The incessant use of wipes and sanitizers is basically "Hygiene Theatre" [1].
> In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to clarify that while COVID-19 spreads easily among speakers and sneezers in close encounters, touching a surface “isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” Other scientists have reached a more forceful conclusion. “Surface transmission of COVID-19 is not justified at all by the science,” Emanuel Goldman, a microbiology professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told me.
A year ago it was generally believed that fomites passed by contact was or could be a significant path for spread of the covid-19 virus. This turns out not to be the case - but that hasn't stopped a huge number of organizations from demanding high levels of surface cleansing.
If you're just unusually fastidious, I guess that's your right. But when you're claiming (or at least implying) that everyone must conform to those same levels to avoid covid-19 transmission - which is what we're still seeing quite a bit of - then that's hygiene theater.
The article isn't about that, it's about focusing on surface cleaning and offering a false sense of security, while taking resources and time from other activities as the previous studies haven't been forward in regards to the dose of pathogen used in said studies; there is no evidence showing an increase of virus transmission through surface touching in the real world.
I've said this from the very beginning of the pandemic that it makes no sense at all focusing on surfaces and raiding stores for hand sanitizer. Even the CDC themselves says this:
"On the other hand, transmission of novel coronavirus to persons from surfaces contaminated with the virus has not been documented."
> Covid does not spread in any meaningful way via surfaces. All of the cleaning and disinfecting nonsense that is still going on is pure theatre.
You may be correct about covid, but cleaning surfaces helps to prevent other illnesses from spreading anyway. In a situation where hospitals are impacted there's a strong argument that such behavior and precautions leads to better healthcare outcomes.
Can we please drop this from COVID discussions? COVID isn’t spread by touch. That was apparent early on, but a lot of energy and resources were still diverted from “things that work” to a cleaning fetish.
SARS-CoV-2 needs that outer shell to be able to infect you.
Lab tests have found that even when hand sanitizer is diluted well below recommended levels of concentration, it's still very effective at inactivating SARS-CoV-2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431409/
The takeaway of that article is that cleaning surfaces to reduce the likelihood of contact transmission (which is close to 0), may detract from practices that reduce the likelihood of airborne transmission (which is close to 1.0 if you're near an infected person).
That's a perfectly sensible approach if you're in charge of a school or a retail business. There's a cost vs benefit and lost opportunity calculation.
In our personal lives, taking 1-3 minutes to wipe down all groceries isn't going to cause you to suddenly forget wearing a mask or staying home as much as possible, unless you have extremely bad executive functioning.
I'm a huge advocate for washing with soap and water, but this gave me pause:
> washing your hands with soap and water is one of the most effective ways people can keep from getting sick, and from passing the [COVID-19] virus to others
So not to doubt handwashing, but I thought we overwhelmingly determined that COVID-19 doesn't thrive on surfaces (very long) and its primary transmission vector is through the air, from respiratory system to respiratory system, clinging to small moisture particles as it goes.
Also... this article is a bit of a stub. Diagrams would be nice. More detail would be nice, I'd expect better from a company like Pfizer, who I do trust to make vaccines, but this marketing content is low-effort.
> From July 2020, "Yes, but it is only very rarely transmitted that way."
It's like 99% something you touch. Hand sanitizer is more important compared to a mask. I'm curious if you knew that? You might not because it was considered 'misinformation' and censored. Gotta keep wearing those masks!
Protip: Your nearby mall probably has a smelly soap store.
It's odd that they're still insisting on cleaning surfaces, although it's been long concluded by e.g. the CDC (is it a settled science?) that infections from surfaces are very unlikely. But I guess if they're going for zero covid, then any little chance need to be reduced.
Given that many people didn't bother washing their hands after using the toilet, didn't wash their fruits and vegetables and considering how e.g. restaurant tables are "cleaned", such overzealous cleaning was long overdue. Once the Coronavirus danger's over we'll be back to being our filthy old selves, if such articles don't already accelerate the transition :-)
That being said, I looked at the resources [#] which the CDC brief is using to make its 1 in 10000 claim and the evidence is pretty thin. One source which claimed a similar number (less than 5 in 10000) swabbed "high-touch surfaces" between March and June 2020 in Massachusets and then correlated that to community infections.
Another source was looking at how to reduce risk to 1 in 1.000.000 by using biocidals.
Finally, the Pitol and Julian study uses a model to estimate the risk. This is probably the source of the stat - "The overwhelming majority of interactions with fomites modeled (sic) were associated with risks less than 10^–4". Here are some details:
* the probability of infection was estimated based on a model built on SARS and MHV-1 infections in mice.
* the SARS-CoV-2 concentration on surfaces was taken from a study in Brazil and the already mentioned Massachusets study.
* "Contamination of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces in public spaces (e.g., traffic light buttons, train buttons) was modeled as a function of disease prevalence in the community and frequency of contact with the surface"
I really wish that the people writing these articles would make an effort, look at the studies and highlight the main assertions and conditions of the experiments instead of being so smug. Based on what I've ready myself, the 1 on 10.000 number is dubious.
Arrington's argument is not "absurdly stupid", and even if he sounds a bit obsessive on this issue, he has the advantage of being right. Meanwhile, you're Not Even Wrong -- there are many types of bacteria and viruses that are spread by skin contact.
Any virologist or microbiologist will tell you that skin contact is a great way to spread viruses and bacteria. In fact, it's pretty widely assumed that aerosol transmission is mediated via skin contact as well: when you sneeze or cough, the droplets fall to surfaces quickly. Someone else then touches those surfaces, touches their mouth, nose or eyes, and voila -- cold transmission. The same thing happens much more directly via handshakes.
There's a reason that public health people insist that you need to wash your hands after going to the bathroom. Do you sincerely believe that they'd be so worried about it, if there were "relatively few" infections that could be spread by skin contact?
Finally, it really bugs me that your comment is +11, when you spend most of your time insulting Arrington for making a (relatively well-informed) argument, and only a very small amount of time making your own (unproven and incorrect) assertions. If you're going to insult someone for making an argument, at least come to the table armed with something more than the opposite opinion.
Don't forget the "viable on surfaces up to days" part.
Someone coughs on a doorknob, hours later, you touch the doorknob, virus goes on your hand, you touch your face, you get infected.
Even if you don't touch your face, your dirty hands spread the virus everywhere, including on food and to other people.
And even if touch isn't the main vector, it is better than nothing. Remember that the goal is to make the rate of transmissions less than 1, so if washing hands help us go down from 1.1 to 0.9, even if isn't that much of a difference, it is all we need to beat the virus.
I think the proposal is that sanitizer induces more risk than it mitigates, since it's now unlikely that hand sanitation is related to covid transmission.
Nonetheless, other things are transmitted by unclean hands, which is almost certainly a greater risk than the benzene.
I agree there is a lot of evidence that washing hands reduces the spread of viruses. However I haven’t read anything that measures the percentage of transmission of corona viruses via contact or fomites.
We obviously should wash hands regularly and well. Even a 5% reduction for a simple action is really worthwhile (and hand washing is clearly critical in a healthcare setting).
My main beef is that in my country I think there has been too much attention paid to hand washing and fomites, and not enough information given on enclosed spaces or mask usage. The turnaround on mask usage is a classic example of seemingly obvious misinformation. Another classic is the news clips of government employees in Asian countries spraying roads and buildings - powerful images that misdirect.
That’s less of an issue than failing to properly describe COVID as airborne and spreading misinformation about the effectiveness of handwashing on COVID transmission
> In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to clarify that while COVID-19 spreads easily among speakers and sneezers in close encounters, touching a surface “isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” Other scientists have reached a more forceful conclusion. “Surface transmission of COVID-19 is not justified at all by the science,” Emanuel Goldman, a microbiology professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told me.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/scourge-hy...
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