What Prompted These Silly Requirements In The First Place?

I'm shocked.  Shocked, I tell you:

Schools can safely seat students three feet apart in classrooms, rather than six feet, says new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. Children must still wear masks, however.

Don’t get too excited, though. The six-foot-distancing rule for sporting events, assemblies, lunch, or chorus remains in place.

Greta Massetti, who leads the CDC’s community interventions task force says that while there is evidence of mental health and other benefits from in-person schooling, “we don’t really have the evidence that 6 feet is required in order to maintain low spread.”

In addition to the new 3-foot spacing, the CDC no longer recommends barriers between desks. “We don’t have a lot of evidence of their effectiveness,” said Massetti...

A recent study from Massachusetts found no significant difference between infection rates of students and staff members between schools using the 3-foot standard and those using the 6-foot standard. Well, aren’t we glad it only took about a year to figure that out.

I wonder if there's any evidence regarding the effectiveness of all those one-way arrows in the hallways around my campus, or of our requirement to wear masks even when walking alone outside on campus.