Have those chairs been wiped down?
There are two wonderful women who now follow me around at the gym, absolutely attentive to my every move. As soon as I complete a set of bench presses or dips and step away, they instantly attack every inch of potential human interface on that machine with disinfectant spray and wipes. If I didn’t know it was in their job description to do it, this level of attention would be positively flattering. I’m damn certain that not a solitary bacterium has escaped their assault. But even though I understand the business purpose at work here, making me and all the other gym rats feel safer, I know that it’s unnecessary, and not only because I and almost everyone else at this gym has been fully vaccinated for months.
Since the CDC finally acknowledged in April that the likelihood of anyone becoming infected by COVID-19 through surface contact (the medical term is fomite contact) was only a little higher than being struck by lightening, topping out at a chance of less than 1 in 10000, our year and a half long obsession with hand sanitizer and disinfectant seems just a little embarrassing in retrospect. Who didn’t see those videos by that well meaning ER physician from Michigan who urged us to wipe down all our groceries and store the non-perishables in the trunks of our carts for three days? And I did that too—many, many of us did, at least for a while. Just like we washed our hands obsessively and carried hand sanitizer in our cars and purses.
Back then, even the buttons on the keypad as you self-checked your groceries were suspect. Because you never knew how dirty the person was who used those buttons before you. Same thing with doorknobs, phones and computer keyboards. Every device, every seat, every chair with multiple users had to be wiped down.
And just to be clear, I get it. At the outset of the pandemic no one was sure exactly how contagious this was. The disinfectant of surfaces on a massive, obsessive scale was a completely valid response to an unprecedented and certainly emotionally taxing phenomenon in this country. Everyone with half a brain was freaked out about cleaning, yours truly included.
But even with the knowledge that by and large you just aren’t going to get this virus from surface contact, some of those businesses that managed to stay open during the pandemic (or are just now reopening) still take this tendency to clean everything in sight to the 11th level. Marc Fisher, writing for the Washington Post, cites a few examples from his geographic area:
At an ice cream shop in Rockville, Md., gloved servers scoop the frozen treat into cups, but a sign taped to the front window says “No cones: Covid.” At McDonald’s outlets along I-95 in Virginia, yellow police-style tape cordons off self-serve beverage stations. And at Nationals Park, baseball fans use a QR code and digital menu rather than ordering directly from the person who hands them their hot dog.
As Fisher notes, while impressive as performative hygiene, none of these measures are making any real difference in containing the COVID-19 pandemic:
None of these precautions provide meaningful protection against the spread of the coronavirus, safety experts say. Instead, they are examples of what critics call “hygiene theater,” the deployment of symbolic tactics that do little to prevent the spread of the coronavirus but may make some anxious consumers feel safer.
Derek Thompson, writing for the Atlantic is credited with coining this as “hygiene theater,” the ostentatious display of ultra-cleanliness during the pandemic, typically by businesses and corporations, in order to reassure wary consumers that their health needs were being strictly attended to. When the CDC acknowledged what Thompson, in private conversations with several scientists and epidemiologists had known for months, he wrote:
Unlike the coronavirus, hygiene theater is very much alive on surfaces across America. Transit authorities are still taking subway cars offline to power-scrub their walls. Baseball parks are banning cash to protect fans from fiat germs. Schools throughout the country still require deep cleanings that sometimes shut down classes for hours or days. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s COVID-19 posters still urge people to “clean high-touch surfaces frequently,” with no mention of ventilation, air filters, or keeping windows open. Target is still running ads on Hulu bragging about how it calls in workers at 6 a.m. to mop and scrub for several hours, for the comfort of its germophobic customers.
But Thompson noted that it wasn’t just the superfluousness--there was actually a real drawback to all of this performative cleansing (if only in retrospect):
[Hygiene theater carries with it an immense opportunity cost. Too many institutions spend scarce funds or sacrifice scarce resources to do microbial battle against fomites that don’t pose a real threat. This is especially true of cash-strapped urban-transit authorities and school districts that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on soap technology rather than their central task of transporting and teaching people.
Now, in mid-June, businesses are finally starting to back off, with the general realization that as the country became more fully vaccinated there was less of a need to clean everything in sight, for reasons of health, safety, or simply to appear that you’re outdoing your competition. Although, as Fisher warns, the ride back to normalcy will still be a bumpy one:
Americans craving clear, consistent rules are in for some disappointment in the coming months. Businesses are adding, subtracting and altering restrictions in every direction.
As for me, I can honestly say I can’t wait to get back to my filthy, disgusting, unhygienic life. But I have to admit, I’ll somewhat miss being chased around by those two women at the gym.
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The most important thing I learned from "Nomadland" was:
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If I say nothing for hours on end, it should be interpreted as something profound
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