We need common sense on social distancing

HOLDING hands isn’t a crime – yet. We all have our social distancing bugbears and here’s mine: you’re running along a path and coming towards you are a couple idling along, fingers entwined, taking up two-thirds of the walkway. Your choices are a) to get them to walk single file or b) plunge off the path into undergrowth that’s full of dog dirt. So much for your relaxing run.

What this behaviour says – and it’s a common enough scenario, as are groups who insist on walking three abreast – is that there are still some people who just don’t get it. They don’t seem to understand what social distancing requires of them.

Well, they need to wise up or everyone could suffer the consequences.

Today marks the beginning of a Bank Holiday weekend and in our disconcerting new surveillance society, we can all expect to be under renewed scrutiny. This week, there was another mild threat from the First Minister of further restrictions on our freedom to exercise if she felt they were needed. It follows a tougher warning from the UK Health Minister Matt Hancock last weekend after pictures appeared to show people meeting up with friends to walk along the promenade in Brighton and Hove.

But we don’t really need stricter rules. What we need is more common sense in following the ones we’ve got.

That goes for the path-hoggers, the socialisers and the thoughtless runners who bowl past people at close quarters instead of moving aside: they need to have the common sense to realise this isn’t OK and that their actions are causing real anxiety to others, especially older and more vulnerable people.

But it also goes, on the other side, for the over-reacters – those who vilify people who are inadvertently breaking the rules while trying to do the right thing.

A moral panic over minor infringements won’t help tackle coronavirus.

Our best hope of keeping ourselves and others safe is exercising sound judgment and respect for others.

Take picnics, sunbathing or any other kind of stationary activity in parks.

These things are not allowed for good reasons. If you do allow people to sunbathe in parks, then an empty space will quickly become thronged with people, even if they are trying to space themselves out. It then becomes difficult for anyone passing through the park to maintain social distancing. Placing your belongings on grass is a bit like planting a flag – others are forced to avoid you but you are making no effort to avoid them. Staying still in proximity to others for any length of time, meanwhile, increases the risk of infection even if you’re outdoors.

But this doesn’t mean that everyone who rests their weary legs within shouting distance of another human being is selfish and morally bankrupt.

Last weekend, I overheard a couple muttering about a mother who had sat down on an empty public lawn to give her young children something to eat. This was a brief pit stop, not a picnic, as small children need constant refuelling. The mum looked exhausted. Perhaps she’d been up all night with her toddler. The chances are, living in the city centre, that she had no garden of her own. She had clearly sat in the middle of the grass to keep well away from others.

Should she not have been there? Well, no, not really (see above) and she hauled herself to her feet and got moving again shortly afterwards. But she had put precisely no one at risk and deserved understanding, not condemnation.

There is a difference between someone carelessly making no effort and someone falling short while trying to do the right thing.

Part of the challenge for us all is that the rules are well-founded and sensible in purpose, but imperfect. This is no one’s fault; it’s just inevitable, given that they were formulated in mere hours instead of the months it would usually take. And so there are anomalies. The path networks in towns are busier than ever and it’s not practical to use them without at times passing others within the 2m distance. No one talks of shutting these paths and yet there is talk of shutting parks where people can space themselves much more widely and safely.

We’re all wrestling with these contradictions. But it’s in all our interests to try and make the rules work as best we can because the alternative, to restrict outdoor exercise further, would be drastic and risky – drastic because it would cause significant hardship and risky because it’s far from clear that its potential benefits would outweigh the harm.

In Paris, outside exercise has been banned during most daylight hours and it was banned altogether in Lombardy, so there is a precedent. But it’s no easy fix. You don’t have to be Neil Gaiman to imagine the damage shutting people up in their homes could do to their health. Not only would we do less exercise but many of us would also comfort ourselves with more treats and alcoholic drinks.

Worse still, probably, would be the mental health impact, particularly for those with anxiety, agoraphobia and depression, or children and adults living in abusive households for whom daily exercise might be their only escape. What a dire prospect for them.

And then, as with every other aspect of this crisis, there is the class dimension. Restricting people’s right to leave their homes may not seem like a calamity for people with private gardens, but for those holed up in tenements or tower blocks, particularly in small flats with bored, energetic children, being prevented from leaving home would be – let’s not be coy – flipping tortuous.

And there is a wider consideration. The evidence on how the virus is transmitted outdoors is patchy and unclear. If such a restriction were introduced and four weeks later there was little or no impact on the infection or mortality rate, then the casualty would be public trust in government decision-making.

Ministers know this and there appears to be no appetite for such a course of action yet.

But if the flouters keep flouting on one side, while hysteria erupts about minor infringements on the other, then we could still find ourselves in that position.

Common sense and respect for others are still our best defence against this relentless virus.

There is a difference between someone carelessly making no effort and someone falling short while trying to do the right thing