I find the following paragraph, the final one of the report, to be wholly unacceptable for a professional paper. Facetious sarcasm seems like the best description. This really should have been removed pre-publication.
We note there have also been no clinical trials of handwashing, coughing into your elbow, social distancing and quarantine, yet these measures have been widely adopted and are considered as effective.
You might think it a throwaway comment easily ignored, but I have recently seen it repeated in a news article.
Handwashing - surely widely accepted since the days of typhoid and Dr Snow. There is a reason medical staff wash etc so thoroughly before surgery, they don't do it as a random precautionary action!
Coughing into your elbow - seems pretty ineffective to me. Many droplets will escape or hang around on your sleeve until garment washed. Better than coughing (or sneezing) into the open air though.
Social distancing - pretty obvious - if you aren't in the vicinity, you won't get the opportunity to catch it.
Quarantine - no research into it's effectiveness, really? I find that hard to believe.
The first two can be done at minimal extra effort and cost. Masks aren't significantly expensive but would be a burden on the poorest, especially with freuquent replacement. As would buying bottles of sanitiser to carry at all times - and use frequently ie every mask up and down times.
Social distancing can be done with minimal effort and costs nothing (assuming you don't get run over jumping into the road) but has impact where it becomes 'stay at home' which is effectively population wide quarantine.
Quarantine takes serious effort and costs significantly - hence the furlough and business support schemes. Plus the social cost of 'shielding' isolation.
royalsociety.org
