2m rule

[Orangeblossom78]

Just wondered what you all felt about the possibility of the 2m rule changing as level of cases goes down. From the Times today

"The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has recommended against a change in the two-metre rule and has been reluctant to endorse a shorter distance as evidence mounts that the risk of infection is twice as high at one metre as at two.

However, one option would be to say that a higher risk of transmission is more acceptable when cases are low enough. Sage is due to discuss the rule today after shifting to weekly meetings as the outbreak eases.

Denmark has halved its rule to one metre, while New Zealand has got rid of social distancing after almost entirely eliminating the virus. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, has also indicated that the rule could be made more flexible by putting greater emphasis on advice that standing back to back or side to side reduces the risk"

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/two-metre-coronavirus-rule-will-be-relaxed-after-pubs-reopen-htx5l0wqj

(saying it may be brought in as pubs start to open- July (?)

@Celan

Sorry to break it to you, but the whole thing has been a monstrous mistake, for no discernible benefit. A massive hand grenade has been chucked into our lives - and particularly our children's lives - for no good reason at all. We have "done all this" for nothing. It will go down in history as one of the worst political mistakes ever made by a British government.

You seem very confident in your fatalism... I can understand scepticism and doubt, but to be so assured that we’d have ended up with as many deaths as if we’d done nothing, so we might as well go back precisely to how things were straight away seems crazy to me.

Perhaps we did lock down unnecessarily hard... Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but none of us can credibly have the foresight to know it will all go away if only we ignored it and went back to how it was before.

I want to get back to normal as quickly as possible... I don’t think going back to the “old normal” straight will achieve that.... on the contrary. If we did, there would very likely be a big second wave, as even under the most optimistic possible scenario that London has herd immunity due antibody levels massively understating real levels of immunity, the rest of the country has a huge amount of fertile territory for Covid to spread into. There’s no way we’d take that in our stride however much the libertarian right plead for the country to take it on the chin.... By September our numbers would be way up again and our children wouldn’t be able to return to school as the rest of the world looked on in horror and pity.

Far better to open up slowly and hopefully get to 90% of normal by the autumn.

Celan do you actually honestly believe our infection rate would have just stopped doubling every 2-3 days on the day it did without lockdown being brought in?

What that Covid would just decide one day it has enough hosts and couldn't be bothered with the effort of infecting more?

itsgettingweird there are actually a few studies which suggest we hit our peak in terms of infections around 5 days before lockdown was announced, and that the spread was already slowing with the initial social distancing measures that were introduced.

WHO think 1m is ok and who the heck knows if they are 2m or 1.6m away from someone?

Comparisons with Denmark or NZ are useless, they have the infection under control or have eradicated it, we do not.

However, the real issue is why there are still 5 to 6k infections each and every day and that the new TnT system isn't tracing 33% of these who test positive, let alone their contacts, we were promised a world class system.

But then that proves the point that measures did need to be taken

Which then answers my question of did the poster really think doing absolutely nothing what so ever would have cut infection.

So just SD would have had a higher peak and a longer decline.

We won't know for a year or 2 which measures were best for an overall control of epidemics in countries. But I think we can agree no measures wasn't an option?

Basic public health infection control is not new science, Govt's that have dealt with CV well, followed the public health rule book, we did not. ref Devi Sridhar.

Johnson needs to employ her.

@Waxonwaxoff0

Sounds good to me. It's the only way we can get children back to school in September. Other countries aren't doing 2m.

The USA, Canada and Spain are doing 2m (6 ft).

I want SD to be dropped for people under 18 so they can finish their education.

1m for rest of us with colleagues/public transport & 2m in other places (any time you don't work/live with the person you're encountering).

I accept this is not the lowest risk picture, but there has been little balance in the picture at all.

I have not really observed anyone keeping to the 2 m rule. I think people have made some effort at distancing and managed about 1m most of the time. I don't live in a deserted rural area.

So we are already at 1m for the most part.

If we reduce it to 1m, we are effectively going to have no distance. Which might work, I don't know, but let's be realistic about what we are doing. We have never done 2 m except in highly supervised situations.

I have not really observed anyone keeping to the 2 m rule. I think people have made some effort at distancing and managed about 1m most of the time. I don't live in a deserted rural area.

Do you mean fleeting passes at 1m or sustained contact? The former, yes, the latter, no, apart from friends and family.

Actually that's a very good point Derby, I think most of the worse 2 m infractions I have seen or experienced have been very fleeting. Sustained contact has been better, not sure if exactly 2 m but better. I haven't had much sustained contact outside my household so perhaps not in a good position to judge.

Ps. That's with the exception of some the groups who have recently been congregating outside near us...I don't include them as they clearly aren't attempting any distancing so whatever the guidance is would make no difference.