I wrote about Hygiene Theater and the challenge of navigating the fog of pandemic science.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/hygiene-theater-still-waste/617939/

“Follow the science” is practically a cliche now. But who do you trust when scientific research is saying two completely different things at once?

In the last six months, it’s become near-consensus that surface-transmission of COVID-19 is very rare and that our efforts should be focused on masks, distancing, and ventilation.

But there are still new studies claiming to show that the virus survives for ONE MONTH on surfaces

The scariest fomite studies use too much virus and set ideal conditions for its survival. It's like wanting to prove you can grow mangoes in Vermont, so you build a $1b greenhouse in Burlington to produce one edible mango and say "Hey, mangoes grow in Vermont! Science says!"

This is the trouble with "Science says."

Great and bad studies are part of the cacophonous hydra of “science” that is constantly “saying” stuff. In the telephone game between science, media, and the public, dubious studies get simplified, exaggerated, and concretized as gospel.

Without clearer national guidance, states, cities, and families are ad-libbing their way through this pandemic in the absence of a script.

Hygiene theater, like so much of U.S. COVID policy, exists in the genre of catastrophic improvisation. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/hygiene-theater-still-waste/617939/