The alternative is what we have right now, ‘scientists’ blathering about their assumptions with the constant disclaimer that nobody really knows for real.
Part of that price is honesty on what's truly known, indicated, suggested, hypothesized, or unknown. What is "blathering" to you is intellectual integrity to others.
This is a correspondence piece, offering the opinion of a WHO working group. The opinion is also not the one you might assume: it proposes unblinding some subjects, not researchers, based on COVID-19 morbidity risk.
From a cursory search of NEJM and PubMed, I can't find evidence that any US-approved vaccines were allowed to run unblinded trials. But I could be wrong.
No, I am talking about ‘scientists’ telling others that Covid-19 is magically limited to a 1.5m or 6 feet circle (depending in which country you live). Or that they have to be really careful outside, and that it’s more safe to not go for a walk and fatten up in front of the TV. Or that ‘covid 0’ is a valid policy and that if it doesn’t work it is the fault of this week’s scapegoat. And then censoring anyone who would dare to point out the lack of logic.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, genuinely believes that COVID-19 can't be spread when social distancing measures are perfectly observed. The 1.5m/6ft distance was chosen based on both epidemiological models that show statistical decreases in contagion and the political reality that people (understandably) get very upset the more you ask them to stay away from other people.
The rest of your post doesn't reflect any government position that I'm currently aware of. Both my local government and the CDC encouraged me to go outside, while maintaining distancing, after the initial lockdown.
It's a very long read, but worth it. Basically, the social distancing measures were based on two things: That the primary spread vector was "droplets", and that they fell to the ground pretty quickly (before they could spread beyond ~6 feet).
The mistake the title refers to is that the medical definition that distinguishes "droplet" vs "aerosol" isn't the same as any other context, such as when used when determining how far the particles can travel. The cutoff between "droplet" and "aerosol" in the medical context came from a Tuberculosis study about how far different particle sizes could penetrate into the lungs. Only later were those numbers mistakenly used as the cutoff for "droplets" vs "aerosols" in general, leading to a lot of confusion over 2020: SARS-CoV-2 really does spread primarily through aerosols, not droplets, as defined in any context other than that medical mistake.
The US is not the world and really, a lot of people have made a lot of truly strange statements.
I have seen plenty of scientists with all kinds of statements, the worst being ‘oh if you got infected, it’s your own fault because you clearly didn’t stay 1.5 m from other people. Because otherwise it is impossible to get infected!’
Real science does have a price.