What's a long time? Hmm, let's see... perhaps the several days that an infected individual carries and spreads mucus carrying the virus to numerous other individuals and objects? You know, the thing we use vaccinations against?
Also, great job on not understanding that it's not an on/off switch, not understanding that lifetime depends on circumstances, and not understanding that the carrier liquid is not infinite.
One last attempt at making you understand that bit: we're not talking about a surface being "infected" for a specific amount of time. Rather, there is some liquid (mucus, most likely) containing viral particles on a surface. The moment that liquid leaves the body, environmental circumstances for the virus start changing up to the eventual point where no viral particles are left alive.
The longer it takes, the more that die off and the lower chances of infection being spread get. Moreover, every touch of the surface will actually remove some carrier liquid, thus transferring it to the person who touched it (and potentially infecting that person if he transfers it to his mucus membranes). This, however, leaves less to infect others. Because the mucus in question does not mysteriously multiply.
That's why you want to avoid having infected people working around the hospital: they go everywhere and leave a constant trail of fresh airborne droplets and smudged out mucus containing viral particles. If another one picks it up, the cycle starts over again, ensuring another few days of the virus being spread. Etc.
On the other hand, if all workers are vaccinated, the spread is somewhat contained. The waiting room is not a good place to be, but since workers wash their hands between patients (or should wash them, anyway) and probably won't get infected themselves, the virus has far less chance to be spread. Surfaces carrying infected mucus become safe again within a few hours, hands carrying infected mucus become safe again even quicker - basically, the virus dies off pretty quickly if it doesn't get the chance to infect workers going around the hospital.
Rather than functioning as a source of further infection for several days, workers at most function as passive superficial carriers for a very limited amount of time. If you cannot see how that is vastly preferable to having infected people everywhere... ugh.
Yeah, because the flu definitely doesn't kill many thousands of people a year, and it's never happened before that a strain of H1N1 killed tens of millions of people... OH WAIT.
Fucking idiot
