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Of course nobody wants overzealous cleaning, but the correct level of zeal for a novel disease is not possible to pinpoint exactly from the outset. It makes sense for people to risk having too much zeal than too little until all the information is available.

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And, honestly, the recommendations that various governments actually made were things like handwashing, use of hand sanitizer, cleaning surfaces that multiple people are touching, etc.--none of which seem unreasonable even at this point. The "overzealous" cleaning that some people were doing was mostly not the response to government guidelines.

And the CDC changed their recommendations and guidelines as knowledge about the virus evolved. Unfortunately too many people interpret these changing messages as: "The CDC was wrong before so they're probably wrong now, so I'm not going to listen to anything they say." So frustrating!

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