I suspect there is at least as much "cultural inertia" at play as the costs and reliability aspect.
That may well be. "But we've always done it this way" is one of the most annoying things people say to me on a regular basis. (I often forget where the metaphorical box is that I'm typically presumed by other people to be thinking in.)
Will be interesting to see if, assuming things do get as bad as everyone seems to be making this to be, we see those types of operational/behavior changes propagating within societies.
Agreed. Tho, I plan on examining implementation of foot-operated doors in my home if it turns out to be reasonable, just for the convenience if nothing else. Just because nobody else is doing it right now hasn't ever stopped me from making improvements on my own if I can!
Out of curiosity, how does the jacket pocket thing work in the summer?
As long as the screen is locked, it doesn't even matter if you press the keys while you're smearing, but I don't usually go in that hard anyway. I just grab a little extra sanitizer for the keyboard and make sure to hit the tops of the keycaps at least. ;) My office has a half-gallon pump bottle of the stuff, so I just give the pump an extra centimeter of travel when I want to do the keyboard (and mouse, BTW). It doesn't have to be often; I usually just wash my hands anyway. And I'm under no illusions that smearing some hand sanitizer on a keyboard is a perfect cleaning job, but it's surely better than nothing. :)
I wipe down my keyboard with hand sanitizer pretty frequently (a couple times a day) just because it's a horizontal surface that could catch anything that happens to be floating through the air. It's not a big deal, especially if I'm using sanitizer anyway: just smear some on the keyboard from the hands before it all dries up.
That would be awesome, but more expensive and prone to failure than what we're using now. I expect this is the primary reason we are still mostly using purely mechanical systems. My "automate everything" is in conflict with my "simpler is usually better" in this case.
I almost made a comment about security (which would be not-very-good given our current technology), but then I realized a couple of things:
I haven't heard anybody talking about credit cards or wallets as potentially-contaminated surfaces. I wonder why that is? We often handle them with unwashed hands, and those pin pads are pretty frequently touched as well.
I'm certain they could be calibrated to require more force than a small dog or baby could apply to operate, or they could be locked by a positive stop mechanism beneath the pedal. Large dogs, some cats, and small children can operate many types of door opener anyway, so I expect we'd find ways around this issue just as we've done with what is now a standard doorknob.
Agreed; I use elbows or shoulders if possible. Some doors even have a kick plate that can essentially be stepped on!
Sudden thought: Why aren't all doors foot operated? A simple pedal latch would be far more hygenic and easier to operate e.g. with an armload of groceries or when wet than the knobs we have most places. I know I've seen doors with this feature (does a google on "foot pedal door opener"...) It's totally a thing! This should be common!
I always thought it was pretty funny when Lovecraft wrote about Un-namable on Indescribable Horrors for exactly this reason. Thanks for expanding on the thought!
Not an economist, but the naive answer is it would be like this anyway. Only people would be dying all over the place and there would be no safety net at all. The damage would be more on a permanent basis due to sporadic but widespread uncontrolled shutdowns. Unemployment would go up like mad and even more people would have no access to health care. Not that it would matter since the hospitals would all be stretched well beyond capacity. The virus would preferentially kill older folks (as it apparently does) without being checked by isolation measures. Their money would pass on to their heirs and the headlines would read "MILLENNIALS KILLED THE BABY BOOMERS".