In early April 2020, Streeck and his team reported that they had "carried out an intensive search of the home of a family infected with the coronavirus but found no trace of it on surfaces."[18]
“We did not find any live virus on any surface. Not on cellphones, not on taps, not on doorknobs.”
Again, we know that this virus can be transmitted to surfaces by the infected. We know that it lives there for days and can be cultured. We do not know the fraction of real-world infections that take a fomite route vs. inhalation, and this study seems like evidence (albeit somewhat limited) that the number is very low.
No one should be interpreting this as "you can't get sick from touching things". We don't know that. Even given this one study, that's not an appropriately conservative way to understand the disease, given the known stakes.
Wash your hands.
I walked into a Costco that had a line that stretched across most of the store. For visual reference, imagine people lined up almost to the horizon of this image: https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/MTkFPPFWgy7UPQtsJo_e...
I immediately walked out, but if there were COVID positive people (this was in NYC by the way), I cannot imagine how others would not be infected
While “social distancing” is a logical thing to do because of what we generally know about respiratory viruses, there’s actually little/no evidence that “shopping” is a thing that we need to specifically be worried about. It’s likely that we hit the point of diminishing returns once we shut down large gatherings like concerts and restaurants.
In fact existing outbreaks COVID-19 are notably NOT solely due to "people being closer together over a longer period of time". Cases of completely untraced community infection are everywhere with this disease.
> “To actually 'get' the virus it would be necessary that someone coughs into their hand, immediately touches a door knob and then straight after that another person grasps the handle and goes on to touches their face.”
This is just simply not true. Fomite transmissibility was demonstrated back in January. I think what he's trying to say is that the chances of static infectious surfaces seem low and that close proximity to an infected person is still the most common vector. But the way you quoted it makes it sounds like you can't get it from a surface, and we know that's not true.
Seriously, wash your hands, folks. And beware of selectively quoted articles telling you not to take obvious mitigation steps.