The Science
took another serious blow on Tuesday, as one of the most persistent, but ridiculous Covid myths was essentially debunked by one of the nation’s foremost public health experts.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the Biden White House’s Covid response coordinator, effectively admitted the “six feet of social distancing” thing was entirely made up. Dr. Jha made the admission in a video called “Path Forward” for the Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. Watch:
“There’s really a new way of thinking about who is going to get infected,” Dr. Zha said. “We used to spend a lot of time talking about 6 feet of distance, 15 minutes of being together. We realize that’s actually not the right way to think about this. That’s not the, kind of, the most accurate way to think about this.”
“What we know about this virus, particularly these very contagious subvariants that are out there right now, it is really about the quality of air you’re breathing around you,” Zha continued. “In a crowded indoor space with poor ventilation, you can be infected within minutes.”
“If you are outdoors, with obviously, by definition, good ventilation, you can be outside for long periods of time and not get infected,” he added.
“So, context matters. Crowds matter. Ventilation matters. That is a major new update in the CDC guidance,” he said.
The major problem with the CDC’s new update on its guidance is that it is nothing new. This is ‘the new guidance’ that the CDC recently released, which should look very familiar to people whose Covid response was managed by governors in states like Texas and Florida.
There was ample scientific literature from the beginning to demonstrate that it was extremely unlikely to get Covid outdoors. The vaccines never stopped viral transmission. It never made sense to screen people for asymptomatic transmission with routine PCR testing. It is “very rare” for Covid to spread through surface contact. Masks don’t stop airborne viruses. The list goes on and on. Add ‘social distancing’ to the list.
The first clue that the CDC was ‘making things up’ when it comes to social distancing is when it suddenly and arbitrarily changed the distance from 6 feet to 3 feet in schools in March 2021. The change came after a massive amount of pushback from parents and teachers.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday relaxed physical distancing requirements for children in school, from 6 feet to 3 feet — a change aimed at allowing more students to be inside classrooms,” NBC reported.
“The recommendations come with a few caveats. Teachers and other adult school staff must still adhere to the 6 feet guidelines, and face coverings remain mandatory,” NBC added.
Of course, that was a lie. The CDC does not have authority to “mandate” anything. And as we are finding out more and more — for good reason. It is either almost always ‘wrong’ or thoroughly political in its decision-making. (The betting money is on the latter.)
The proof the CDC never knew what it was talking about with its ‘six-foot social distancing’ rule came when a study showed that schools that implemented such guidelines (wait for it) had more cases.
“Districts implementing >3 feet reported 895 student and 431 staff cases. Districts implementing >6 feet reported 3223 student and 2382 staff cases. The risk of a COVID-19 infection was 11% less in districts implement >3 feet of social distance for students and staff,” the American Council on Science and Health noted.
“The degree of community spread did correlate with the incidence of infections among students and staff, depicted in this graph. But when controlling for community spread, the >3 feet distance continued to be safer,” the report added.
So, just like with the pointless and damaging school mask mandates, the “experts” gave the nation guidance based on no real-world scientific data. Public health experts will never openly admit that they were wrong; but if you listen really closely, you can hear them admitting that their policies didn’t work.
The post The Covid Experts Effectively Admit They Made Up the Whole ‘6-Feet Social Distancing’ Thing appeared first on Becker News.