vesicles
Colonel
Adding to the mess is the media. Intentionally or unintentionally, the media misinterprets scientific findings and misleads people. A headline yells "SARS-CoV-2 can survive on a hard surface for 2 years!". And you go "wait a minute, didn't they just say the virus can only survive on a hard surface for 30 seconds???" What's going on? Different kinds of surfaces, different temperatures and different lighting conditions all make a difference. Copper is toxic to most cells. If you put viruses on a copper surface, they will die in seconds. Change that to steel, they can live for up to a few days. If you lower the temperature, you will keep them alive even longer. Take away sunlight, they are even happier. Does any of these caveats show up in headlines? Hardly.
Then you will see some scientists casting doubt on the validity of the virus survival data. They will tell you that survival doesn't mean these viruses can still make you sick. You go "WHAT!? You just said the virus is alive. Now you say they may not be able to infect people. Didn't you just tell me this critter does human-to-human transmission?!" Someone must've lied!!! Well, being alive doesn't mean they will infect you. The ability of a virus to infect depends on the health level of the virus and/or the number of virus. If you have some unhealthy viruses, they cannot function normally and their ability to infect will be compromised. The ability of any cells, mammalian, plant, bacterial or viral, will depend on numbers. If you put a single cell in a dish, this single cell will never grow and proliferate into two, four or 16. That single cell will stay there for days, weeks, or months, then eventually die off. On the other hand, when you put 1 million cells in a dish, they will double their numbers in every 4-6 hours. And in a day, they will expand like crazy. So if you leave a virus on a surface for a few days, you still detect some live virus. But if the number is too few, they can never proliferate. These viruses will stay in your body as they are and slowly die off. Then you are not infected... Will you get this info from a headline? Will any journalist clearly explain this to you in their article. I doubt any of them would understand this. Even if they do, it would be less stunning. They might simply ignore to mention it to make their piece sound more dramatic. You end up getting conflicting ideas about this virus.
Then come the scientists... They go nuts because their findings are misinterpreted. And more of them come out and try to clear things up. But most of them don't know how to talk to the lay public and begin to throw some big jargon words out. Most people fall asleep in the middle of the speech. And only thing picked up by the public would be "death! brain damage!". Then the public becomes even more confused. My God! These people are out of their minds! They go back and forth and things keep changing! And we have this huge mess...
Then you will see some scientists casting doubt on the validity of the virus survival data. They will tell you that survival doesn't mean these viruses can still make you sick. You go "WHAT!? You just said the virus is alive. Now you say they may not be able to infect people. Didn't you just tell me this critter does human-to-human transmission?!" Someone must've lied!!! Well, being alive doesn't mean they will infect you. The ability of a virus to infect depends on the health level of the virus and/or the number of virus. If you have some unhealthy viruses, they cannot function normally and their ability to infect will be compromised. The ability of any cells, mammalian, plant, bacterial or viral, will depend on numbers. If you put a single cell in a dish, this single cell will never grow and proliferate into two, four or 16. That single cell will stay there for days, weeks, or months, then eventually die off. On the other hand, when you put 1 million cells in a dish, they will double their numbers in every 4-6 hours. And in a day, they will expand like crazy. So if you leave a virus on a surface for a few days, you still detect some live virus. But if the number is too few, they can never proliferate. These viruses will stay in your body as they are and slowly die off. Then you are not infected... Will you get this info from a headline? Will any journalist clearly explain this to you in their article. I doubt any of them would understand this. Even if they do, it would be less stunning. They might simply ignore to mention it to make their piece sound more dramatic. You end up getting conflicting ideas about this virus.
Then come the scientists... They go nuts because their findings are misinterpreted. And more of them come out and try to clear things up. But most of them don't know how to talk to the lay public and begin to throw some big jargon words out. Most people fall asleep in the middle of the speech. And only thing picked up by the public would be "death! brain damage!". Then the public becomes even more confused. My God! These people are out of their minds! They go back and forth and things keep changing! And we have this huge mess...