Also, “viable virus could be detected” seems potentially different from “you could get infected from handling it” (in either direction). Your immune system is more robust than the cell culture they use to detect, so many ‘detectable levels of virus’ are still safe, and the detection method requires diluting the contaminated swab, which means that you coming into contact with the undiluted thing might have nonzero risk even when the test can’t detect anything.
But based on my limited understanding of what’s going on, the threshold is within a doubling or two of what’s sensible; not diluting at all should correspond to the 10^0 line on the graph, which their model suggests should be hit within 20-45 (point estimate: 30) hours of when virus is deposited on the box. So unless you’re somehow managing to concentrate the virus, that’s the point at which it couldn’t infect a cell culture without an immune system.
Also, “viable virus could be detected” seems potentially different from “you could get infected from handling it” (in either direction). Your immune system is more robust than the cell culture they use to detect, so many ‘detectable levels of virus’ are still safe, and the detection method requires diluting the contaminated swab, which means that you coming into contact with the undiluted thing might have nonzero risk even when the test can’t detect anything.
But based on my limited understanding of what’s going on, the threshold is within a doubling or two of what’s sensible; not diluting at all should correspond to the 10^0 line on the graph, which their model suggests should be hit within 20-45 (point estimate: 30) hours of when virus is deposited on the box. So unless you’re somehow managing to concentrate the virus, that’s the point at which it couldn’t infect a cell culture without an immune system.