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- Oct 13, 2010
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I just think that’s a much less likely way to get infected from contaminated surfaces compared to person to person contact as several medical/health folks have indicated. That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore surface contamination. I’m just not going to freak out about every possible thing I could touch, and wash my hands often when I am in public areas or have just departed public areas. I’m going to focus more on staying away from other people.
I'm going to focus more on the surface contamination, because I think that's where a lot of the contamination happens. My reasoning includes two natural experiments: Diamond Princess and airline flight attendants.
The fact that people were stuck in their cabins on the DP, but the virus swept through quite completely suggests that surfaces (food plates, trays, and possibly the food itself) was the vector. True, the delivery person might have coughed inside peoples' cabins, but probably not enough to allow the kind of spread we saw.
The virus is transmitted long distances on aircraft, staffed by flight attendants that don't wear masks and are listening to people talking at higher than average volume (talking above the ambient noise). All of those interactions with infected people have resulted in very few (that I have heard of) flight attendant cases.