On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Ranking Member Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) acknowledged that there wasn’t any evidence for six feet social distancing guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic but defended the guidelines because “they had to pick an arbitrary number to make it easy for people to understand the concept of social distancing.”
Host Erin Burnett asked, “[Fauci] did also talk about some things that he conceded on. He conceded, for example, Congressman, that there’s no scientific basis for the six-feet distancing rules. He conceded there may have been negative repercussions to vaccine mandates. Do you still feel that he did the best that could have been done?”
Ruiz responded, “I think that he did the best that he could have…done under the circumstances, which he explained very early on, where we had thousands of people dying from this novel virus and we were figuring things out as we went. And with more data, we were able to adjust. Now, let me back up for a second, because the Republicans tried to put the attack on the no data for the six feet of social distancing as an attack on the basic public health principle of social distancing when you have an aerosolized or a droplet-transmittable virus from somebody’s mouth. Now, it doesn’t take data to show you that if you jump off an airplane without a parachute, you’re going to die. So, we know that if you are far away from a person’s ability to extract or cough up or sneeze aerosolized droplet[s], that you’re going to be safer from receiving that droplet or aerosolized virus into your eyes, your nose, your mouth. Now, the question that was asked is, was there any evidence to show whether it should have been six feet or ten feet or 50 yards or three feet? And that is no. So, they had to pick an arbitrary number to make it easy for people to understand the concept of social distancing.”
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