Coronavirus Invention Goes Horribly Wrong: Australian Astrophysicist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose
An Australian astrophysicist was brought to the hospital for a COVID-19-related incident after getting four magnets stuck up his nose.
Dr. Daniel Reardon, an astrophysicist and research fellow at a Melbourne University, was working on an invention that will help stop people from touching their face in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The 27-year-old doctor, together with his partner, were developing a necklace that will sound an alarm when someone touches their face when the incident happened.
“I have some electronic equipment but really no experience or expertise in building circuits or things,” he told The Guardian.
Dr. Reardon says out of boredom, he started playing with the magnets. He first clipped it to his ears and then to his nostrils.
“I was still a bit bored, playing with the magnets. It’s the same logic as clipping pegs to your ears – I clipped them to my earlobes and then clipped them to my nostril and things went downhill pretty quickly when I clipped the magnets to my other nostril.”
He placed two magnets inside both his nostrils and two on the outside. As he tried to remove them, the two inside stuck together. He tried to remove them but couldn’t get past the “ridge at the bottom of my nose.”
He tried to use more magnets to resolve his predicament, but “they clipped on to each other and I lost my grip. And those two magnets ended up in my left nostril while the other one was in my right. At this point I ran out of magnets.”
“Every time I brought the pliers close to my nose, my entire nose would shift towards the pliers and then the pliers would stick to the magnet,” the doctor shared.
At the hospital, doctors who found the incident funny, used anaesthetic spray and removed the magnets manually. Reardon says he won’t be performing any experiments after his invention gone wrong.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC), SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 can be transmitted by touching contaminated surface. This is why it is highly suggested that people avoid touching their eyes or mouth with their hands.
