By John Chenier
Medical scientists have been working all out to understand and find a way to defeat COVID-19. Teams in countries around the world are searching for a vaccine that will neutralize the virus or to find medicines that will treat and relieve the deadliest symptoms brought on by COVID. Public health agencies are examining how the virus is spread, how long it can live on various materials in wait for its next victim and how much and what kind of exposure people can tolerate before they come down with the disease.
At the moment, the only and best weapon available to prevent the spread of COVID is not medical, but social — as in social distancing. If you avoid contact with an infected person, you cannot contract the disease and, more importantly, you cannot pass it on to others.
may be in conflict with the requirements of physical distancing. What will be sacrificed?
Parking? Vehicle traffic? Pedestrian and/or diners’ safety? Photo: John Chenier
The lockdown gave us time to design practices and redesign workspaces based on what we were learning about the spread of COVID. Many businesses adopted new ways of serving their customers. Take-out, on-line ordering and pick-up or delivery services eliminated most physical contact. Protective screens, directional arrows and limited capacity in stores made practicing social distancing easier and shopping safer.
But, as lockdown restrictions are phased out, it is important to remember that the one thing that really matters hasn’t changed. The COVID-19 virus is still out there and there is still no known cure or means of prevention other than to wash your hands frequently, avoid touching your face and, of course, practice social distancing. It may sound easy, but it isn’t as easy as you might think.
While medical scientists have been searching for a cure, social scientists have been working on what kind of messaging works best at getting people to accept and act on pandemic warnings. An article by Graham Lawton in the May 2020 issue of New Scientist laid out what they have discovered about public acceptance. Among those he interviewsed were researchers from the Behaviourial Research Unit in the Economic & Social Research Institute of Ireland
The trick here, says Lunn, [Peter Lunn, team leader] is to generate a common group identity. That means “geting it across that we are all in it together and communicating to everybody a strategy that says , ‘if we all do X, we will all be better off and here’s why.’ And also introducing gradual degrees of social punishment and disapproval for people who don’t bat for the team.” Think tutting when people don’t social distance or challenging those who break the rules.
Obviously a British magazine! In other countries, a mere tut-tut has led to dire consequences.
The article continues:
Encouraging collective action, for example, is a classic public goods problem where enough people must override their own self-interest in pursuit of a common goal. Existing research suggests that most people are “conditional operators”: willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, but only if others do too.
That last part is what they discovered to be the most critical element to public acceptance. It is also the source of our biggest problem.
There have been many contradictory approaches and attitudes to COVID since the pandemic was declared. Some of these changes in approach are a result of what we have managed to learn about the spread or containment of the virus; others are what people would rather have us believe, such as “It’s just a flu.”; others are based on different ways of coping with a pandemic, such as developing herd immunity.
These contradictory messages chip away at the public’s buy-in to social distancing. The likelihood that people will follow recommended procedures on social distancing is reduced significantly when they see leaders who don’t “walk the talk” or public policies that go against social distancing. Add in all the false information that has been circulated and you can understand why we seem to have social confusion rather than social distancing.
The real test for residents of Lowertown, especially in the ByWard Market area, will be the ability to practice social distancing in restaurants or when walking on the sidewalks Diners on patios will, for obvious reasons, not be wearing masks. Pedestrians should be two metres away from the closest diner. Current patio regulations for restaurants require that they leave a space of 1.98 metres for pedestrian traffic. If that is followed, the first rank of pedestrian traffic would have to be on the roadway and those going in the opposite direction attempting to social distance should be a further two metres beyond that. And that doesn’t account for patrons waiting to get in.
In other words, something will need to change. We cannot have patios, ensure pedestrian safety and have 1.98 metre pathways. There has to be some combination of either shrinking patios or shrinking roads.
How the city goes about balancing the safety of it citizens against the need for patios if restaurants are to remain viable will send a message about the priority it places on preventing the spread of COVID — and how safe it is to enter the Market precinct.