PHYSICAL DISTANCING
It’s harder to stay apart
“Even in the absence of threat,” philosopher Ophelia Deroy and colleagues wrote at the very start of the COVID-19 calamity, “spatial distancing is unnatural.” Like other primates, humans crave contact. Faced with danger, we instinctively want to huddle even closer.
Which may help explain why, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson mulls the idea of reducing the U.K.’S physical distancing rule from two metres to one and Quebec reduces it in some circumstances, new polling shows Canadians are having a harder time staying apart.
Overall, of 1,510 Canadian adults randomly recruited from a web panel who were surveyed June 5 to 7, 63 per cent said that, despite making “considerable efforts” to socially distance, people outside their families had come within two metres of them over the past week, up from 57 per cent the previous week.
Social distancing “enjoys the least success” among 18 to 24 year olds, the poll found, while Ontario saw the biggest week-to-week “erosion” in social distancing, along with Quebec and Alberta, according to the Association for Canadian Studies — Leger poll, which raises the question, will Canada be the last country to cling to the two-metre edict?
As the provinces move closer to semi-normal, as the “de-confinement” measures began, “we saw a change in the perception people had about whether others are getting in their space,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies and chair of the COVID-19 Social Impacts Network.
Outside B.C., where the inverse was true, “the idea of social distancing in large dense areas is increasingly challenging for people,” Jedwab said. “And there’s a psychological impact of de-confinement. People are a little more relaxed about social distancing.”
When asked where social distancing can be a challenge, 75 per cent said while grocery shopping, 20 per cent said in pharmacies, 24 per cent said in work spaces, 14 per cent said taking public transit and 22 per cent said going for a walk in the neighbourhood.
While the official federal advice in Canada is to keep no less than two metres distance from others outside the home as much as possible, Quebec announced Monday that, starting June 22, the province is reducing to one metre its physical distancing rule for children 16 and younger.
In movie theatres and other places where people don’t frequently circulate or speak, distancing will be reduced to 1.5 metres, Quebec officials said.
The World Health Organization has said at least one metre is safe. Canada, the U.K., and Spain are all at two metres, the U.S., 1.8 metres. Other countries (Australia, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal) have gone for either 1.5 metres, or one metre (China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Lithuania and Singapore).
In the U.K. Johnson has come under pressure from the tourism and hospitality industries to permit people to be physically closer together in pubs, restaurants, salons and spas, or risk the sectors sinking. On the weekend, Johnson said there was a “margin for manoeuvre” in the twometre rule.
The British PM has commissioned a scientific and economic review of the rule, the BBC reported, but some senior scientists, including England’s chief medical officer, have said it will likely have to remain in place for months.
Jedwab expects pressure will mount on Canadian health authorities to revisit the distancing rule. What’s most important is that there be some consistency, he said.
Like the flip-flopping on public non-medical mask wearing, “we’ve been getting a lot of ambiguous messages,” Jedwab said. “You can’t have a situation where I’m walking down Sainte-catherine’s street (in Montreal) and some people think it’s two metres and some think it’s one. It’s going to be chaotic.
“There’s got to be a clear message because there is still a lot of anxiety out there.” Even though young people disproportionately feel less anxious than at the start of the pandemic, there are many others who remain seriously jittery. Jedwab has seen people walking downtown with measuring tapes.
A study published in the medical journal The Lancet led by Mcmaster University researchers found that transmission of viruses is lower with distancing of one metre or more, versus a distance of less than one metre. The review, based on studies that focused mostly on MERS and SARS and not COVID-19, found that keeping a distance of one metre reduced the risk of infection from 13 per cent, to three per cent. Every extra metre of separation, up to three metres, doubled the relative protection.