Image Credit: Twitter, @FacetheNation 
A former commissioner for the US Food and Drug Administration on Sunday described how the CDC’s six-foot social distancing guideline was selected arbitrarily.
Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation discussing his latest book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the CDC lacked “rigor” in effecting its policies.
Former FDA commissioner @ScottGottliebMD calls CDC’s six-foot distancing recommendation “arbitrary” and “a perfect example of sort of the lack of rigor around how CDC made recommendations.” pic.twitter.com/2Xf4vrz6Ec
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 19, 2021
“And you write, the six feet was arbitrary?” asked Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan.
“The six feet was arbitrary in and of itself,” Gottlieb answered.
“But if the administration had focused in on that, they might have been able to effect a policy that would have actually achieved their outcome. But that policy making process didn’t exist, and the six feet is a perfect example of sort of the lack of rigor around how CDC made recommendations.”
Gottlieb went on to explain the CDC’s six-foot distancing guideline was recommended with little to no science behind it.
“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. We now know COVID spreads through aerosols. We’ve known that for a while, so how operative is that?”
He also explained the CDC simply revised its original recommendation of 10-foot social distancing after the Trump White House pushed back, arguing that kind of distancing could shut down society.
“The initial recommendation that the CDC brought to the White House, and I talk about this, was 10 feet,” he said. “And a political appointee in the White House said, we can’t recommend 10 feet. Nobody can measure 10 feet. It’s inoperable. Society will shut down. So the compromise was around six feet.”
“Now imagine if that detail had leaked out. Everyone would have said, this is the White House politically interfering with the CDC’s judgment.”
Gottlieb says instead of changing along with the science, the CDC’s guidelines changed seasonally.
“The CDC said 10 feet, it should be 10 feet, but 10 feet was no more right than six feet and ultimately became three feet. But when it became three feet, the basis for the CDC’s decision to ultimately revise it from six to three feet was a study that they conducted the prior fall. So they changed it in the spring. They had done a study in the fall where they showed that if you have two masked individuals, two people wearing masks, the risk of transmission is reduced 70 percent with masks if you’re three feet apart. So they said on the basis of that, we can now make a judgment at three feet is an appropriate distance. Which begs the question, if they had that study result in the fall, why didn’t they change the advice in the fall? Why did they wait until the spring?”
The former FDA commissioner said the constant revisions are what have led the American public to lose confidence in the institution.
“This is how the whole thing feels arbitrary and not science based. So we talk about a very careful, science-based process and then these anecdotes get exposed, and that’s where Americans start to lose confidence in how the decisions got made.”
Interestingly, Gottlieb currently sits on the Pfizer board of directors.
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