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That was a very interesting article, and it makes me feel much better about eating out...at least take out, but I'm not completely convinced that all of the cleaning is unnecessary. Also, I'm not sure that I agree with the article about closing restaurants, as long as the restaurants maintain separation, and the workers wear masks. Are there examples of such responsible restaurants spreading the virus? Although the virus may linger longer in the indoor air, I haven't read anything saying that it won't fall to the ground pretty quickly. I do agree that bars and other establishments that can't maintain a distance should be closed, however even bars could maintain distancing if they were willing. It's just that they are usually not willing to either put the policy in place or enforce any policy.Excellent article and I’ve never hear the term “hygiene theater” before
Sorry if it’s been posted already
It kind of reminds me a bit of the half-arsed, split second bag check that security does when you go to an amusement park
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As a covid-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage.
National restaurants such as Applebee’s are deputizing sanitation czars to oversee the constant scrubbing of window ledges, menus, and high chairs.
The gym chain Planet Fitness is boasting in ads that “there’s no surface we won’t sanitize, no machine we won’t scrub.” New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast the seats, walls, and poles with a variety of antiseptic weaponry, including electrostatic disinfectant sprays.
And in Wauchula, Florida, the local government gave one resident permission to spray the town with hydrogen peroxide as he saw fit. “I think every city in the damn United States needs to be doing it," he said..........
COVID-19 has reawakened America’s spirit of misdirected anxiety, inspiring businesses and families to obsess over risk-reduction rituals that make us feel safer but don’t actually do much to reduce risk—even as more dangerous activities are still allowed. This is hygiene theater.
Scientists still don’t have a perfect grip on COVID-19—they don’t know where exactly it came from, how exactly to treat it, or how long immunity lasts.
But in the past few months, scientists have converged on a theory of how this disease travels: via air. The disease typically spreads among people through large droplets expelled in sneezes and coughs, or through smaller aerosolized droplets, as from conversations, during which saliva spray can linger in the air........
Finally, and most important, hygiene theater builds a false sense of security, which can ironically lead to more infections. Many bars, indoor restaurants, and gyms, where patrons are huffing and puffing one another’s stale air, shouldn’t be open at all.
They should be shut down and bailed out by the government until the pandemic is under control. No amount of soap and bleach changes this calculation..........
Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time
People are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security.www.theatlantic.com
I also have to wonder how all of the cleaning is affecting the very rare transmission by fomites (surfaces)? Almost every country is doing lots of cleaning. Is there an example of a country that is not doing lots of cleaning and that has it under control? I know the Japanese building seems like a great example of rare fomite spread, but if the people in that building were doing lots of hand cleaning, and exercising precautions when pressing buttons, then they wouldn't have spread the virus via fomites. That example was a slam dunk for aerial spread, but it doesn't prove fomite spread is unlikely. You also can't justify stopping the cleaning based on biased studies. The studies that stacked the deck with unreasonable amounts of virus should be thrown out, and studies need to be done with reasonable amounts of virus load on fomites. If adjusted studies reveal that spread is rare, then I'll buy into the argument laid out by the Atlantic author that we are spending too many precious resources on cleaning. Until then, I think erring on the safe side with extra cleaning is prudent.
