Social Delusioning?

Is anybody really social distancing? Maybe it depends on exactly what social distancing means. But if it actually means maintaining a distance of six feet from other people, my own experience is that no one is really doing it.

I don’t mean that people don’t intend to do it. Or that we intentionally invade one another’s space. It’s just that we’re lousy at it, and we aren’t wired that way.

This isn’t about pointing the finger. Because I confess that I don’t succeed either. Whatever my intentions, I just don’t manage to be around other people for very long before someone is in my space or I’m in theirs.

During the first couple of months of the COVID shutdown, I successfully avoided almost all physical meetings and gatherings. But in recent weeks, I’ve been to several. And I can confidently state that not a single one has been really successful from a social distancing perspective.

That is, if six feet really means six feet. I sometimes wonder if the stated recommendation is six feet because health officials share my own conclusion: that people are horrible at social distancing. Do you recall that the initial recommended distance was 2-3 feet? I wonder if this wasn’t inflated with the belief that most people would never meet the full standard but might meet it halfway?

My personal experience has gone something like this:

A meeting or gathering is planned. One party says, “Of course we’ll social distance,” and there is general agreement. At the moment of contact, there is a display of good intention: people sliding sideways to pass one another, taking awkward detours, often with arms spread wide, or leaning away from one another. But within a short period of time – usually ten to twenty minutes – people are walking or standing within a foot or two of one another and no one seems to notice. When I’ve mentioned it, the reactions range from mild surprise, to shrugs of resignation to denial that there have been any lapses at all.

And I get it. I even accept it. We humans aren’t wired to behave like this. We’re meant to huddle together. And it’s uncomfortable to back away from someone, to ignore an offered hand, or to tell someone they’re standing too close. I'm accepting that if I want to social distance, I just can't do meetings. It just bugs me that we pretend we’re doing what we aren’t.

But what led me to post this are signs that this ‘denial’ may be more deep-rooted and widespread than I’d thought. I was watching CBC’s The National the other night. And there was a light, upbeat feature about a graduation event for a group of high schoolers who missed the real thing. And of course they missed the real thing because of COVID concerns. But in the videos of the event everyone is standing in small clusters as though COVID is the least of anyone’s concern. And then, the CBC anchor explicitly says that parents and teachers were on hand to make sure that everyone observed social distancing! I was astonished. Hadn’t he seen the video that I just saw? There was clearly no social distancing happening at all.

Then, I saw something very similar again today. Another event, video clearly showing that social distancing was ignored, and a representative of the event stating that, “…of course, social distancing was observed.”

So I’m scratching my head a little. Is what I’m seeing a reflection of the resignation that may be setting in about social distancing? Acceptance that people are too weary of the shutdown to take it seriously anymore? It might be so. And this may not matter across most of Canada, where infection numbers have clearly and steadily been coming down. But if there’s another spike, as much of the U.S. is now experiencing, or a full blown 2^nd wave months from now, I wonder if it will even be possible to mandate a shutdown. It looks like there are many reasons that people will seize on, to stop trying to do something that we aren’t very good at anyway.