Gottlieb: “No one knows” the origins of the six-foot social distancing recommendation

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that “no one knows” the origins of the six-foot social distancing recommendation.

During an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Gottlieb told the host Margaret Brennan that the recommendation was arbitrary, saying the Biden administration had asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change its guidelines from six feet to three feet with the goal of reopening schools last spring.

” Nobody knows where he comes from. Most people assume that the six feet apart, the recommendation to keep six feet apart, is from old flu-related studies, where the droplets travel no more than six feet, ”Gottlieb said. to Brennan.

Former FDA Commissioner @ScottGottliebMD calls the CDC’s six-foot distancing recommendation “arbitrary” and “a perfect example of some kind of laxness in the way the CDC made recommendations.” pic.twitter.com/2Xf4vrz6Ec

– Face the Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 19, 2021

Gottlieb also said the CDC’s original recommendation for social distancing was 10 feet.

So the compromise was about six feet. Now imagine if that detail leaked. Everyone would have said, ‘It’s the White House that is politically interfering with the judgment of the CDC. The CDC said that 10 feet, it should be 10 feet, but 10 feet was no straighter than six feet and eventually became three feet, ”Gottlieb said.

“But when it got three feet, the CDC’s decision to finally revise it from six to three feet was a study they conducted the previous fall. So they changed it in the spring.