It has become popular among some on the right to diss those who advocated social distancing during the Covid pandemic. A public figure admitted that the 6 feet distance was a guess, not based on research, done to get people not to cluster and thus share germs. People pounced on this to claim it was nonsense to distance.
I believe we had less Covid because of social distancing, though I'll admit I cannot cite evidence thereto. Keeping individuals with viral laden breath several feet away is just common sense.
During the pandemic the DrsC wore plastic face shields for a couple of weeks before switching to cloth masks. You should try wearing one of those for a day while you go about your normal activities.
What you'll learn is that all of us expel small droplets of saliva/mucus as we breathe and talk. These are caught on the inside of the shield, dry there, and become unsightly.
Anyone who has Covid (or any other respiratory illness) is expelling tiny disease cultures even if they are not coughing. Those are heavier than air and will sink to the ground where they'll do no harm, but they won't do so immediately.
If my high school physics was accurate, doubling the distance you are from someone expelling infected droplets should decrease the droplet density to the square root of what it was standing at a normal conversational distance. So, if at 3' the concentration is, for example, 100, at 6' the concentration should be roughly 10. And in crowded places like elevators and airplane cabins we are much closer than 3'.
So yes, distancing works, not perfectly and not completely, but you ignore basic physics if you think it didn't help.
