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If COVID originated from a lab in China, do you think they should be penalized for it?
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Turns out it was hygiene theater for a while. In the early days, we just didn't know how it was transmitted, so the CDC recommended hand-washing and surface sanitizing out of an abundance of caution. I worked at a grocery store through the pandemic, where both of the owners were very community-oriented, and one was a low-key germophobe. They took the CDC recommendations seriously, and we all had to wear disposable gloves, as well as follow all sorts of protocols to sanitize surfaces.
Later on in the course of the pandemic, scientists started to question whether COVID-19 could spread on surfaces, because the evidence wasn't showing up. In fact, there was a study done back in the 1980's here at the University of Wisconsin in which volunteers who were sick with respiratory viruses (incl. coronaviruses) would read newspapers, play cards, play board games, etc. in a room, and then the researchers would bring healthy volunteers into the same room to do the same. Zero healthy volunteers got sick, so the researchers had the ill volunteers cough and sneeze directly on the shared objects before handing over the room. Again, zero healthy volunteers got sick. They were unable to demonstrate any surface-contact transmission.
This news came out, but the CDC was slow to update its recommendations. There was a period during which I was highly annoyed at having to wear the gloves, and spray surfaces with the extremely-expensive electrospray gun, when it was already scientific consensus (minus the CDC) that COVID-19 didn't spread through surface contact. Eventually, they did update their recommendations, and we were able to stop with the rigamarole. Sales of hand sanitizer and wipes dropped off (but still were high, because the new information wasn't universally known). If I understand it correctly (eh...), the virus which causes COVID-19 is relatively delicate, and its structure is supported by the water droplets which spread it. Once the droplets hit a surface, the protein structure of the virion collapses, and it's no longer capable of infecting a cell.
Anyway, yeah, it was an abundance of caution, which turned into hygiene theater.