Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time

“Masks, social distancing, and moving activities outdoors. That’s it. That’s how we protect ourselves.”

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. He also emphasized the primacy of airborne person-to-person transmission.

Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time

People are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security.

The Atlantic
Derek Thompson