{"id":18302,"date":"2021-04-09T10:28:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T17:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=18302"},"modified":"2021-04-09T10:28:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T17:28:50","slug":"cdc-you-can-stop-with-the-deep-cleaning-and-hygiene-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/09\/cdc-you-can-stop-with-the-deep-cleaning-and-hygiene-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"CDC: YOU CAN STOP WITH THE \u2018DEEP CLEANING\u2019 AND HYGIENE THEATER"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

8 APRIL 2021\/SF NEWS<\/a>\/JAY BARMANN<\/a> (SFist.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Centers for Disease Control confirmed today what epidemiologists have been saying for at least eight months, which is you don\u2019t need to keep disinfecting surfaces and decontaminating your groceries because the coronavirus doesn\u2019t spread by surface contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that it is never possible for a person to get COVID-19 from a contaminated surface, but experts have said there has not yet been a confirmed case of this, and most agree that the chances of such an infection are very, very slim. Hand-washing is still encouraged, sure \u2014 and other diseases spread this way so why not? But, as of Thursday, the CDC may finally be putting an end to the need for the sort of hygiene theater that many, many businesses are still performing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople can be [infected] with the virus that causes Covid-19 through contact with contaminated surfaces and objects,\u201d said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during a White House briefing earlier this week. \u201cHowever, evidence has demonstrated that the risk by this route of infection of transmission is actually low.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agency also updated its official cleaning protocols<\/a> for workplaces and schools, which still discus surface contamination as a possible hazard. But they now say that full disinfection of a space \u2014 beyond standard daily cleaning \u2014 isn\u2019t necessary unless COVID infection is high in a particular area, there is a \u201clow number of people wearing masks,\u201d or if an infected person has been in a space in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the New York Times reports<\/a>, multiple experts in the field praised the updates, but they go further to say things in more absolute terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface,\u201d says Linsey Marr, an airborne virus expert at Virginia Tech. She adds that the appearance of surfaces being cleaned simply \u201cmakes people feel safer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Emanuel Goldman, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, says, \u201cThis is a virus you get by breathing. It\u2019s not a virus you get by touching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in the pandemic, there was widespread misinformation about the primary sources of infection \u2014 with health officials and experts initially insisting that the virus was only spread through large respiratory droplets. Here in the Bay Area, that led to one county health officer in Solano County insisting that offices could stay open<\/a> as long people had their own cubicles. Solano County initially did not follow the rest of the region in enacting a stay-at-home order, but within about a week they did, and then Health Officer Dr. Bela Matyas jumped the gun on reopening indoor restaurants<\/a> in May as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a month or two, it became clear that face masks were necessary to reduce transmission risk, and that outbreaks were occurring in indoor spaces regardless of how well people washed or sanitized their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But over a year since pandemic lockdowns began in the U.S., people are still obsessed with Clorox wipes and the Chase Center is still talking about spraying down seats with electrostatic disinfecting sprayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Walensky said in her Monday briefing, \u201cIn most cases, fogging, fumigation and wide-area or electrostatic spraying is not recommended as a primary method of disinfection and has several safety risks to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Joseph Allen, a building safety expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, expressed relief at the CDC\u2019s new stance, and tells the Times, \u201cThis should be the end of deep cleaning,\u201d and \u201cThis frees up a lot of organizations to spend that money better\u201d that they were spending on all this \u201chygiene theater.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 APRIL 2021\/SF NEWS\/JAY BARMANN (SFist.com) The Centers for Disease Control confirmed today what epidemiologists have been saying for at least eight months, which is you don\u2019t need to keep disinfecting surfaces and decontaminating your groceries because the coronavirus doesn\u2019t spread by surface contact. This is not to say that it… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18303,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302\/revisions\/18303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}