As China grapples with its biggest-ever spike of covid cases, the government's decision to keep pushing the narrative that surfaces pose a significant infection risk means time and money are being poured into the wrong things during a crisis, scientists say. Measures to stop airborne transmission are more effective.
The government's response to the health crisis is part of a larger state-controlled narrative that is designed to legitimize the government. It plays into China's favored narrative that it could have been imported through frozen food.
The scientific debate about how much of a contribution surfaces make to the spread of coviden is over. The University of Michigan published a study in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology that estimated the chance of catching covid from a contaminated surface to be 1 in 100,000.
The World Health Organization has decided that the risk is too low to warrant active measures. Most countries outside of China have stopped encouraging people to wash their hands as a way to avoid covid. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance in May 2020 to reflect the fact that it is mostly unnecessary.
The majority of people agree that aerosols and droplets are more likely to transmit the virus than surfaces. A Michigan study found that airborne transmission is 1,000 times more likely than surface transmission.
People only have the bandwidth to do so many protective health behaviors. It would be ideal for them to focus on the things that are going to have the biggest impact on reducing their risks.
The media and government in China often point to research to justify the fear of surface transmission. Researchers in Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia have found that covid viruses can live for days or weeks on a variety of surfaces.
The lab results don't reflect real life, says Ana K. Pitol, a researcher at theLiverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK.
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