ARBITRARY: CDC, NC State Board of Education Halve Arbitrary K-12 Social Distancing Requirement to 3 Feet

RALEIGH – Wait six feet apart. We’ve been hearing this command for about a year now. It is one of the ‘Three Ws’ as Health Czar Mandy Cohen as repeated reflexively for months.

Indeed, the six feet rule has been used as a deterministic input for limiting capacity in restaurants; bars; gyms; event and entertainment venues; retail stores; and, importantly, schools, insomuch as they were open to students at all.

You probably won’t be hearing it quite as much anymore in North Carolina, or across the nation, on account of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) move to halve the social distancing requirement to three feet in K-12 schools. That spurred the partisan N.C. State Board of Education to approve it’s own motion reflecting the change in requirements for N.C. Public Schools.

The Board approved this change quickly, along with funds for a collaborative COVID monitoring study on those middle and high school kids returning to ‘Plan A,’ a full reopening. It’s a relief for many students, parents, and administrators who wanted to reopen their schools fully, but were impeded by the former six feet social distancing requirement.

So, what about that six feet? With so many extraordinarily consequential policies predicated on the magic of standing six feet a part — how many hours in the classroom, jobs, or businesses must have been lost to this six feet rule — one might wonder if this distance was the minimum backed by an exhaustive feat of science  targeting the optimal distance to effectively reduce transmission of the Wuhan Virus.

Nope. It was completely arbitrary from the very beginning, and enough clarifying science has emerged that America’s Arbitrary Autocrats at national and state public health agencies have been forced to confront it, as nonchalantly as possible, and quietly cut it in half. For good measure, they proceed to behave as if their diktats should retain credibility.

This 50 percent reduction in required distancing is such a wrinkle in the script that even ‘Keep Schools Closed or We’re All Going to Die‘ activists like the Far Left N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE) stumbled into the rational observation that it could be arbitrary.

This is the truly remarkable statement from NCAE President Tamika Kelly (emphasis added):

“For the sake of public trust and clarity, we urge the CDC to provide far more detail about the rationale for the change from 6 feet to 3 feet for students in schools, clearly and publicly account for differences in types of school environments, new virus variants, differences in mitigation compliance, and how study participants were tested for the virus.

“We are concerned that the CDC has changed one of the basic rules for how to ensure school safety without demonstrating certainty that the change is justified by the science and can be implemented in a manner that does not distract from the larger long-term needs of students.” 

Say it again; LOUDER.

Folks, you really can’t make this stuff up. The salient points made by Ms. Kelly, on behalf of a Leftist political organization that has fought to keep schools closed and levels of Pandemic Panic high, can and should be appropriately applied to EVERY COVID RESTRICTION promoted by the CDC and decreed by public health agencies.

What is the rationale for each restriction; and is their strong science to back that up?

Aren’t environments different, and uniform declarations therefore insufficient?

Are the purported benefits of these restrictions weighed against the long-term effects of such policies?

For goodness’ sake, are these extraordinarily disrupting, central tenets of Pandemic Panic policies justified by proven science at all?

We doubt that Ms. Kelly, neither the professional Left, will examine any other part of the bigger picture through this happenstance of logic. Even so, the sudden script change and the jumbled confusion it’s caused the role players, has effectively caused them to break the fourth wall in a fit of acknowledging reality here. It’s remarkable, at least.

Luckily, and most importantly, kids can get back in school now that the bureaucratic barriers have been moved.