Surface Contact Spread of COVID is Real

[Ocelot II]

75. Yes, and the probability isn't cumulative.

It's kind of, but not exactly, like the odds of getting snake eyes when you roll a pair of dice, which is 1/36, and if you roll snake eyes your probability of rolling snake eyes on any roll is still 1/36 (2.77%); the fact that you just did it is totally irrelevant to future outcomes. But the probability of rolling snake eyes twice in a row is (1/36) x (1/36) which is 1/1296 (about .07%). The odds of rolling snake eyes is easily determined to be 1/36 because all of the possibilities are known - two dice with six sides each will always give you exactly 1/36 odds. The probability of doing it twice in a row is much lower, though, because you figure probabilities by multiplying the odds of a single result by the number of attempts. But the analysis isn't whether you'll get covid once by touching a surface and then get it a second time by touching another surface (the odds would be 1/10,000 x 1/10,000, which is vanishingly small), so it's not really like rolling dice. What we want to know is whether your odds of getting covid increase on the basis of how many surfaces you touch, and specifically whether that probability can be determined mathematically. If you keep touching public surfaces and never washing your hands you might increase your very small odds of getting the virus over time, but the odds will not increase predictably in accordance with the number of surfaces you touch. That's because the CDC says only that the probability is less than 1/10,000. It could be 1/100,000, 1/1,000,000, or even zero. It all depends on the surface, the amount of time the virus has been there, whether it's been exposed to sunlight, and many other factors. So it's simply impossible to conclude that if you touch many surfaces your odds of infection increase in accordance with the exact number of surfaces you touched.