Conventional wisdom has it that COVID-19 is transmitted three ways: 1) fomites, where large particles drop onto and contaminate a surface, 2) short-range transmission particles, which gave rise to the 6-foot rule for social distancing, and 3) airborne, as aerosols or droplet nuclei or droplets, which can float around in the air. But despite the grocery-washing paranoia of this spring, it turns out that surface contact isn’t the primary way the disease is spread. And evidence suggests that infections cannot be neatly separated into a neat dichotomy of droplet versus airborne transmissions, said Steve Taylor, principal of Taylor Engineering in Alameda, California.