Covid Government Response, part 3: Social Distancing

The term "Social Distancing" was unheard of before February 2020 and I hope the day will come I never hear of it again.  I never really understood what it means.  What is means, of course, if you were supposed to stay 6 feet away from everybody.   But that's hardly "social".  I always thought "physical distance" made more sense, but I suppose "social" may mean that you have to stay 6 feet away from people not animals or things.

Of all the restrictions in place, I'd estimate this one was the least followed.  Though in my mind it probably stood a chance of being more effective than some of the others.  I think the practicality of the spacing simply got in the way.  If you're going to let people together in a place you can't really keep them apart.  You can put circles on the floor but you can't force people to stand in them.  Though birds seem to comply easily.

Note that in the images above, the lines and circles are outside, but there was plenty of that inside buildings, including some stores that had one-way arrows on the floors.  Those were ignore even more than the circles.

Where the "social distancing" (I have to metaphorically put gloves around that phrase because it's so nonsensical to me) had its biggest impact on restaurants.  To be complete, in the early days of the lockdown, restaurants were closed, though they were allowed to operate on a take-out basis.  Then after things started loosening up, restaurants were allowed to open, but only at 50% capacity or something and distancing rules were in place.  In practice this meant that restaurants had to remove or mark off tables.  Some put clear plastic barriers between booths.  As things loosened up further, Texas (for instance) raised that limit to 75%, but for smaller mom-and-pop restaurants that was a notional change. An Italian place we frequented in the neighborhood, could only have 40% of their max occupancy due to the need to spread the parties out (according to the owner).

And of course, some restaurants simply ignored that, as was the case in another restaurant in the neighborhood which never enforced a mask order or distancing requirement.

That latter situation made the county mad and at points they wanted the governor to shut down restaurants again.  Because they couldn't be sure the places were complying with the distance order.

That's simple laziness.  It reminded me of a time when we were visiting family in Ohio and I wanted to show off my fancy new car with it's fancy app that let me start the car remotely (worth doing since it was 10 F outside).  My companion's eyebrows shot up in horror and they informed me that I could be arrested for doing that.  When I incredulously asked why they said that too many cars were being stolen. But that simply criminalizes using your car's features while letting car thiefs off the hook. Again, it was very cold out and I figure that it's simply easier for the local cops to drive down a street and spot empty cars with steam coming out of the tailpipe than it is to chase down car thiefs.  

Similarly, the county already has a health department devoted to monitoring restaurants.  Their inspectors show up every month for a roach and mold check but it's too burdensome to show up to count heads in the restaurant so they simply drive by and count cars.  If there are too many, then the restaurant isn't doing takeout-only and they get a ticket.

Even delivery people were required to keep their space. One time I happened to be outdoors when UPS was dropping off something and I walked over to take the package from the guy and he backed up a few steps and said I had to keep my space or he'd get in trouble.  

But to the point, what is the evidence for this 6-foot (or 2-meter) spacing?  The WHO only recommended a 3-foot spacing which, given the big bellies a lot of American's have, would seem to be automatic.  Why not five feet or ten feet?  What have five feet and eleven inches?  "Far enough away that I can't smell you" seems reasonable, assuming that you could actually smell a person's breath or body odor or perfume.  Maybe the government should have mandated Old Spice for men and Red Door for women?

It obviously depends on the way the virus spreads, which puts this in the same category as the masks.  If viruses spread mostly by droplets, then at some point the droplets will all fall to the floor and won't get breathed in by the next person.  But it they are spread by aerosol particles, then they could stay suspended in the air longer.  Back to my sarcastic comment about Old Spice above, we know that certain odors tend to linger after a person passes.  Do virus particles hang out in the air like stink particles do?  Maybe.  At least it gives some real life insight into how invisible viruses might spread.

There were a few studies that looked into droplet travel to see if the 6-foot rule made sense.  But those studies, like most during the pandemic, were mechanical in nature.  Missing is the critical information about how many viruses are needed to cause infection.  The authors of the study may say that a viral load below some level is safe, so then they can say "droplets travel this far", meaning that past this distance the number of droplets found were considered to be safe.  Or another study might assume that every droplet is a little bubble of woe that will result in hospitalization or death and they'll draw the line on the point where NO droplets are found (which seems hard to quantify to me).  And of course if the virus is being spread as an aerosol or contact you have to worry about that as well.  Say you eliminate 90% of the droplet particles through a mask or spreading people apart.  Does that represent 90% of the total, or 50% or 10%?

Again, it's unethical in the extreme to expose people to these conditions to count up how many people get sick.  People have tried to get similar data by counting up infections in various settings were distancing wasn't practiced but that's hardly a controlled situation.

As mentioned before, the concept of social distancing (especially outdoors, contra the pictures above) was undermined completely during the summer of 2020 when public health experts all around the country not only accepted but encouraged mass demonstrations against the killing of George Floyd.  To be fair, the message wasn't so much "You won't get sick so go protest", but "Even if you get sick, it's still important to protest".  Regardless, avoiding the virus suddenly became a luxury good that could be set aside when more important issues arose.

Weeks of protests followed with large crowds packed together (many wearing masks, it must be noted).  These protests were covered enthusiastically on TV.  And cases did go up a little.  I assume there were two main reasons.  While I don't think that the outdoor gathering in the warm summer air and sunshine actually lead to a lot of direct spread, I assume the protesters met indoors on occasion as well to either celebrate a successful rally or plan the next day's events.  Also, after watching this spectacle on TV for weeks, most people just decided that the rona was over. 

Good thing none of those protestors got a package from UPS.

Note that until George Floyd, the newsies were habitually shaming people that didn't follow the CDC guidelines.  Any time any group of people were discussed on the news, it would be noted how many people were wearing masks and if they were properly spaced apart.  At times I thought I was listening to a fashion report on the Hollywood reporter shows that follow the local news in Dallas.  But during the George Floyd protests, such discussion was nowhere to be found.  No reporter counted up the number of masks and there were no Karens to spread people apart.  So it must not matter anymore, right?  Go to Home Depot and get on with your life.

Of course, nothing lasts forever and eventually the George Floyd riots fizzled out and the newsies started wetting their pants over the virus again and tattling on rona recusants was back in vogue.

Again during both phases (the "social distance" and "have fun protesting" phases), we were lead by "science" when in fact we were being led by "scientists" who are, after all humans and have their own ideas about managing risk.  Is it worth risking the rona to get a burger at McDonalds?  Is it worth risking the rona to improve policing and eliminate racism?  Those are valid questions and decisions that every person needs to make.  

But why should we care about what scientists think?  Just because someone has a degree in public health, he's authorized to tell me what to do in every aspect of my life?  And it's not like they did a great job on the "science" part either.  As I asked with masks: what was the Relative Risk of standing 6 feet apart vs standing 3 feet apart.  What about if people were facing each other or one was behind the other (as in standing in line or getting your hair cut).  Don't tell me about droplet spread.  Show me some real data.

In fact, most viral outbreaks rose and fell over the course of 1-2 months, and I suspect that was due to people modifying their behavior in the face of the threat.  Cases are low?  Let's have that family gathering at Mega-Eats restaurant.  Let's all meet for happy hour after work.  Cases are high?  Let's have that family gathering at my place instead.  Let's all work from home.  To the extend that people had flexibility they'd use it and the viral spread would modulate accordingly.  They didn't need to be encouraged by the public health hall-monitors to do specific things, they'd make up their own minds.

But of course, there are people with limited flexibility.  The cooks and servers in Mega-Eats have a fixed amount of space to work in.  That space can be reconfigured based on CDC recommendation to some extent and that might help (and might be valuable).   But what is the consequence? Does the County Health shut down the places (probably smaller mom-and-pop) that don't have the space while letting the big chains that do have the space go on? In fact, I didn't hear of anything like that happening.  Ultimately, there was widespread compliance from a business standpoint (putting up lines or circles every six feet or limiting tables) but little compliance by the public.  And although some people lost their minds over it, by and large most people minded their own business.

Social distancing had severe consequences for smaller retail and service places that couldn't make money with the smaller customer load.  A small restaurant with 10 tables probably can't keep going if they can only open 2 or 3 of them. A small barbershop with 6 chairs might not be able to make it with only 2.  Again, the restrictions favored the big-box chains.  There's plenty of room to spread out at Buffalo Wild Wings.  But for my part, the whole social distancing phenomena was nonsense. It was redundant when everything was locked down and stupid when things opened up again.  But like everything else,  it sounded like it should help.  But I can't say it ever did. 

It was just over-eager bureaucrats exercising their new-found and long-desired power.