Keep your distance

More or Less: Behind the Stats

English - June 06, 2020 18:00 - 9 minutes - 8.26 MB - ★★★★★ - 740 ratings
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Previous Episode: False negatives, testing capacity and pheasants

Next Episode: Antibody tests, early lockdown advice and European deaths

What difference does a metre make? The World Health Organisation recommends that people keep at least 1 metre apart from each other to stop the spread of Covid-19, but different countries have adopted different standards.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends staying six feet apart - that’s just short of 2 metres; in the UK, the rule is 2 metres.

But all this has a big impact on the way businesses and societies get back to work. Tim Harford investigates the economic costs and conundrums of keeping our distance in a post-lockdown world.

How can we avoid infection spreading again, while getting on with life?