I don't think anyone debates that it is possible to catch Covid-19 from surfaces. It's more a question of how commonly this occurs compared to airborne transmission. This is a very different virus than noro, which is not enveloped, and where ingestion is the primary route of infection. Non-enveloped viruses thumb their noses at soap and stomach acid. 18 noro particles can make someone ill, it sticks around for months sometimes, and only certain disinfectants work on it.
We don't know how many Sars-Cov-2 particles must be taken in via various routes to cause infection, but most experts think it is considerably more than norovirus. Whether that means a couple thousand, though, or hundreds of thousands is still up in the air, AFIAK. A sneeze at point blank can throw hundreds of thousands in your face, though. Randomly touching a surface that someone sneezed on hours or days ago, though, would convey much fewer, and it's not clear how infectious they would still be.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't wash our hands before we eat, or after we've been some place where we are touching things or when we've been handling stuff from outside. As MaeZe said, it may be a better use of time to simply treat the food from the fridge (where particles could live longer) the way one handles meat--wash hands and surfaces after handling the packages and make sure food is washed or cooked properly.
The main point is that when public health resources are limited, spending money spraying down all surfaces in public spaces each night might be a less effective use of said funds than paying for masks and shields and making sure the HVac is set to pull air from outside rather than recirculating, and to exchange air as many times per hour as possible and to change filters frequently etc. Oh, and also that thing about limiting the number of people who can be in a building at a time.
This idea that six feet is sufficient indoors (or outdoors when not masked) is also problematic, since aerosols spread a lot further.
12 is more prudent, but even so, people should be masked in all indoor spaces at all times, unless they are having a procedure that requires the mask to be removed.
Sadly, my own county is having a huge spike right now. 1200 new cases in a single day--the largest single-day increase ever by far (our population is 1.5 million). I'm sure the mask naysayers will cite this as evidence that masking doesn't work, since you do see more people wearing them now. However, we also have more people having get togethers and gatherings, and churches are defying orders, and restaurants have open patio areas (with 6' distancing, not 12') and a bunch of other things that are careless.
Oh, and my spouse just got a jury summons, so evidently the courts are open. Sounds like a blast, eh? Sitting in a crowded room for 8 hours, masked the whole time, waiting for your group to be called into a windowless court room. Even if they have tape on the floor for lines and are making everyone sit every third chair, it seems like a disaster in the making.
Wonder how they handle folks who don't know their nasal cavities are connected to the rest of their respiratory tract (and a source of "covidetttes in their own right).
They're closing the school for 2 days to sanitize everything. That should stop the spread of a virus that spreads from person to person through the air, especially in crowded indoor spaces!
