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Social distancing: 2m is twice as good as 1m
04/06/20 .
News
Readers of the UK press could be forgiven for being confused this week when the Daily Mail and the Guardian reported in apparently contradictory fashion on new Lancet research on social distancing.
The Daily Mail claimed that 'keeping one metre apart can slash the risk of catching coronavirus by 80 per cent' while the Guardian said that 'reducing physical distancing advice from 2 metres to 1 metre could double the risk of coronavirus infection'. To make matters more confusing, both are broadly true.
The Lancet study pulled together findings from 172 relevant studies related to Covid-19 and, mostly, to previous viruses such as SARS and MERS to arrive at a meta-analysis of the value of social distancing, face masks and eye protection.
The researchers conclude that social distancing is massively important. One metre reduces risk by 80% from a 13% risk of infection with no social distancing at all to a 3% risk at one metre. But, the researchers go on, the evidence suggests that 'for every 1m further away in distancing, the relative effect might increase 2·02 times'. In other words, you're twice as protected at 2m as at 1m.
The researchers say: 'the results of our current review support the implementation of a policy of physical distancing of at least 1m and, if feasible, 2m or more.'
So, the question governments have to wrestle with when offering social distancing guidance is: do you want a 3% risk of infection with 1m or a 1.5% risk with 2m?
- Thanks to Full Fact, the UK's independent fact checking charity.
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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