I’m having a lot of trouble reading that article, but it also appears to be a very small number of people.
In related news, a friend who just returned from playing poker in Vegas reports that he has covid. He didn’t say whether he caught it from the cards or the air, though. 
There’s plenty more out there on this topic. Rest assured that there’s more out there than the lone 1987 18-person poker study.
I don’t believe enough work has yet been done to change official guidance. And I fully admit, in the same vein, that the science on “handwashing doesn’t affect (most) respiratory viruses’ transmission” is far from settled.
All the same, I find it compelling. Others’ mileage may vary.
The first link below was a Nature article that was originally paywalled, but later made available on Google Scholar. Link is to a PDF document:
These next two are commentary published in The Lancet. Both reference other, searchable studies for anyone who wants to do a deep dive (scroll to the bottom of each).
Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites
Low risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by fomites in real-life conditions
Those are all about covid. I was curious about studies on transmission of the common cold.
Of the viruses grouped together and referred to as the common cold, several of them are coronaviruses.
There’s more on that as well – but recall that it’s been necessarily-recent research into COVID transmission that has led a minority of researchers to re-test previous assumptions about respiratory virus transmission in general. So while there is material out there that ties “many respiratory viruses” together with one bow, typically the lead-in will involve COVID. This piece is representative:
That preview kind of misses the meat:
Over the last century and at the beginning of this pandemic, it was widely believed that respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, mainly spread through droplets produced in coughs and sneezes of infected individuals or through touching contaminated surfaces. However, droplet and fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 fails to account for the numerous superspreading events observed during the COVID-19 pandemic or the much higher transmission that occurs indoors vs. outdoors.
Motivated by a desire to understand the factors leading to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers from Taiwan, the United States, and Israel sought to identify as clearly as possible how the coronavirus and other respiratory viruses spread.
The team reviewed numerous studies of superspreading events observed during the COVID pandemic and found the studies consistently showed that airborne transmission is the most likely transmission route rather than surface contacts or contact with large droplets. One common factor of these superspreading events was the shared air people inhaled in the same room. Many were linked to crowded locations, exposure durations of one hour or more, poor ventilation, vocalization, and lack of properly worn masks. The researchers also reviewed evidence collected from many other types of studies—air sampling, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based and/or cell culture studies, epidemiological analysis, laboratory and clinical studies, and modeling work—and concluded that airborne transmission is a major, or even dominant transmission pathway for most respiratory diseases, not just COVID-19.
I can’t really singlehandedly turn accepted science on its head in this thread all by my lonesome, though. It’s all right if others don’t see much here. Maybe more and better evidence will build up in the future – I acknowledge that it’s not there yet.
Yes, though I understand that incidences of legacy-coronavirus infections are dwarfed in number by incidences of, say, rhinovirus infections.
Interesting to me is that among respiratory viruses, RSV is specifically excluded from the “airborne only” transmission club (see the Atlantic article excerpts posted above). “Touching things” is thought to play a role with RSV. I’d like to look more into that.
Well, it certainly matches my intuition. I used to put, “did you know you can catch a cold from your hands?” in the " weird science facts" category.
Mostly back to whatever normal is, but only very recently. I’ll tell my story here for the first time.
My partner and I have been much more completely isolated than most Americans for a much longer time due to ability/privilege, combined with a much higher fear of risk of Covid than average:
What changed:
My partner’s employer had been making more and more serious noises about staff returning to the office at least one day per week, and then just recently, my mom went into the hospital again for something else. It looked even more like the end than Covid did. Partner and I agreed I should get on a plane, which is an all-day trip, with masking agreed to be fully optional. I ended up wearing it in the airports but mostly not on the planes, nor around my mom (she recovered) and her friends.
The thinking went: it’s time to just go ahead and get Covid or not; our lives are already destroyed anyway by 3 years of isolation so what the hell.
The trip was uneventful, and the very week I came back was the first week my partner started going in to work, also with no mask (no one else wears one there). There’s been a sudden sea change in our attitudes. We’re still not going to restaurants or parties or unnecessary crowded and stuffy indoor venues, but we’re going to work, to the grocery, on airplanes, etc., mask free. (Our feeling has been that masks don’t protect us much. Of course I am still happy to wear a mask if others expect it or are made more comfortable. In this neck of the woods, masked people mostly get the stink-eye.)
I figured the sudden transition would be extremely weird, but it’s been almost nothing. Before, we were isolated and terrified of Covid, and now we’re not isolated and not terrified, and it all happened almost instantaneously with almost no emotional effort in the end.
Get back to me after I get sick – whether with Covid or just a bad cold – and I may say something different, but for now, life seems new again.
Back in the early maximum-paranoia days, we had all food delivered, and the refrigerated/frozen stuff had to be immediately wiped down with my carefully hoarded bleach wipes before going in the freezer/fridge. The rest of the stuff sat untouched for 48 hours or more. This was the first caution to go out the window, probably long about the time the bleach wipes ran out.
Given the current COVID numbers where we live, and that I have had every shot I am eligible for and had COVID in December/January (and although I was pretty damn sick for a month, it was mostly extreme fatigue and didn’t go to my lungs or hospitalize me in spite of increased risk factors), and that I really do have a hard time with masks, I think that until further notice, I plan to mask in crowded indoor situations (public transportation, airports, etc.) but I am not going to continue the near-isolation that I have lived in for more than 3 years.
I do plan to continue my 100% remote work accommodation for all sorts of other reasons, though. I no longer have an office and there isn’t even space to give me one; I get my work done just fine at home; and I have another, totally unrelated ongoing medical issue for which I had requested remote work (which is greatly helped by being able to shut my eyes in the middle of the day and remove outside stimuli, which is impossible even in the so-called “quiet room” at work - I tried, and even during the summer 2021 attempt to get everyone to return to the office, which was largely unsuccessful, it was just too damn noisy in there).
Well, not 100% as I just came back to this message board to look for some balanced discussion (I remember how good it was for it). I still keep coming across videos on the subject and two sides calling each other disinformation and whatnot.
Behaviourally though yes like 95%. I understood why social distancing was pushed and complied but at the same time lamented that social creatures shouldn’t be separated for any longer than necessary. Even I, a shy and relatively antisocial person, still need human contact. As soon as it was seen as socially acceptable in the UK (a lot sooner IRL than online, I found) I was back to normal and going to busy conventions and beer festivals. I’m of the view that life is for living, even if we hadn’t weakened COVID as much as we have done (but especially because we have)
I am even back to going into work with a cold. Because everyone else is. I’d rather there’d been a shift in attitude but as there wasn’t, I’d rather not be the only one going off sick for a week at a time. And if they’re willing to give it to me, to be brutally honest, I don’t mind returning the favour.
However the other 5%. I still wear a mask if I have to attend a hospital, even though almost no one else does now. I was sat in a waiting room last year only about 1 in 10 were masking if that and a lot of people (as expected in a hospital) were elderly. But it just feels wrong to me now not to wear a mask in a place full of sick people, even if I’m in the minority.
I will still test if someone asks me to (but not if they don’t… they’re not free any more) or if I was visiting someone extremely vulnerable in which case I’d also wear a mask.
I wore a mask for a flight and train journey to and through Germany this time last year when it was still required. However in July this year it’d been dropped, no one wore one, so I wore one on the way in but adapted and stayed without while there and on the way home.
I’ve always hated “so crowded you can’t move your elbow” so no change on attending ridiculously busy bars etc I avoided them before COVID and avoid them now.
There was at my job. We can work from home. We worked from home 100% for a couple of years. We still routinely with from find about 50%. It used to vary from group to group whether people came in or worked from home when they were still coughing and sniffly. Now it’s universal that sick-employees-able-to-work should do it from home.
Well, almost. My boss and the admin caught covid at the same time, 2-3 days after everyone was in the office. (Felt sick after 2 days, tested positive after 3.) Might be a coincidence. But they both think they caught it at work.
Anyway, I’m still not 100% back. But yesterday i went to the supermarket without a mask for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It’s two weeks since my most recent jab. The supermarket is well ventilated.
I’m mostly back to life before Covid. I avoid crowded, closed-in situations, but I did that before Covid anyway - no bars, churches, music venues or theaters. I’ll wear a mask to the doctor’s office or lab, and if I fly I’ll wear one. Heck, I think that if Covid disappeared from the face of the earth right now, I’d still wear a mask in an airplane. I’ve come down with bad colds a few days after flying more than once and it sucks when you’re on vacation.
I retired six months ago, but my office was back to business as usual for months before I retired. One or two people still masked up, but the rest didn’t.
I wore masks on airplanes before covid. I get dehydrated on airplanes, and masks help a lot.
It does seem to depend on the company culture. Ours recalled us back to the office the moment they were legally allowed to. We do actually have the ability to work from home now which is a difference from before but it’s still common to have the entire open plan office coughing away :). I’ve also seen a few members of management use air quotes when saying someone is “working” from home so there’s still an air of cynicism about it.
I’m two weeks out from my XBB and Flu shots. Still working from home and I mask situationally. A quick trip to the grocery store is unmasked, a Costco visit or seeing a movie is probably masked unless it’s well spaced out.
An update:
I started a new job last month; I’m now working at a smaller marketing agency, and they don’t allow WFH at all. So, I’m back to taking the train into downtown Chicago every day, and going into the office every day; it was three jobs ago (2011) when that was last the case.
(The agency where I’d previously worked had finally instituted a mandatory “3 days a week in the office” policy at the beginning of September, which coincided when I’d put in my two week’s notice.)
At our office, where we have about 60 employees, there are one or two people who are still masking, but otherwise, not a mask to be seen. The commuter trains are generally not nearly as crowded as they were pre-COVID, and again, while one sees an occasional mask on the train, it’s definitely the exception to the rule.