The virus is like a hollow ball with a number of free-floating small proteins inside.
But instead of being made up of rubber or plastic, the virus is made up of greasy, fatty substance (imagine butter).
If you have ever had greasy hands, you know only water doesn’t wash the greasiness away.
And because the outer layer of a virus is also made up of greasy/fatty stuff, only water can’t wash the virus away.
Soaps contain 2-sided molecules that look like a pin – a round head on one side & a pointy-spike on the other.
The round-head side of soap gets attracted to water and the pointy-spike side to fat.
Now, imagine thousands of pointy-spikes piercing into the outer layer of the virus that is made up of fat (butter).
Each of these thousands of molecules pulls apart the fatty layer of the virus and, together, the soap molecules disintegrate the stuff inside the virus.
The stuff inside the virus is water-soluble and water easily dissolves it and washes it away.
To understand this, imagine what happens when you add oil to water – oil floats on top; but when you put a few drops of liquid soap in this mixture and shake it, oil dissolves in water.
Now, human hands are complex organs – they have big lines, fine lines, micro lines, creases at the root of the fingers, gaps between nails & finger, fine hair on the outside, etc.
And, viruses are tiny objects (1/5th size of what a human eye can see) and they can stick to any of the intricate locations on the hands.
The more time the soap gets, the more its molecules can work on pulling apart the fatty-outer layer of various viruses residing on different parts of our hands.
Scientific observations have confirmed that a 20-second exposure to soap consistently removes all the viruses from the hands (anything less than 20 seconds is not as effective).
Sanitizers are also effective (based on the same principle of attacking fat), but they need to have a minimum of 60% alcohol (so vodka & beer, etc. are not useful).
Also, for sanitizers to be effective, they must be used on clean (not sweaty or dirty) hands; that’s why scientists recommend soaps over sanitizers.
