WEBVTT - The Story Behind the Six Foot Rule 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:09.560 Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one, twenty 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:15.360 six since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story, 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:21.160 standing six ft apart in public has become COVID gospel. 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.960 But where did that number come from? And how far 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.639 is really far enough? But first, here's what happened in 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:46.479 virus news today. US hospitals have been ordered to stop 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.360 sending COVID nineteen related data to the Centers for Disease 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.720 Control and Prevention. Instead, they will now send numbers they 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.240 tally of y U beds, ventilators, and more to a 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:03.200 centralized health and Human services database that will not be 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.920 available to the public. The government says the change will 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.800 improve tracking, but experts fear this will politicize the data 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:19.280 and obscure what's really happening with the disease. Walmart is 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.160 going to require customers to wear masks in all of 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:26.360 its US stores to protect against the coronavirus starting July. 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:34.120 Walmart's decision follows similar moves by Costco, Starbucks, and Best Buy. 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:39.160 Also today, the National Retail Federation, the country's main industry 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:44.360 trade group, called on retailers to set nationwide mask policies. 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:48.280 The n r F said in a statement that shopping 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:55.080 in stores is a privilege, not a right. Finally, Tokyo 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.760 raised its alert level for coronavirus to the highest on 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:03.080 a four point scale. The city reported one and sixty 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.600 five coronavirus cases on Wednesday. It has struggled to get 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:11.560 a handle on growing infections as it reopens its economy. 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:17.560 Tokyo Governor Euriko Koike urged residents to avoid stores that 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.520 don't need safety guidelines, but has not called on businesses 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:33.560 to close their doors. And now for today's main story, 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.080 While wearing a mask or refusing to wear one has 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.040 become politicized, there's one COVID safety measure we seem to 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.880 be comparatively united about. Everyone knows they should stand six 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:51.120 feet away from other people in public, mask or no mask. 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.520 But where did this guidance come from? As Kristin V. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:59.800 Brown reports, that one simple number is already changing our 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.800 b behavior and will soon change the places where we live, 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:11.160 work and play. When I go to the grocery store, 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.560 there are these little vinyl stickers on the floor six 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.120 ft apart tell me where to wait in line. When 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.280 I run in the park by my house. There are 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:24.959 signs there too, demonstrating the distance that fellow exercisers should 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.160 keep from one another. In the last few months, like 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:33.040 many people, I have gotten really good eyeballing a distance 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:37.640 of six ft in the midst of a surging pandemic. 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.400 Six ft has become a number that we all live by. 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:47.440 But where does that number come from exactly? It turns 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:52.120 out the actual distance for safe social distancing is kind 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.440 of hard to pin down. I talked with Gabriel isaacman 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:58.520 ven Worts, a scientist at Veraging Attack who studies the 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:05.400 way that particles change in atmosphere. But there isn't some 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.760 number that says, well, beyond this, there's no risk, and 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:10.880 in front of that, you know, closer than this there 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.160 is a risk, or beyond this all of the things 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:15.320 that are infectious have been gone, are gone, they fall 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.320 into the ground, and closer than that than there is 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.960 still infectious risk. Right, So that number is going to 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.159 depend on sort of what is the activity, and what 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.360 is the environment and what is the airflow? Right? Are 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.760 you upwind of someone or downwind of someone? Are you 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.760 inside the room? Are you outside? Is the air still? 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:34.640 You know? What's the air ventilation? Rate in the room. 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:36.239 And so I think a lot of the issue around 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.039 around that uncertainty kind of stems from this issue that 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:44.320 it is fundamentally a question of circumstances. There is little 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.000 doubt that strategies like wearing a mask and social distancing 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:51.880 play a major role in stopping the spread of COVID nineteen. 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.560 The question is how far apart you have to be 0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.080 in order to adequately avoid risk. The CDC recommends at 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.960 least six ft from other people as a way to 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.919 avoid the potentially infectious droplets a person launches into the 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.400 air when they cough, sneeze, or talk. The World Health Organization, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.520 on the other hand, recommends just three ft. But Gabriel says, 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.040 the issue is that there isn't just one magic number. 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.640 When we talk or sneeze or do anything, we're not 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.680 releasing like some big particles and some small particles, and 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:30.400 then that's it that we can talk about them separately. Right. 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.320 We tend to release kind of these mixtures of particle 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:35.720 sizes um and once they're in the air they can 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.440 change more, so they can you know, our breath is 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.160 very humid, so you can get out into the air. 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:41.720 That's what the fog is that we're seeing when we 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:43.680 breathe out in the winter, and so I think the 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:47.600 difficulty is that it's all sort of this continuum, and 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:51.040 so you know, the question is how much do we 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.520 need to breathe in and how infectious is it? Really? 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.119 The three foot rule actually dates back to the turn 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.640 of the last century. It talked with Kavin Handle, a 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.279 medical historian at Virginia Tech, who was working to figure 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:09.200 out the origins of these numbers. Interestingly, she says, we 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.080 don't really know where the rule comes from. At one point, 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:17.400 diseases were regarded primarily as airborne, and at the beginning 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.600 of the twentieth century, scientists moved towards the idea that 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.840 when a person's sneezes or coughs, they produced infectious droplets 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.880 that quickly fall to the ground. In the thirties, Harvard 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:33.000 scientists suggested those droplets could travel three ft. Fast forward 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.080 to the early ops, a study of stars transmission on 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:39.320 a plane suggested droplets could travel more like six ft. 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:43.520 Another recent study found that coughs and sneezes create turbulent 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:48.520 gas clouds that can carry pathogens a whopping twenty seven feet. 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.560 More recently, the World Health Organization recognized that COVID nineteen 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:59.040 can be airborne in indoor spaces with poor ventilation after 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:03.400 pressure from hundreds of scientists. The issue, though, as Gabriel 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.600 points out, is that there isn't a dichotomy here. It's 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.600 not that a virus is either airborne or spreads through 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:14.800 droplets when we cough and sneeze. It's a spectrum. The 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.880 bigger question instead is whether the virus is actually infectious 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:25.480 in all of these different ways that we encounter it. Obviously, 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.600 we know that sneezing and coughing produce a lot of 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.440 different sized particles. We know they can travel fairly far. 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.760 We have a pretty good body of literature now that 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.400 says that even things like talking and singing produce some 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.040 of the smaller particles. We have some literature that says 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:45.360 that in certain cases we can find we can basically 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.480 find RNA, we can find viruns, We can find some 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.520 information that says that coronavirus is in these smaller particles. 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.560 But we don't have great information on is how infectious 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:56.600 are those smaller particles. How much do we have to 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:58.640 breathe in to get infected In that kind of thing, 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.600 The thing is the world we live in isn't rearranging 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:09.320 itself to accommodate a spectrum of conditions. Our built world 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.760 is starting to revolve around maintaining a distance of six feet. Parks, 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:18.000 including San Francisco's famous Dolores Park, are painting white circles 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.600 on the ground to designate where to sit as school's reopen. 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:25.880 Guidelines from places like the American Pediatric Society have suggested 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.239 that desks should be placed between three and six feet apart. 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.120 I also spoke with Eron Betsky, the director of Virginia 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.480 Tech School of Architecture and Design, about what kinds of 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.920 more permanent changes we might expect to our built world 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:44.040 after the pandemic. Aaron says we can expect things like 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:49.120 better ventilation in indoor spaces and more easily cleaned surfaces. 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.720 He also said design will become more private and isolating. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.720 This is going to be just one more layer of 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.920 trying to isolate and insulate ourselves from other human beings 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:06.280 in the real world, and in the end it will 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.080 be used. Should we do it. Of course, we should 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.360 do it. We need to protect people, We need to 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.880 protect ourselves because we have made ourselves vulnerable. All that 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:20.680 you will see is the erection of shields and separating devices. 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:25.240 So I think it's unfortunate that what had become a 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.440 more collective and open environment workplace in many areas of 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.520 people complain that they can't concentrate, is going to turn 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.320 back into Dilbert Land. So we'll see a revenge at 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:40.160 the office qube. Aaron says that design will also try 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.120 to look safe, like the hospital rooms with rounded corners 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.920 designed to prevent dirt from accumulating in them that cropped 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:52.200 up in the twenties and thirties. You're also going to 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:57.000 see a style where things should need to look safe 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:00.839 to reassure people. So I'm not saying that necessarily we're 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:05.439 going to make things that are safer by having rounded corners, 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.959 but we're going to make things that reassure people that 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.079 there's not something hiding somewhere that's going to come out 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.880 and bite them or make them sick. This won't be 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.520 the first time our physical realm has been altered due 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:25.080 to disease. In the eighteen hundreds, for example, after cholera 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:29.559 killed tens of thousands of Parisians, the city condemned crowded 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:34.720 medieval neighborhoods and instead built wide avenues and parks. But 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.119 the sign suggests we should be considering things like airflow 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.120 and the size of a room when making decisions about 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:46.760 what distance is a safe distance. You know, probably any 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.680 researcher in any of the related fields would agree is 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.000 that the farther way you can be the better. Right, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.240 And and so you have to make some messaging decision. 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.240 And I suppose about what is far and what is close. 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:04.240 Six ft doesn't feel that far to me um, But 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.440 also there I understand that there are other sort of 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.200 things that go into making that decision. Right, can you 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:12.320 open up? Would you be able to reopen any of 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.079 our day to day life if we insisted on right? 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:26.520 That becomes a lot harder at the end of the day. 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:32.120 It's not exactly six ft that's a rule to live by. Instead, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.000 it's more important to remember to keep your distance no 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.280 matter where you are, and of course to wear a mask. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.920 That was Kristin v. Brown and that's it for our 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.920 show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one around 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:04.160 the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:06.719 you like the show, please leave us a review. And 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.560 a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.440 way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.800 Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:25.280 Magnus Hendrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:29.760 reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Citrin. 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:34.760 Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.319 is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.