The All-or-Nothing Approach to Social Distancing Isn't Working

After months in lockdown, many Americans are craving human contact, crowding into bars and joining parties or other large gatherings. The standard rules to prevent Covid-19—wear a mask and stay at least six feet apart—are being flouted, even as cases spike across the U.S. and the World Health Organization warns the worst is yet to come.

This apparent coronavirus fatigue is spurring some public health experts to call for more nuanced guidelines to help people avoid contagion. Their recommendations draw on a pragmatic model called harm reduction, which seeks to reduce the negative consequences of potentially risky activities, particularly drug use. Harm reduction emerged in the early 1990s during the AIDS crisis, and one of its key lessons “was that people had to think in terms of safer, not in terms of absolute safety, figuring out how to do activities that were essential to life,” says Daniel Wolfe, of the Open Society Foundations’ public health program.