My story starts when Covid-19 hit the world at the beginning of 2020. It was overwhelming, following the news and keeping up with following the recommendations of public health officials to prevent the spread of the illness in the ongoing pandemic. I took the many safety measures as advised; I washed my hands frequently,

Avoided touching my face, ended up counting how many times I touched my face and put on hand disinfectant all over my hands as well as the things that I used daily. I stressed increasingly over how many things I had touched throughout the day just going from home to the grocery store; hallway door, elevator button, hallway door number two, outer door, ATM buttons, shopping cart handle, card reader at the store and then the hallway-elevator shuffle all over. An unhelpful search online showed me a study that said that 35% of surfaces on vending machine and crosswalk buttons had high enough levels of contamination to spread illnesses, ATMs had 41% and mailboxes had 61%. So, out come the disinfectant wipes and the awkward elbow button-mashing dance in doubled force.

My hands started to become dry from frequent contact with hand disinfectant and the ordeal of wiping down all the things I touched. I thought to myself: ”How can I solve this problem? There must be a better way to deal with avoiding touching things without looking completely mad”, so I took a look all over the internet. The advice that surfaced on the internet was to use a pen, your elbow or a disposable tissue to touch buttons and other high-risk contaminated surfaces.

The prospect of continuing to do the elbow button-mash boogie while adding a pen and tissue in there for extra flare didn’t feel like the most exciting concept. So I fired up my 3D printer and started to design a tool to address this daily annoyance with the ambition to make life easier and make a product that was not meant to be disposed of after use. The solution became a hook prototype worthy of the gadgets in Batman’s tool-belt. The prototype could be used in all physical contact with door-handles. ATM buttons and the now forever fear inciting traffic light buttons. I tested the prototype continuously in all daily routines. After a lot of feedback by testing the prototype and printing 16 different versions, the Corona Assassin was finally ready to be used by the public. Join in! www.kickstarter.com