One of my employers makes us all watch a COVID-19 video, even if we’re working from home. The intention of the video is to convince us that it’s safe to come back to the physical workplace. The visual argument rests on assurances that it will be so clean once we get there.

The video, perkily narrated by a young, feminine voice because nothing says clean like women, shows imagery of cleansers, sanitizers, and glistening desks. Gleaming surfaces advertise just how hard some of our fellow employees (the cleaning staff) are working to eradicate germs from the environment. We are also exhorted to take on this cleaning labor ourselves: the nice lady’s voice instructs us in ways of sanitizing our desks, computers, and anything else we use.

This summer the Atlantic magazine’s Derek Thompson coined the term “hygiene theater” to describe the false sense of security we’ve derived, during this pandemic, from scrubbing surfaces, or from cleanliness. While experts emphasize that it’s still important to wash our hands, most also agree that COVID-19 is mostly not spread through surfaces, but rather, through the air. Most of us read that research — some of it from a German virologist, if ever a crude national stereotype instilled confidence! — and that’s why we stopped washing our groceries back in April. Our bosses are apparently assuming that none of us have been paying any attention to this.