Wouldn't we just breathe those virus in the air if we kept our windows opened or walking by a person who was infected?
The virus lives in droplets of bodily fluid, when you're closer than 2m just speaking with someone else is enough to exchange droplets and spread infection.
It's of course possible that someone walking by your window will cough out some droplets and they might be carried through in the air and infect you but the aim of the social distancing precautions is to reduce the infection rate and spread, not to prevent anyone from ever getting the virus.
And there is as minimal viral load you need to be exposed to, to actually get you infected.
So there is a low chance to get in contact with the virus, a even lower getting in contact with enough viral load to cause you harm.
The distance (and potentially masks) serve the purpose to get the density down to point, where it doesn't matter.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v...
In practice, a transmission event happens through a certain amount of virus particles entering the body, and this doesn't seem to happen very often for Covid.
Of course it isn't settled, but this is what all the discussion about droplet (doesn't linger) and aerosol (lingers) transmission is about.
So we’re safe from lingering viruses because COVID-19 doesn’t linger that long outside.
As viruses go COVID-19 is pretty easy to break down, and doesn’t last that long in the wild (especially compared to things like bacteria). But it’s still virulent enough to cause a pandemic, despite being pretty easy to destroy using light and alcohol.
Sitting next to an infected person at work, cinema or bus for a long time will expose to a large probability of being infected several times with a high viral load.
Walking past an infected person the probability is low, the viral load hopefully quite dispersed.
Though getting too close to heavy breathing and sweating jogger is not recommended.
It seems like the primary transmission mode is through droplets, not air
Edit - does anyone have data to contrary?
I'm sure you're aware that positive news about the virus is generally being censoring by mainstream outlets, if you're wondering why you didn't hear about it.