COVID-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning?

When Emanuel Goldman went to his local New Jersey supermarket last March, he didn’t take any chances. Reports of COVID-19 cases were popping up across the United States, so he donned gloves to avoid contaminated surfaces and wore a mask to prevent him inhaling tiny virus-laden droplets from fellow shoppers. Neither gloves nor masks were recommended at the time.

Then, at the end of March, a laboratory study showed that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can persist on plastic and stainless steel for days1. That triggered startling headlines and a slew of...