by running a daylong experiment in this third-grade classroom. I found this powder called Glo Germ. And just like real germs,
when it's on your hands, you can't see it. But unlike real germs, if you turn a black light
on, it becomes visible. But it transfers to things you've touched, so it provides a really good way to visualize exactly how germs spread. So before the kids arrived, as a control, I went around and noted
any preexisting spots in the room that fluoresced
under the black light. And then it was go time. The kids, of course, had
no idea what we were doing and that the teacher had
been secretly infected with the glowing powder. So she randomly shook
the hands of three kids but didn't touch any of the rest. And so with that, they just
went about their normal day. (lighthearted music) At break, I did choose one random student, and he agreed to letting
me put some of the powder on his hands too. And then two hours later at lunchtime, I checked the results. Remember, everything you see here started with just the teacher and one student having
a little of that powder on their hands. And because my flashlight
can only illuminate one spot at a time, I used Photoshop to better
visualize our observations of where germs were left behind, including on the other kids. Uh-oh!
(children exclaiming) We're pretty hot over here! Oh, right here. And they were actually pretty diligent about washing their hands. This was the desk of the
kid that was infected. And what's crazy is that germs could live on a hard surface like
this for up to nine days. And so you can see how important it is to disinfect the things a
sick person regularly touches. For example, this was
the phone of the teacher in the experiment. Even if you wash your hands really often, if you immediately pull out your phone, a lot of those germs just
go right back on your hands. Think about when the last time was that you cleaned your phone. My friend Joanna at "The
Wall Street Journal" recently demonstrated
you can clean your phone with an antibacterial wipe
every day for at least a year and it doesn't affect the
oleophobic coating at all. And this hopefully gives
you a better mental model of why it's really
important to wash your hands or use hand sanitizer after being at places like this or this or this or this. Cleaning commonly touched
surfaces is important because even if a virus is spread through airborne transmission, those tiny droplets don't
stay in the air for long. Then they land on surfaces, waiting to be touched by our hands. Which raises an important point. The ultimate defense
against catching a virus is just don't touch your face. Your eyes, nose, and mouth
are like the single weak spot on the Death Star when
it comes to viruses. That's the only way they
can get in to infect you. But as you can see here, not touching your face
is easier said than done. (bell dinging) And before you think, "Yeah, well, that's just kids for you," this was what the
teacher's face looked like at the end of the day. And she said she tried extra hard to remember not to touch her face. I found this result fascinating, so I put the powder on my
own hands for a few hours. And I resisted the urge to
touch my face so many times that I fully expected I was going to have a perfectly clean face
and the moral high ground. And then this is what I saw. (Mark laughs) What the heck? I genuinely have no idea when any of this came on. (tape rewinding) Until I reviewed the footage. Oh, well, there you go. On average, we touch our
face 16 times an hour, which is why washing
hands is so important. It's impossible to catch a virus directly through your hands. It's as futile as
shooting the outer surface of the Death Star. The problem is, we use our
hands to help the virus out by constantly giving it a ride to our figurative Death
Star exhaust ports. (guns shooting) (explosion booms) Because of this, I ran another experiment with
some of the kids after lunch. First, I had them put
some lotion on their hands that also glows under a black light. But then I told them I made a mistake and used the wrong lotion. Could you guys just go
wash your hands real quick? And do a good washing, right? - 20 seconds.
- Yeah. Do the right washing, okay? I just tricked you guys again, because what I really wanted
to do is test how good you are at washing your hands. So guess what I'm gonna do now? - [Children] What? - Show me your hands. But before I show you how
effective they actually were at washing their hands, here's what you should
quickly know about viruses. They're super tiny, but also the most abundant
biological entity on the planet. In fact, there's over 10 million viruses in any single drop of sea water. And a lot of types of
viruses are beneficial to the planet's ecosystem, and only an insanely tiny
percentage affect humans at all. And they're really simple. Viruses are basically a
shell with some DNA inside, and they just wanna spread and duplicate. That's their only goal. But they're so simple that
they need a host to do that. So they reproduce by
infecting their host cells and then trick them to become factories that just make more exact
copies of the virus. When you get sick and then cough or sneeze or wipe your nose and then touch a surface, you're putting copies of this
virus out to find other hosts and just repeat the process. And so here's what the
kids' hands look like after washing their hands. Uh-oh, look at the backs.
(children laughing) Let me see your fingernails! Oh, look at all those germs! Oh, your thumb! - Oh, my hand-
- Oh, look at your wrist! Look at your wrist! We all sort of have a habitual
way of washing our hands. So once again, I tried this myself using
the typical quick way I do it in my muscle memory. Granted, that's better than nothing, but you could see the difference compared to when I was deliberate
and took 20 seconds, which is why it helps to do things like sing the "Happy Birthday" song twice, or you could do what I do and follow Brandon Flowers' example. ♪ Jealousy, turning saints in ♪ ♪ Eager eyes ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm Mr. Brightside ♪ - And then for a final experiment, I wanted to show how dumb handshaking is. So I infected the first
kid with the powder and then had them do a
handshake chain down the line. The fifth person here still
had significant traces on their hand, so I put him at the first and lined four more kids up after him, and three of their hands glowed. So we got trace germs
from the original person all the way down eight handshakes later. So if you ever meet me in real life, please don't be offended if in lieu of a handshake
I offer you a fist bump and a selfie.
(camera shutter clicks) In conclusion, what does this all mean with regards to the coronavirus COVID-19? You should be concerned
and take this seriously, but regardless of what you
see in the coming weeks, there's absolutely no need to panic. As I'm sure you've heard a bunch by now, our goal is to flatten the curve so that reported cases stay
just under the capacity of the healthcare system, and social distancing is the best knob that we can turn to affect that. The reason this helps should
hopefully make more sense after watching this video, especially for those who have
been doubting the science and feeling like this
is an extreme reaction. And my take here is I'm
a practical optimist. The upside is while this virus is bad, it could be way worse. And this gives us a chance
as a global community to get some systems and methods in place to handle something
potentially even more drastic in the future. Also, maybe it'll lead to
changing some social norms, like replacing handshakes with fist bumps or when people are really sick thinking it's okay to
mingle about and go to work. Globally, the normal flu kills anywhere from a quarter to a half
a million people a year due in large part to people not practicing
good germ hygiene. So if this experience makes
people more socially aware of the right precautions
to take when they get sick, that will save countless
lives for years to come long after this coronavirus is old news. And make no mistake, this is gonna be rough
for some more than others, but history has shown that us
humans are pretty resilient. These types of things can
bring out the worst in us, but they can also bring out the best, most wholesome parts of us, like these Italians practicing
their social distancing with an impromptu balcony concert. (people singing in foreign language) How we feel about the
situation is largely dependent on just which part we choose to focus on. For me, that means being grateful to the heroes in our healthcare system, or the school lunch ladies
still providing free lunch for kids who depend on them, or the scientists all over the world who are working tirelessly
seven days a week to create better testing
methods in a vaccine. This is gonna be a bumpy ride for us, but the economy will
eventually bounce back, as it always does, and we'll be better off
as a global community for having gone through this. Again, take this seriously, but there's absolutely no need to panic. We totally got this. (stream burbling) (upbeat music) (Mark screams) (snowballs thudding)
(kids screaming)
