Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. We're the programme that

sneezes suspects statistics into the crook of an analytical elbow and I'm Tim Harvard.

We're all pondering how a post lockdown world will work. How can we avoid infection spreading

again while getting on with life?

The World Health Organisation recommends that people keep at least one metre apart from

each other that different countries have adopted different standards.

The US Centers for Disease Control recommends staying six feet apart, that's nearly two metres.

In the UK the rule is two metres.

A one metre rule would obviously make it easier to go about our daily affairs but presumably

would also increase the risk of infection relative to a two metre rule.

It's a trade off of course, keeping a hundred metres apart is very safe and very impractical,

squeezing into concert venues, trains or elevators is how we always use to do things but the virus

loves it when we snuggle up close.

The Lancet published a meta-analysis of over 170 observational studies at the spread of COVID-19

and two related illnesses, SARS and MERS, looking at the value of masks, visors and physical distance.

None of the studies were randomized trials but in total they covered a lot of people in a lot of

different situations. The Lancet authors concluded that maintaining one metre physical distance gave a large

protective effect relative to actual physical contact but there was some evidence that moving to a two metre

distance might provide a substantial further protection.

So keeping some distance really helps, keeping a bigger distance probably helps more, that makes sense I suppose,

but what about the flip side of this question?

How much of a difference would it make to businesses and indeed to all of us trying to get on with life

...