You wasted a lot of words here.

You acknowledge that at the beginning of COVID, contact tracing and sterilization of contact surfaces was paramount before we knew better, going to the length of generating, or otherwise obtaining "tubs" of cleaning products for the purpose.

My entire point is that "contact tracing" is not just who you make contact with but what you make contact with. My point is not and was never that it was relevant for protection against COVID. My point was that it was a part of contact tracing. I only mention COVID at all because that is what was taught in the early days of the lockdown. A point to which you have all but plainly said, that you have also been educated on.

The miscommunication here is that you are only looking at contact tracing as person to person contact because it was relevant during the pandemic, while I'm focused on the umbrella concept of contact tracing not just for COVID specifically and that as a medical term, which it is and always has been, "contact tracing" is not just person to person contact, but also contact with surfaces. The context of the word contact, is the difference. In your view, you are seeing contact as in someone on your contact list, a person you connect with, or communicate with. In my context, contact is the act of touching or making physical contact with peoples and things, including nonphysical contact, like what happens when you share a small space with someone, you are in contact with all of the surfaces they are, inhaling the air they're exhaling.

For COVID, contact tracing and education thereof started with the full medical definition of contact tracing, including, but not limited to, physical contact to both people and objects, and sharing a space with others. Later the former part of that was dropped for COVID specifically as it was established that it did not yield any significant prevention from infection.

None of the above paragraph is in question.

My friend who sanitized their groceries on the advice of medical professionals during the early days of the pandemic did, indeed, as you say, waste cleaning products with no real gain to show for it. In their defense, at the time nobody knew that.

My point is. Contact tracing is more than who you make contact with. That was it. You're arguing something totally off topic about COVID that doesn't refute anything I'm trying to prove.

In the context of COVID, again, no it does not prevent the spread in any meaningful way, as medical science has since proven. You were, like everyone else, taught the full meaning of contact tracing during the early days of the pandemic, yet here we are. You're up on a soap box, shouting from the rooftops that it doesn't prevent the spread of COVID. A point that was never in contention. Good job. You played yourself.