No Hands

AUCKLAND, Today: Is the handshake dead? Here’s a Business Section story from this morning’s Herald: “Forged in antiquity, the preferred office greeting of the corporate era has survived the peace-sign-as-hello 1960s; the deal-clinching high-five 1990s; and the bro hug of the past decade (a manly-man micro-Heimlich ascending all the way from the playing fields to the Obama White House).

“It’s one of the major ways you can transmit a respiratory-borne illness.”

“But will it survive the coronavirus? The short-term prospects do not look good.

“We’ve got to break that custom,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease specialist, said of the original glad-hand in April, “because as a matter of fact that is really one of the major ways you can transmit a respiratory-borne illness.”

• Read the full story here (you may need a Herald Premium sub to access it)