New York Times Admits That There Was Never Any Science Behind the "Six Feet of Social Distancing" "Rule," and That It Was Something Our "Experts" Just Pulled Out of Thin Air

Julie Kelly wrote about this long ago. Back in April 2020.

So, precisely what is the science driving this mad world of shuttered public beaches, stormtrooper cops ticketing churchgoers sitting in their own cars, and duct-taped boxes in checkout lines to instruct shoppers where to stand?

It turns out, there is little verifiable evidence to support this government-imposed safe space: The CDC's COVID-19 guidance portal is disturbingly vague about a policy now fueling the destruction of the U.S. economy and forcing Americans to live under house arrest for the foreseeable future.

A month later, she noted the "experts" admitting that their rules were just an "experiment" -- and that that experiment failed.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration and a lead booster of social distancing, admitted Sunday that the draconian measures aren’t working as the experts promised.

"The concerning thing here is that we're looking at the prospect that this may be a persistent spread," Gottlieb said on CBS News' "Face the Nation," further noting 20,000 to 30,000 new reported cases per day despite intense lockdown orders in most states.

"While mitigation didn't fail, I think it's fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected," he said. "We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we're just not seeing that."

Literally every single thing Fauci said about covid was a lie, and literally every thing Julie Kelly said about covid was true.

More recently, Tucker Carlson addressed this Fake Science non-rule which Master Bullshit Artist and Part-Time Bathhouse Inspector Anthony Fauci seized on because it sounded good and scientific because it included a specific number.

Numbers are sciencey, right?

At this time last year, most Americans understood that social distancing was a form of punishment.

"It’s not good for man to be alone." That's one of the very first observations in the book that forms the basis of Western civilization, and we've lived accordingly. Apart from the death penalty, the harshest things we do to criminals in this country include separating them from other people. Prisoners have chosen lethal injection over solitary confinement; that's how badly human beings need to be close to one another.

So when they told us to stay far apart from each other last spring in the name of public health, it was an enormous sacrifice, whether or not we understood it at the time. Because this was a trusting and law-abiding country, we obeyed that order. We barely grumbled about it. We assumed they knew best. "Stay six feet from each other." That was social distancing. It was the law and most of us followed that law.

But where did that law come from? Who did the scientific research that determines six feet was the safest distance apart from other people that you could be? Somebody should have asked that question last spring, but as far as we know, nobody did.

It turns out the research that formed the basis of that law came from a German hygenicist called Carl Flugge. It was Flugge who decided that six-foot separations were necessary to slow the spread of pathogens. The CDC went with Flugge's judgment. What the CDC didn't tell us was that Karl Flugge had been dead for nearly 100 years. His research on social distancing was published in the 19th century, before most Americans had electricity or indoor plumbing. So why is that research still guiding public health policy in this country in 2021? It's a good question, and experts don't seem to have a good answer.

Last year, one of the top aerosol scientists in Australia, a woman called Lidia Morawska, likened social distancing regulations to a cult ritual: "The dogma was born. Like any dogma, it's extremely difficult to change people's minds and change the dogmas." So it was all just faith-based, and it had massive consequences.

Millions of American schoolchildren have not been educated for a year because the CDC turned century-old German theories about tuberculosis into a kind of modern, state-enforced religious faith. It's enough to make you feel sick.

Yes, our authorities are just that mediocre. But the most infuriating part of it all is not that they were wrong, but that they won't admit they were wrong and apologize for it. Dr. Anthony Fauci spent much of last year pretending "six feet apart" was some kind of unquestioned, universally recognized physics principle, like gravity or photosynthesis.

It's this "six foot" rule which the teachers unions seize upon to justify their refusal to work -- desks aren't six feet apart, and classrooms aren't big enough to keep kids six feet apart, so schools can't open.

Except... the real science is that three feet is enough social distancing to reduce disease transmission.

The kids had no choice. The science was settled, we were told.

Or at least, was settled until last week, when the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that the law of six feet of social distancing isn't actually real. It's not a law. It was a guess, and it's wrong. Researchers looked at coronavirus case rates in Massachusetts school districts that required six feet of social distancing and compared those with school districts that required only three feet of social distancing (yes, there were some). Researchers found there was no statistically significant difference in coronavirus cases between the two. That wasn't just true for students; it was also true for adult staff members. The study also controlled for coronavirus rates in the surrounding communities. It was not shoddy research. It was real. Here's the conclusion:

"Lower physical distancing policies can be adopted in school settings with masking mandates without negatively impacting student or staff safety."

Fake Jake Tapper actually stopped conspiring with Brian Stelter about which conservative media figures to cancel next to ask the Credentialed Bug-Chaser Fauci about the actual science:

But Tony Fauci didn't apologize for the fake science he's imposed on the entire country. He just nodded and kept going.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN 'STATE OF THE UNION': There's this new study from researchers in Massachusetts just out this week. It found no significant difference in coronavirus spreading in schools where there were six feet of distancing versus three feet of distancing. But that six-foot requirement, that's one of the main hurdles to reopening schools ... Does this study suggest to you that three feet is good enough?

FAUCI: It does indeed.

"Yeah, it does. Not a big deal, just kind of kept an entire generation of kids from learning anything. We'll just move forward with the new science."

Now even the New York Times is forced to admit the experts have been making this bullshit up all along.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clear and consistent in its social distancing recommendation: To reduce the risk of contracting the coronavirus, people should remain at least six feet away from others who are not in their households. The guideline holds whether you are eating in a restaurant, lifting weights at a gym or learning long division in a fourth-grade classroom.

The guideline has been especially consequential for schools, many of which have not fully reopened because they do not have enough space to keep students six feet apart.

Now, spurred by a better understanding of how the virus spreads and a growing concern about the harms of keeping children out of school, some public health experts are calling on the agency to reduce the recommended distance in schools from six feet to three.

"It never struck me that six feet was particularly sensical in the context of mitigation," said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. "I wish the C.D.C. would just come out and say this is not a major issue."

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN that the C.D.C. was reviewing the matter.

The origin of the six-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery. "It's almost like it was pulled out of thin air," said Linsey Marr, an expert on viral transmission at Virginia Tech University.

Now even leftwing idiot and Russia Truther Jonathan Chait -- who literally accused Trump of being a Russian agent recruited in the 80s -- says the case for keeping schools closed is "disintegrating."

How about, "Never existed?"

posted by Ace at 01:50 PM

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