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Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Can you provide the back up for these claims? It is very common belief that all viruses are frequently spread by touching contaminated surfaces. I am not disagreeing that viruses are also spread by inhaling droplets but it is very presumptuous to assume that touching contaminated surfaces is not a major way of spreading virus.
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That may be a common belief but it's wrong and probably based largely on flu virus which IS spread commonly by what's called "fomites" (that is, surfaces).
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The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
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https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2...nsmission.html
Let me repeat that: ". . . it MAY BE POSSIBLE that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has virus on it . . . but THIS ISN'T THOUGHT TO BE THE MAIN WAY THE VIRUS SPREADS . . . ."
Does that sound to you like they are saying touching contaminated surfaces is a MAJOR WAY the virus spreads? It doesn't to me--sounds like they are saying that's at most a MINOR phenomenon.
The point here is that rather than obsessing about surface contacts with expensive cleaning (and that developing world spraying of disinfectants on pavement), you'd be much better advised to obsess about what you are breathing. The bad news here is that we are finding out that the virus that people expel can linger in the air for hours so "social distancing" is also a fraud. If you stand 6 ft from someone and then everybody circulates so that you are where another person was a half hour ago, you can be breathing their exhaled virus.
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Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1
Letters
TO THE EDITOR:
A novel human coronavirus that is now named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (formerly called HCoV-19) emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and is now causing a pandemic.1 We analyzed the aerosol and surface stability of SARS-CoV-2 and compared it with SARS-CoV-1, the most closely related human coronavirus . . . .
We found that the stability of SARS-CoV-2 was similar to that of SARS-CoV-1 under the experimental circumstances tested. This indicates that differences in the epidemiologic characteristics of these viruses probably arise from other factors, including high viral loads in the upper respiratory tract and the potential for persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 to shed and transmit the virus while asymptomatic. Our results indicate that aerosol and fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is plausible, since the virus can remain viable and infectious in aerosols for hours and on surfaces up to days (depending on the inoculum shed). These findings echo those with SARS-CoV-1, in which these forms of transmission were associated with nosocomial spread and super-spreading events,5 and they provide information for pandemic mitigation efforts.
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https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
In other words, this bit of research does confirm the idea that virus may be present on surfaces though it doesn't address the question of how often or to what degree that virus is transferred in infectious quantities to the human respiratory tract. But what it also says is that human exhalations potentially containing viruses don't immediately settle out onto surfaces but linger in air for hours and so as you pass through a room or subway car you are passing through clouds of what people--especially any unmasked people--exhaled even hours ago.