Gottlieb: "Nobody knows" origins of six-foot social-distancing recommendation *****PFV0k6nvia pic.twitter.com/8gCORZiRHG
— The Hill (@thehill) September 19, 2021
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that "nobody knows" the origins of the six-foot social-distancing recommendation.
During an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Gottlieb told host Margaret Brennan that the recommendation was arbitrary, saying that the Biden administration asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change its guidelines from six feet to three feet in an effort to re-open schools last spring.
“Nobody knows where it came from. Most people assume that the six feet of distance, the recommendation for keeping six feet apart, comes out of some old studies related to flu, where droplets don't travel more than six feet,” Gottlieb told Brennan.