Does social distancing even do anything?

To preface this, I am not particularly harmed at the moment by the lockdowns; I was working from home back in the fall. What I am concerned with is people on both sides citing 'science' for their claims. One of the foundations for the lockdowns is the benefit of social distancing to slow the spread.

Sounds intuitive, right? If we stay away from each other, we won't spread the virus. Unfortunately, medical history is chock full of ideas and treatments which at first seem intuitive, but later are revealed to be either pointless, or detrimental.

First, the NIH on social distancing:

LINK

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what we need most right now to slow the stealthy spread of this new coronavirus is a full implementation of social distancing. What exactly does social distancing mean? Well, for starters, it is recommended that people stay at home as much as possible, going out only for critical needs like groceries and medicines, or to exercise and enjoy the outdoors in wide open spaces. Other recommendations include avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people, no handshakes, regular handwashing, and, when encountering someone outside of your immediate household, trying to remain at least 6 feet apart.

These may sound like extreme measures. But the new study by NIH-funded researchers, published in the journal Science, documents why social distancing may be our best hope to slow the spread of COVID-19 [1].

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Ah hah! So there is clear evidence that social distancing works. The experts say it right there. They even cite a study!

Let's continue:

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Here are a few highlights of the paper, which looks back to January 2020 and mathematically models the spread of the coronavirus within China:

• For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections.
• Although they are thought to be only about half as infectious as individuals with confirmed COVID-19, individuals with undetected infections were so prevalent in China that they apparently were the infection source for 86 percent of confirmed cases.
• After China established travel restrictions and social distancing, the spread of COVID-19 slowed considerably.

...As these new findings clearly demonstrate, each of us must take social distancing seriously in our daily lives. Social distancing helped blunt the pandemic in China, and it will work in other nations...

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Wow, sounds conclusive. Should we bother to go and look at the study ourselves?

The study they cite

Hmmm, first paragraph after the abstract, which doesn't say anything about social distancing:

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The novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China (SARS-CoV2) at the end of 2019 quickly spread to all Chinese provinces and, as of 1 March 2020, to 58 other countries (1, 2). Efforts to contain the virus are ongoing; however, given the many uncertainties regarding pathogen transmissibility and virulence, the effectiveness of these efforts is unknown.

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Weird, its almost like the NIH took a study and projected their own opinion on it. Reading through a quick googling, its apparent that every study which looks at social distancing is at pains to point out that they have no conclusive evidence. One of the main problems: lack of any reliable control groups. Control groups are a central tenet of modern scientific studies. Without them, you are unable to know if something had any actual effect.

Here's one for the flu from a few years ago.

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Fifteen studies, representing 12 modeling and three epidemiological, met the eligibility criteria. The epidemiological studies showed that social distancing was associated with a reduction in influenza-like illness and seroconversion to 2009 influenza A (H1N1). However, the overall risk of bias in the epidemiological studies was serious.

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What do they mean by that? That if the modelers wanted to show social distancing was effective, they could, and there was no control to measure against that was reliable.