{"id":206623,"date":"2020-05-03T08:19:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T08:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206623"},"modified":"2020-05-06T05:00:04","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T05:00:04","slug":"government-adviser-says-guidelines-on-keeping-apart-was-conjured-out-of-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206623","title":{"rendered":"Government adviser says guidelines on keeping apart was &#8216;conjured out of nowhere&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Robert Dingwall from Nervtag said the rule is not backed by scientific evidence<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>The sociology professor warned evidence supports a one-metre gap but not two<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>He said that government&#8217;s advice for a two-metre distance was a &#8216;rule of thumb&#8217;<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Nervtag feeds into Sage, which is spearheading the government&#8217;s Covid-19 fight<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>James Gant \u2013 Daily Mail April 26, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Social distancing orders for people to keep two metres apart to stop the spread of <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/coronavirus\/index.html\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">coronavirus<\/span><\/strong><\/a> is not based on any scientific research, a government adviser has said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Robert Dingwall, from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the rule was &#8216;conjured up out of nowhere&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The sociology professor at Nottingham Trent University said scientific evidence supports a one-metre gap, but the two-metre advice was a &#8216;rule of thumb&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Nervtag feeds into the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which is spearheading the government&#8217;s pandemic response.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Johnson-Cummings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-194122\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Johnson-Cummings.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Johnson-Cummings.jpg 590w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Johnson-Cummings-300x178.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a>Sage has faced fierce criticism after it was revealed\u00a0Boris Johnson&#8217;s chief adviser Dominic Cummings has been sitting in on meetings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Mr Dingwall told Radio 4&#8217;s Today: &#8216;We cannot sustain [social distancing measures] without causing serious damage to society, to the economy and to the physical and mental health of the population.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;I think it will be much harder to get compliance with some of the measures that really do not have an evidence base. I mean the two-metre rule was conjured up out of nowhere.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He added:\u00a0&#8216;Well there is a certain amount of scientific evidence for a one-metre distance which comes out of indoor studies in clinical and experimental settings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;There&#8217;s never been a scientific basis for two metres, it&#8217;s kind of a rule of thumb. But it&#8217;s not like there is a whole kind of rigorous scientific literature that it is founded upon.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The government put the UK on lockdown on March 23 and enforced social distancing to try to combat the spread of the virus which has killed nearly 20,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Guidance on its website says: &#8216;If you meet others when you are outdoors (for example, on a walk) ensure that you stay at least 2 metres away.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-8256109\/Social-distancing-two-metres-apart-based-figure-says-government-adviser.html\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Dingwall, who is part of a group advising the government, said there has \u201cnever been a scientific basis for two metres\u201d social distancing <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206627,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206623\/revisions\/206627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}