so, social distancing is supposed to prevent the spread of the disease, and maybe it might work if the following things are known and implemented:
- we have to know exactly how far the virus can jump in order to know how far to stand apart.
- we have to fucking do it.
but, we didn't and still don't know the answer to the first part and, if you've been in a grocery store, you know that the second part is fucking hopeless.
then, by implementing this in a half-effective way, without knowing how far the virus can actually jump, what we're doing is creating selective pressures for transmission amongst mutations that can spread further.
let's be concrete.
suppose the virus can jump a maximum of 2.5 metres and the social distancing policy is 2 metres. now, the virus will have some variation, just like humans - some mutations will allow the virus to jump a maximum of 0.5 metres, whereas others may allow it to jump 3 or 4 metres. but, if you force people to stay 2 metres apart from each other, only the viruses that can jump further than 2 metres will get to their next host and transmit further. the ones with minimal ability to jump will not be successful and will die out.
now, it is true that if we were to set social distancing at 3 m and stick to it, and we got a little luck in no mutations getting over that, then the virus would die out via social distancing. but, if we calculated this wrong (and we clearly did.) and then were half-assed about enforcing it (how about quarter-assed, really?) then it's eventually going to be the case that all of the strains of the virus will be able to jump past that 2 metre distance, and social distancing becomes meaningless because we've spurred the virus to evolve beyond it.
so, do we increase social distancing to 10 metres then? well, that's what you'd need to do, if you were to salvage the concept, yes....
likewise, if you start with a virus that can only get through a cloth mask 10% of the time (which is an underestimate of the starting point) and force everybody to wear a mask then only that 10% of virus genomes will carry on to the next generation. but, once that happens, all of the strains can then get through masks with ease - because we've driven the transmission process to select for the variants most adept at getting through masks. we'd have to all wear n95s, then. but, what happens when that selective process works it's way through?
this used to be a relatively harmless virus, but i told you, like, last year that it wasn't going to stay a harmless virus if we kept putting these kinds of selective pressures on it to mutate into a more dangerous one. so, now what?
well, right now, we've just made it more contagious. i don't think we've made it for deadly. yet.
but, if we want to avoid doing that, we should probably back off and stop being so aggressive with it and sort of let it burn out. we have 70%+ vaccination rates now. that's as close as we're ever going to get to mitigating this, and we should be careful to avoid creating a disaster out of a situation that seems like it's going to be alright.