The question is how few cases. I would agree at some point extremely few cases would mean not a significant risk, but because single cases can potentially case

The question is how few cases. I would agree at some point extremely few cases would mean not a significant risk, but because single cases can potentially case the virus to be spread widely before they are noticed even fairly small numbers of cases could have a significant impact. Many potential surface exposures would overlap with potential airborne exposure and most places with many cases don't have sufficient contact tracing to really have any idea how a large portion of the cases are occuring. I don't even disagree that much with you, Goldman, or the Atlantic article. Surface disinfection giving a false sense of security does seem like a major issue to me (and surface coatings and a number of other more extreme measures seem like a bad idea to me). However, I think you, the Atlantic author, and Goldman (unless misquoted, it seems he makes a different argument here than his Lancet article) are being unreasonably certain about it not mattering at all. It seems like the author could only find two people, both from Rutgers, willing to publicly support that argument. It seems like a pure ego thing to be so certain based on so little evidence and potentially quite harmful if not correct.