Originally Posted by
SWBKCB
Fake science, the linked article below suggests not - there are even arguments for 4 or 6 metres, and that the combination of distance and duration are important.
Are these not the same over-reacting idiots that warned that 600,000 people in the UK would die then cut the number to 200k a few days later and then 20k - can we really take people like that seriously? Here is an out-take from BBC Radio 4 Today's Programme interviewing Professor Robert Dingwall from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) that advises the govt on CV19:
'We cannot sustain [social distancing measures] without causing serious damage to society, to the economy and to the physical and mental health of the population.
'I think it will be much harder to get compliance with some of the measures that really do not have an evidence base. I mean the two-metre rule was conjured up out of nowhere..... there is a certain amount of scientific evidence for a one-metre distance which comes out of indoor studies in clinical and experimental settings. There's never been a scientific basis for two metres, it's kind of a rule of thumb. But it's not like there is a whole kind of rigorous scientific literature that it is founded upon.' This where the WHO gets it's 1m guidance from.
So somewhere along the way, the government decided to ignore the science and go for 2m. It has now been proven to be ineffective compared to lesser impacted countries that used 1.5m but because 2m has been adopted in the UK, the economic damage will be greater and the recovery will be much harder.
We can't 'get rid of the virus' as some seem to believe, any more than you can 'get rid of' nuclear weapons or malaria. We have to learn to take a risk based approach to life. Punishing those at almost no risk (essentially any healthy person under 60) by denying them a job or future or social life, frankly makes life not worth living.
I think we are already seeing a 'Berlin Wall Syndrome' where people will risk anything to get their freedom back.