Thread by @Ayjchan

What are the chances of someone catching COVID from international mail?

I'd say it's near impossible unless they were aerosolizing + inhaling their letters.

"contact with a contaminated surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection"
cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…

If scientists are too fixated on mythical SARS-CoV-2 transmission via international mail, they might miss the actual community transmission of the virus.

This is unless there is somehow a new trend where people are mailing sputum to each other internationally.

There's also no study outside of China, afaik, that cites any evidence of cold chain transmission of Covid #PopsicleOrigins

The one non-China preprint was conveniently withdrawn in March 2021 right after being cited by the China-WHO joint study. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

If your local scientists/investigators are telling you that sporadic covid cases in your city are from cold chain or international mail, you might be rightly concerned that they're covering up or not doing due diligence to find the real source of infection threatening the city.

Even if you invaded a covid patient's house and found it stacked from floor to ceiling with Maine lobster, Faroe Salmon and letters from Hogwarts, it is still thousands of times more likely that they caught the virus the regular way through the air/close contact with an infected.

Selling the narrative to your people (and youth) that a sporadic Covid case came from frozen food / international mail, as opposed to the highly plausible transmission of the virus via millions of travelers (by land, sea, air) might compromise their critical thinking abilities.

These kinds of misinformation can stick in the minds of children and hurt their ability to think logically in the future. Imagine an entire generation of children being raised to think that they can catch SARS from frozen seafood or international mail.

Flight attendants broke quarantine in Hong Kong, tested + for Omicron after being in community.

Totally plausible + expected way for SARS-CoV-2 to breach zero covid. Probably other travelers breaching restrictions.

No need to blame sporadic cases on ✉️
cnn.com/2022/01/18/bus…

Some have said the 1/10,000 risk of fomite transmission cited by the US CDC was too high, so I went to check their citations.

1st paper
"Infection risks ranged from 2 in 10,000,000 to 4 in 10,000"
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

"We did not attempt to culture live virus from any of our surface samples and therefore cannot determine the viability or infectivity of the SARS-CoV-2 detected in our samples."

Then how did you estimate the infection risks?

2nd paper also did not check whether their surfaces were actually contaminated by live virus.
ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-…

Last paper does check for infectious virus after exposure to humidity/heat, and rightly states "the infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 is currently unknown and thus it is difficult to evaluate the risk of infection following contact with a contaminated fomite."
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mS…

None of these 3 citations in the US CDC website can really tell us what the risk of catching COVID from a contaminated surface is because there is no evidence pointing to fomite transmission.

But I would say it's accurate that it is certainly "LESS THAN a 1 in 10,000 chance".

Still it would be more accurate if the US CDC and other health organizations would inform the public that they have zero evidence of anyone having caught Covid from a contaminated surface.

We are 2 years into the pandemic. How is it that scientists/public health organizations are still having such a hard time communicating to the public how to effectively protect themselves against Covid transmission?

If people are misinformed and spend their efforts disinfecting their frozen seafood or international mail, as opposed to protecting themselves against actual sources of the virus, this is a major public health failure.