UK: 2 Meter Social Distancing Rule was “Conjured Out of Nowhere”

If it looks like governments are doing completely nonsensical stuff in response to coronavirus, it’s probably because they are, in fact, doing completely nonsensical stuff that so-called experts and politicians pull out of their asses.

Daily Mail:

Social distancing orders to keep two metres apart to stop the spread of coronavirus is based on a made up figure, a government adviser has warned.

Robert Dingwall from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) said the rule was ‘conjured up out of nowhere’.

The sociology professor at Nottingham Trent University said scientific evidence supports a one-metre gap, but the two-metre advice was a ‘rule of thumb’.

Nervtag feeds into the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which is spearheading the government’s pandemic response.

Sage has faced fierce criticism after it was revealed Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings has been sitting in on meetings as far back as February.

Mr Dingwall told Radio 4’s Today: ‘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.’

He added: ‘Well 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.’

People often assume that what experts advise is often the result of careful scientific testing and investigation, but that’s just not the case.

If the two meter rule is arbitrary, then how many other parts of the response to the coronavirus are arbitrary too?

What — and where — is the evidence that the lockdown can decrease the spread of the virus? It’s not a proper quarantine and chances are that it actually encourages transmission while making everyone remarkably paranoid.

Pictured: victim of “corona death.”

The virus can only be considered a serious threat for very old people.

We’re talking people over 80.

If we wanted to protect the old timers, why not just put them all into some kind of big hospital or camp with a proper quarantine instead of forcing literally everyone to live like prisoners while the economy collapses?

It would have been cheaper to just build quarantine compounds for the people who are most at risk, instead of sacrificing the economy in this weird experiment.