That study isn't saying anything contrary to what the CDC is saying. Or am I the parent that you're agreeing with, and you meant "regardless of whatever the CDC is saying?"
Maybe I misinterpreted what you meant. Your quote from the CDC said that the virus has poor survivability on surfaces, but the study I linked concluded it can survive for 2-3 days.
These are not mutually exclusive statements. It probably can survive for weeks in rare cases, but if it doesn't do that often it doesn't matter.
Any method of transmission that infects fewer than one additional person on average are effectively negligible on the overall exponential curve.
So yes, it is likely possible that symptomatic people can infect others, and it is likely possible that a contaminated doorknob can infect people for a week, but if these things happen rarely enough, it doesn't matter. The virus will die out if other routes of infection (e.g. the more typical person to person transmission) can also be made rare enough.
The relevant part of the CDC quote was "because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks" and the study preprint you linked showed that in the worst case (polypropylene surfaces) no live virus at all was detected after 72 hours while on cardboard it was more like a third of that time (with large error bars).
willj|6 years ago
creato|6 years ago
Any method of transmission that infects fewer than one additional person on average are effectively negligible on the overall exponential curve.
So yes, it is likely possible that symptomatic people can infect others, and it is likely possible that a contaminated doorknob can infect people for a week, but if these things happen rarely enough, it doesn't matter. The virus will die out if other routes of infection (e.g. the more typical person to person transmission) can also be made rare enough.
brianpgordon|6 years ago