Two metres apart, please

It's startling to realise that even now, weeks into the isolation measures introduced by the spread of covid19, after eight people have died from the illness and more than 100 cases have been identified,  the most basic of instructions on how to limit the spread of the virus seems to elude our grasp.

While research into all the ways that covid19 spreads continues, it's now definitive that the principal source of infection for the virus is sustained exposure to an infected person.

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests a minimum of three feet of distance between people standing together, and the two-metre suggestion is an amplification of the measure wherever it is possible.

The WHO has identified the primary method of transmission as droplets produced by speech, coughing and ordinary breathing from an infected person which go airborne. The virus infects anyone breathing them in or touching them then touching their eyes or mouth. New research into the persistence of the spread of the coronavirus is considering the presence of microdroplets, tiny particles of liquid that remain suspended in the air, carrying the virus far longer and further than was generally understood before now.

Two metres translates, in this metric-averse nation, into 6.56 feet. That's the height of a tall human. That distance makes for an unusual sight in a socially engaged TT, people spread apart in lines just outside normal conversation range. Which is the point.

Despite countless warnings by public health experts, constant repetition in news media and on social media channels and the stern attention of police officers, shoppers and citizens doing business in San Fernando were found clustering in groups that clearly ignored that core instruction.

Police officers on duty on Tuesday in the business centre of the southern city told Newsday that they feared that within another two weeks there might be another round of cases cropping up caused by simple stubbornness. The most densely clustered people in these groups are those hoping to be first through the door of a commercial enterprise, their desire to be first a worrying displacement of the more sensible imperative to be safe.

The Police Service is now implementing roadblocks to screen citizen to ensure that only people with legitimate business were on the roads. This follows a campaign to ensure that bars complied with the orders to close and the arrests of three bar owners who are alleged to have defied the measure.

To drive home the point with, perhaps, necessary morbidity, 6.5 feet is also the approximate depth of the secondary excavation of a burial site.

That's a fate citizen should work harder to avoid.