28 May 2020
Scrap the Two-Metre Rule
Now!
By Richard Pooley
Returning to south-west England last Wednesday after ten weeks in south-west France has been a discombobulating experience. As my Senegalese taxi driver (masked, separated from me by a plastic screen) took me from the Gare d’Austerlitz to the Gare du Nord, Parisians were behaving on that hot early afternoon little differently from their Lottois fellow-citizens three hundred miles to the south. Most women wore masks, many surely artfully designed to draw attention to their faces and away from the lack of clothing elsewhere. Fewer men wore masks. Those who were probably only did so because they had to on all public transport and in stations. A trip across town which would normally take an hour lasted forty minutes. More cyclists than usual, I would say; and buses half-full. Pavements were crowded with people chatting or simply ambling home to get a late lunch. One metre apart? Rarely.
My (French) son-in-law had driven up from Bath to collect me at St Pancras. All of us on the quarter-full Eurostar train had had to wear masks and were still doing so as we came through on to the station concourse. Only one of the waiting greeters, all at least two metres apart from each other, was wearing a mask. And he continued to do so all the way back to Bath. As I did.
Next day I was in charge of shopping for my wife, daughter and grandsons, all safely living in another part of the city from me. I had taken over from my son-in-law who had already set off for the Channel Tunnel and a car journey across France to his new office near St Tropez. Lucky man. I headed for the usual entrance to Sainsbury’s, masked and ready to fill my trolley with blueberries, nappy pants and sundry other necessities for toddler twins, working mother and nannying grandmother. My way was blocked by a furious, gesticulating female fiend in Sainsbury’s garb. Had I not read the sign or seen the queue that stretched back into the far distance from the other entrance? Er, no. I trundled my way past thirty-six people and their trolleys, trying to ignore the obvious disapproval at my behaviour on their maskless faces. As I waited in the queue I pondered on my very different supermarket experiences in France. There were never queues outside my nearest Leclerc or Intermarché. Why? Because in France and many other European countries the required minimum “social distance” is one metre, not two. Far more people can be absorbed by French supermarkets without breaking the one-metre distance rule.
One metre is what the World Health Organisation recommends is the minimum distance between people in public places while the coronavirus in still active in the population. There is no evidence which shows that two metres has resulted in fewer cases of Coivd-19 than one metre. Badly-hit Spain and the UK chose two metres. So, originally, did mildly-affected Denmark. Germany went with one and a half, and Italy with one. Has the British insistence on two metres made it much more difficult for the lock-down in the UK to be eased in a way which makes it possible for people to return to work, for schools to reopen, for public transport to be used effectively, and for shops, gyms, the hospitality industry, airlines and sports clubs to operate profitably? Will the fear of catching the virus, which the British Government has so successfully and evidently (to my fresh eyes) instilled in many of the British people, make it much harder for the British to accept what the Danes have accepted when the social distance in Denmark was recently cut from two metres to one? Or will the selfish actions of Dominic Cummings and the refusal of Boris Johnson to sack him result in most British taking back control of their lives (and deaths) and refusing to keep even one metre apart? If my French experience is any guide, the British will be literally rubbing shoulders and more before the summer is out. Indeed, photographs of British beaches rammed with sunseekers and bathers last weekend indicate that it’s already happening.
Throughout the time I was in France, I watched the 20-minute interview by Jean-Jacques Bourdin of the politically great and medically good broadcast simultaneously on radio and television at 08.35 each weekday on RMC BFMTV. From the start of France’s confinement, Bourdin, one of the most respected journalists in France, asked almost every one of his interviewees whether the French would be able to take their annual summer holiday. He knows just how important this is to the French. The people who live all year round in my village in France know how important domestic tourism is to the economic survival not only of the village but of the whole Lot department. I described this four years ago – Les Vacances de L’Ete. Most French spend their summer holidays in France. And it can sometimes feel as though all of them have chosen the Lot as the place to come to. The population of the department jumps by 700% in July and August. I am confident, as are my erstwhile neighbours, that 2020 will be no different. And will locals and visitors keep one metre distant as they party every Thursday night in the village square or buy food in the market in the same square on Thursdays and Saturdays? I think not. And the French Government know it and are making their plans in the expectation that the country’s déconfinement will be done by July.
And when the second wave of Covid-19 hits, as it surely will across Europe, whether it is because the lock-downs were not continued or because the lock-downs stopped most people getting the virus the first time round, there is no way the British Government will be able to successfully reimpose the two-metre social distancing rule. It will be hard enough to get people to accept one metre. So why don’t they make life easier for all people and businesses trying to get back to work and do what the sensible Danes have done and cut the distance to one metre? Now.
