Most people still do not get that Covid is airborne, and I watched a nurse figure it out mid wipe this morning. I am at my weekly GLP 1 shot appointment before work. It’s 8am, and I am still trying to be awake and so is everyone behind the front desk. The nurse comes to get me and she is already flustered. Shoulders up to her ears, sighing loud enough for the whole waiting room to hear, holding that big canister of Lysol wipes like a weapon. I walk into the exam room and there is this little machine on the counter glowing bright pink, puffing out this thick foggy mist that smells like fake strawberries. Like a tiny rave humidifier. As if scented fog is going to make the whole room germ free. I have no idea what that thing is supposed to do, but it is clearly part of the plan. It was like Bath and Body Works got put in charge of infection control and decided strawberry scent was the answer. She does not even say good morning. She just starts wiping. Hard circles on the exam chair and arm rests. Then the little side table. The door handle. And the back of the door handle. I ask her what happened. "I am SO tired of these people coming up in here sick!!! Why can't people just stay home when they sick?! Ugh and of course it was all that gunky nasty upper respiratory stuff. Coughing and sniffling up in my face!" And she keeps wiping, wiping, wiping, while that pink machine keeps puffing that strawberry fog behind her like it is doing something. It just came out. I said, "It is airborne though." She freezes. Hand mid air over the chair, wipe dripping. She looks at me. Looks at the wipe. Eyes locked still at the handle she just bleached. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, it is." You could see it land. That split second where her face went from annoyed to OH S*IT. That look of wait, WHAT am I actually doing right now? That WOW, this sucks. Because that is the part most people never digested. They spent years thinking it lives on tables and chairs and doorknobs, so if they just wipe hard and spray enough pretty smelling fog they will be safe. But it does not live on the table. It does not disappear in that pink mist. It lives in the air they just shared in that tiny room with no open window or HEPAS. Until they get that Covid is airborne, and not a surface thing, or a washing hands thing, and not a bad smell you can cover up with strawberry fog, but is an invisible shared air thing, they are going to keep scrubbing surfaces while breathing each others uncleaned air.