Around here, we’re still haunted by the ghosts of COVID past. The playground has a big warning sign that tells parents not to keep the kids there for more than 30 minutes, to wash their hands, don’t feed them, to make sure they wear masks and… maintain a 6-foot distance from other kids. (Good luck with that.)

At the pharmacy,  the old ‘feet’ stickers on the floor mark what was supposed to be the old 6 foot personal DMZ.

Obviously no one (or hardly anyone) abides by these rules anymore and the whole thing feels a bit unreal, like a strange movie we saw or an odd dream we had, and yet millions lived under this totalitarian system. (It’s as if we had a year where we were suddenly living in the USSR and then the whole thing fell apart like a Cold War at hyperspeed.)

Where did that 6-foot social distancing thing even come from? Apparently, like so much else, the Department of Trust the Science just made it up.

Trust Fauci.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said in congressional testimony that he reviewed no scientific evidence behind the specific recommendations for masking children or maintaining 6-foot social distancing before advocating these policies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When asked about social distancing recommendations that were implemented in businesses and schools during the early stages of the pandemic, Fauci said he did not recall where the precise number of 6 feet came from.

“It just sort of appeared,” Fauci said in his interview. “I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever.”

Fauci also said that he had not seen any scientific study supporting the measurement, noting that such a study would be “very difficult” to do with accuracy and scientific rigor.

The Science Squad would make stuff up to suit the needs of the moment. Much like masking which Fauci was against before he was for.

The 6 feet rule was just something that sounded good to tell the proles.

Fauci, much as people hate him, was a symptom. The problem is that a whole lot of public health and D.C. works this way. As does a sizable chunk of public-facing medical science. Tell people something that sounds authoritative to get to do what you really want them to do. The goal is to get people to stay apart so tell them to wear masks and follow some arbitrary measure of social distancing while acting like there’s science behind it.

And there never was.

The wizard behind the curtain was always a humbug. In the face of mass panic, little big men like Fauci would throw their weight around while exploiting that panic. They claimed to embody science when all they embodied was power.