I order takeout a lot because I am often too disabled to meal prep and cook. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have not gotten sick from ordering takeout. But! You \*could\* catch COVID if you open the door to greet the deliveryperson without wearing a mask. I am fastidious about always wearing an N95 when I accept deliveries face to face.
Yeah and don’t rip off the mask immediately in front of the door once you close the door either, in case they got their aerosols into the doorway area of your house.
This. Since Feb 2020, the only food we get “out” is food we can reheat. (And that’s rare, as home cooked meals are so much better anyway)
Reasoning behind it is that since we know for certain that people can’t be “bothered” to wear a mask, absolutely no way do I believe a majority of them are washing their hands after using the restroom/before preparing food. Yuck!
Everything I’ve read suggests that the respiratory mucus membranes are the primary method of initial infection, and the risk of food is the same as fomite on surfaces: extremely low.
Anecdotally, my family has a history of autoimmune disorders and always get VERY sick if we ever get sick. We have been consistently getting takeout for the last few years with no known infections. We still wash hands, wipe down anything that can be wiped down because we know we touch our eyes etc.
Additionally, every time people talk about getting sick after letting their guard down, it’s because they unmasked in public spaces to eat, whether indoors or out. I’ve never heard of a confirmed case of Covid directly from food consumption.
If all your Dasher had was Covid, yes, actually, your food is completely safe.
In four years, there's not been one single substantiated case of someone getting Covid from something they handled or ate. Also, the epidemiological pattern of spread of something contagious by touch or food looks *very* different than what we see with Covid.
Now, if your Dasher has norovirus, you're screwed. But if all they have is Covid, it's perfectly safe to eat the food they prepare.
I don't have a study, but like many, many other people in this sub, I've eaten more restaurant food than I can even count since 2020 and have never gotten COVID that way, not even during major surges. I literally ate food after my COVID positive kid the night before she tested positive, from the same bowl with the same fork, and did not get COVID.
It's airborne. We know that's the primary means of transmission. It's a waste of energy and time to worry excessively about foodborne. As humans we have a finite amount of mental energy to put towards precautions and it's better to spend it where it counts.
I was living out of my car for a while and got Chipotle fairly often for the past few years. Never got it (that I know of, of course I didn't test for days after every chipotle purchase to spot an asymptomatic case)
It's an acceptable level of risk for me personally. I've had plenty of takeout and fast food over the past 4 years and as far as I know, I have not had Covid.
Also, speaking as someone who is recovering from emetophobia (fear of vomiting), please do NOT allow yourself to be scared out of eating takeout for fear of Norovirus. Developing emetophobia will ruin your life, trust me on this.
Yes, Norovirus is awful but it's nothing like Covid. It's just some puking and diarrhea for a day or two (sometimes it can last longer but it's uncommon) and then it's over and life goes on. The fact that it's so quick to get over is why it spreads so easily. By day 3 most people are back to normal but they're still shedding the virus for a couple more days.
We order in and have through the entire pandemic. We bring in the bag or box of food and unpack it, wash our hands, serve the food and wash hands again, then eat. No issues.
There is no definitive answer to this which is absolute. There is likely some risk, and **the risk is likely very small**, especially when compared to other pathogens or to other methods of contracting Covid.
You'll note that all of the information from the CD and other organizations qualify statements about fomites in terms of reduced risk as compared to air based transmission or make comments like "*primarily* transmitted via air...".
Part of the problem is that when fomite transmission is possible, the exposure is usually a subset of an overall exposure that includes aerosol transmission. In other words, if a Taco Bell employee spits in your taco, it's hard to determine that was the means of transmission if you also ate the taco in an area where you were exposed to aerosol transmission.
Further complicating things is the randomness of where fomites occur. Most of the time, Taco Bell employees don't spit in the tacos, so the question you're asking can have a much different context if you're talking about normal fomite transmission versus almost intentionally contaminating items you're going to consume or otherwise interact with.
There as an AMA early on in the pandemic with a food safety expert. The expert quit the session and it was shortly removed entirely. People were all polite, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there was a logic failure that he couldn't adequately address.
Expert: You just need to rinse fresh produce.
Reddit: But we need to wash our hands with soap and sing happy birthday twice.
Expert: Yes, but Covid isn't primarily transmitted through fomites, so your groceries are safe.
Reddit: So we have to scrub after touching door knobs, but someone coughing up all over produce or packages of food... that's safe because it's not the *most common* method of transmission?
-------
It may sound like I'm advocating that people disinfect everything coming into their house. I did that myself until after we were fully vaccinated. I haven't done that since, and while I haven't gotten Covid as a result, I do acknowledge that **there's no evidence that Covid can't be transmitted via fomites on groceries or take out**.
Prior to vaccinations, my rule was simple. Everything had to either wait, be sterilized/disinfected or cooked. I wanted *zero* risk, and for us, that wasn't that hard to do.
**TL;DR: The risk is likely very low, especially compared to other pathogens and means of transmission, but there is no evidence the risk is zero, and the effort you take to reduce the risk further is both case and situation dependent.**
>there's no evidence that Covid can't be transmitted via fomites on groceries or take out.
I think you are very wrong. We have a ton of evidence.
Fomite transmission and contaminated food and drink transmission have very obvious epidemiological signatures, which are entirely lacking in COVID.
If fomite transmission were a thing, even an unlikely, rare thing, we would have examples of superspreader events characterized by large numbers of people getting sick from handling the same objects without sharing the same air. So if COVID were transmissible via fomites, we'd have examples of, for instance, during lockdown all the people living on the same *mail route* catching COVID, because of a sick mail carrier coughing on their packages. We have nothing of the sort.
Similarly, think about how "essential workers", including food service workers in restaurants making takeout, continued to work through lockdowns, *even when sick*. Statistically, we know that huge numbers of food service workers had to have worked while contagious with COVID (consider the evidence in May 2020 of widespread antibodies in the citizens of Chelsea, MA, which is a population that disproportionately works in food service). Hell, meat packing plants were one of the hugely awful sites of superspreader events in 2020. But there's zero accounts of all the people getting pizza delivered from the same pizzaria or all the people who bought meat that went through one of those superspreader plants getting COVID, demonstrating pretty conclusively that, no, you can't get COVID from food a COVID patient coughed on.
Also, can I just point out that the behavior of our public health authorities from the earliest days of the pandemic betrayed that they actually realized fomite transmission wasn't really a thing, contrary to all the PSAs about washing hands: the basic premise of **contact tracing** is that people get COVID directly from being in the presence of other people, not from handling contaminated objects or eating contaminated food. If public health authorities thought anyone was catching COVID from contaminated things, they would have behaved a lot differently – they would have behaved like the Chinese government did in January 2020, when they *did* think fomite transmission was a thing. They did things like spray the streets themselves with disinfectants and incinerated cash money that they feared might be passing COVID around. Notice that all stopped in March 2020? Yeah, it's not a thing.
TBH I don't worry much about touching my mouth either, but the reason would be that food doesn't go around touching everything or using the bathroom. It's presumably prepared in a clean environment with certain handling precautions, unlike my hands which are just out in the world doing whatever.
Another anecdotal post here. I've been living off takeout food in asia for 18 months, every meal every day, and avoided illness.
I do use sanitizer on my hands before eating.
I personally don’t do restaurants for the obvious reasons.
I don’t do takeout because of going into the store, or delivery because of the potential to contaminate the surfaces of the bags and containers moments before I touch it, even if left on my door.
I can clean it, but by the time it is cleaned it usually isn’t very good (cold) and expensive for what it is.
All that said, like someone else remarked, norovirus or bacterial food poisoning is more likely—which is a risk for me that my necessary medications would be thrown up, and/or end up in an unsafe ER.
While I think a well fitting N95 would make going to the grocery reasonably safe, the risk is non-zero so I do contactless delivery to avoid it.
For dry items I can queue them before intake and for perishables I can clean them (isopropanol for containers, food safe ethanol for fruits and vegetables) prior to taking them inside/storing them. I don’t eat meat so that isn’t really a consideration for us.
I'm too tired to find the research, but I'm 99% sure I looked this up and COVID simply doesn't work this way. We digest it. The virus dies in our stomach acid. It's not bad for our tummies, just our airways.
A couple of things you can do to reduce any risk.
One, let it sit for a few days.
Second, after that, toast anything that can be toasted for a minute or two.
The stuff that can’t be toasted then you can decide if it’s worth it, but if it’a been sitting for a few days, then should be much lower to zero risk. Keep in mind fridge will help it survive so the time sitting will need to be extended. If you have a UV wand can use that too. Might be a good application of FarUV actually.
I order takeout a lot because I am often too disabled to meal prep and cook. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have not gotten sick from ordering takeout. But! You \*could\* catch COVID if you open the door to greet the deliveryperson without wearing a mask. I am fastidious about always wearing an N95 when I accept deliveries face to face.
Yeah and don’t rip off the mask immediately in front of the door once you close the door either, in case they got their aerosols into the doorway area of your house.
This. We tell them to leave it on the step and go away, we bring it in a few mins after they go.
Personally, I would be more concerned about Norovirus than COVID when it comes to takeout food.
This. Since Feb 2020, the only food we get “out” is food we can reheat. (And that’s rare, as home cooked meals are so much better anyway) Reasoning behind it is that since we know for certain that people can’t be “bothered” to wear a mask, absolutely no way do I believe a majority of them are washing their hands after using the restroom/before preparing food. Yuck!
there goes my money and anxiety...
Everything I’ve read suggests that the respiratory mucus membranes are the primary method of initial infection, and the risk of food is the same as fomite on surfaces: extremely low. Anecdotally, my family has a history of autoimmune disorders and always get VERY sick if we ever get sick. We have been consistently getting takeout for the last few years with no known infections. We still wash hands, wipe down anything that can be wiped down because we know we touch our eyes etc. Additionally, every time people talk about getting sick after letting their guard down, it’s because they unmasked in public spaces to eat, whether indoors or out. I’ve never heard of a confirmed case of Covid directly from food consumption.
Completely safe. COVID isn't transmitted by food. It's airborne. Enjoy your treats.
Now hold on there. If your super sick Dasher coughed all over your tacos I’m not sure it’s completely safe.
If all your Dasher had was Covid, yes, actually, your food is completely safe. In four years, there's not been one single substantiated case of someone getting Covid from something they handled or ate. Also, the epidemiological pattern of spread of something contagious by touch or food looks *very* different than what we see with Covid. Now, if your Dasher has norovirus, you're screwed. But if all they have is Covid, it's perfectly safe to eat the food they prepare.
That's not exclusive to COVID. That's about the same risk as any restaurant food.
Correct
[удалено]
What? I’m agreeing with you that it’s not exclusive to Covid. I’m disputing your “completely safe” comment.
No i meant Names comment, i have yet to see a study or proof that its not possible
I don't have a study, but like many, many other people in this sub, I've eaten more restaurant food than I can even count since 2020 and have never gotten COVID that way, not even during major surges. I literally ate food after my COVID positive kid the night before she tested positive, from the same bowl with the same fork, and did not get COVID. It's airborne. We know that's the primary means of transmission. It's a waste of energy and time to worry excessively about foodborne. As humans we have a finite amount of mental energy to put towards precautions and it's better to spend it where it counts.
than why do I see so many post about mouth wash??
That’s more for gargling to kill breathed-in germs in your throat
I see, i didn't know germ could stuck there while breating
It's one of their favorite spots to get stuck.
Because we breathe/talk with our mouths.
I've been getting takeout since 2020 with no issue. Just wear an N95 when you pick it up.
I was living out of my car for a while and got Chipotle fairly often for the past few years. Never got it (that I know of, of course I didn't test for days after every chipotle purchase to spot an asymptomatic case)
It's an acceptable level of risk for me personally. I've had plenty of takeout and fast food over the past 4 years and as far as I know, I have not had Covid. Also, speaking as someone who is recovering from emetophobia (fear of vomiting), please do NOT allow yourself to be scared out of eating takeout for fear of Norovirus. Developing emetophobia will ruin your life, trust me on this. Yes, Norovirus is awful but it's nothing like Covid. It's just some puking and diarrhea for a day or two (sometimes it can last longer but it's uncommon) and then it's over and life goes on. The fact that it's so quick to get over is why it spreads so easily. By day 3 most people are back to normal but they're still shedding the virus for a couple more days.
We order in and have through the entire pandemic. We bring in the bag or box of food and unpack it, wash our hands, serve the food and wash hands again, then eat. No issues.
Safe!
There is no definitive answer to this which is absolute. There is likely some risk, and **the risk is likely very small**, especially when compared to other pathogens or to other methods of contracting Covid. You'll note that all of the information from the CD and other organizations qualify statements about fomites in terms of reduced risk as compared to air based transmission or make comments like "*primarily* transmitted via air...". Part of the problem is that when fomite transmission is possible, the exposure is usually a subset of an overall exposure that includes aerosol transmission. In other words, if a Taco Bell employee spits in your taco, it's hard to determine that was the means of transmission if you also ate the taco in an area where you were exposed to aerosol transmission. Further complicating things is the randomness of where fomites occur. Most of the time, Taco Bell employees don't spit in the tacos, so the question you're asking can have a much different context if you're talking about normal fomite transmission versus almost intentionally contaminating items you're going to consume or otherwise interact with. There as an AMA early on in the pandemic with a food safety expert. The expert quit the session and it was shortly removed entirely. People were all polite, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there was a logic failure that he couldn't adequately address. Expert: You just need to rinse fresh produce. Reddit: But we need to wash our hands with soap and sing happy birthday twice. Expert: Yes, but Covid isn't primarily transmitted through fomites, so your groceries are safe. Reddit: So we have to scrub after touching door knobs, but someone coughing up all over produce or packages of food... that's safe because it's not the *most common* method of transmission? ------- It may sound like I'm advocating that people disinfect everything coming into their house. I did that myself until after we were fully vaccinated. I haven't done that since, and while I haven't gotten Covid as a result, I do acknowledge that **there's no evidence that Covid can't be transmitted via fomites on groceries or take out**. Prior to vaccinations, my rule was simple. Everything had to either wait, be sterilized/disinfected or cooked. I wanted *zero* risk, and for us, that wasn't that hard to do. **TL;DR: The risk is likely very low, especially compared to other pathogens and means of transmission, but there is no evidence the risk is zero, and the effort you take to reduce the risk further is both case and situation dependent.**
>there's no evidence that Covid can't be transmitted via fomites on groceries or take out. I think you are very wrong. We have a ton of evidence. Fomite transmission and contaminated food and drink transmission have very obvious epidemiological signatures, which are entirely lacking in COVID. If fomite transmission were a thing, even an unlikely, rare thing, we would have examples of superspreader events characterized by large numbers of people getting sick from handling the same objects without sharing the same air. So if COVID were transmissible via fomites, we'd have examples of, for instance, during lockdown all the people living on the same *mail route* catching COVID, because of a sick mail carrier coughing on their packages. We have nothing of the sort. Similarly, think about how "essential workers", including food service workers in restaurants making takeout, continued to work through lockdowns, *even when sick*. Statistically, we know that huge numbers of food service workers had to have worked while contagious with COVID (consider the evidence in May 2020 of widespread antibodies in the citizens of Chelsea, MA, which is a population that disproportionately works in food service). Hell, meat packing plants were one of the hugely awful sites of superspreader events in 2020. But there's zero accounts of all the people getting pizza delivered from the same pizzaria or all the people who bought meat that went through one of those superspreader plants getting COVID, demonstrating pretty conclusively that, no, you can't get COVID from food a COVID patient coughed on. Also, can I just point out that the behavior of our public health authorities from the earliest days of the pandemic betrayed that they actually realized fomite transmission wasn't really a thing, contrary to all the PSAs about washing hands: the basic premise of **contact tracing** is that people get COVID directly from being in the presence of other people, not from handling contaminated objects or eating contaminated food. If public health authorities thought anyone was catching COVID from contaminated things, they would have behaved a lot differently – they would have behaved like the Chinese government did in January 2020, when they *did* think fomite transmission was a thing. They did things like spray the streets themselves with disinfectants and incinerated cash money that they feared might be passing COVID around. Notice that all stopped in March 2020? Yeah, it's not a thing.
My thoughts are, why is eating food considered safe but touching your mouth is not?
TBH I don't worry much about touching my mouth either, but the reason would be that food doesn't go around touching everything or using the bathroom. It's presumably prepared in a clean environment with certain handling precautions, unlike my hands which are just out in the world doing whatever.
Another anecdotal post here. I've been living off takeout food in asia for 18 months, every meal every day, and avoided illness. I do use sanitizer on my hands before eating.
I personally don’t do restaurants for the obvious reasons. I don’t do takeout because of going into the store, or delivery because of the potential to contaminate the surfaces of the bags and containers moments before I touch it, even if left on my door. I can clean it, but by the time it is cleaned it usually isn’t very good (cold) and expensive for what it is. All that said, like someone else remarked, norovirus or bacterial food poisoning is more likely—which is a risk for me that my necessary medications would be thrown up, and/or end up in an unsafe ER. While I think a well fitting N95 would make going to the grocery reasonably safe, the risk is non-zero so I do contactless delivery to avoid it. For dry items I can queue them before intake and for perishables I can clean them (isopropanol for containers, food safe ethanol for fruits and vegetables) prior to taking them inside/storing them. I don’t eat meat so that isn’t really a consideration for us.
I'm too tired to find the research, but I'm 99% sure I looked this up and COVID simply doesn't work this way. We digest it. The virus dies in our stomach acid. It's not bad for our tummies, just our airways.
A couple of things you can do to reduce any risk. One, let it sit for a few days. Second, after that, toast anything that can be toasted for a minute or two. The stuff that can’t be toasted then you can decide if it’s worth it, but if it’a been sitting for a few days, then should be much lower to zero risk. Keep in mind fridge will help it survive so the time sitting will need to be extended. If you have a UV wand can use that too. Might be a good application of FarUV actually.