The “explicit guidance” is also minimally scientific: it varies from 1m in (parts of) Europe, to six feet in the US. These things are being made up on the fly.

The “explicit guidance” is also minimally scientific: it varies from 1m in (parts of) Europe, to six feet in the US. These things are being made up on the fly. There is no solid science for how far apart people should be, and there are so many complicating factors (what kind of room? how much airflow?) that any such guidance is a rough guideline, at best. Folks who are stringently trying to stay six feet apart from each other while walking down the street in Manhattan, for example, are more than a bit silly. The GP is a reasonable statement of the current scientific knowledge: it isn’t airborne, and you actually do need fairly intimate contact to get the virus “through the air”. Spending hours together in an unventilated room is probably sufficient, even if you never get closer than 1m; conversely, it probably doesn’t matter much if you pass right next to someone on the street(unless they cough directly in your face).