At a May 1, 2006, Science and Engineering fair in Indianapolis, 15 year old Laura Glass’ science project laid the plan for 2020 social distancing and lockdowns. [1, 2, 6] Maybe Laura was inspired by the New York Times article earlier that year which mentioned “social distancing“?
Laura’s father, Dr Robert Glass, “a senior scientist at Sandia in New Mexico who specialized in building advanced models to explain how complex systems work” [3] explored the separation and closure concept further and the paper “Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza” was published by the CDC in November 2006.
This concept flowed through Bush administration “federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and politically infeasible.” But by February 2007, the CDC wrote the Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) policy for pandemic influenza mitigation, which included “social distancing” and “stay at home” and closure of schools. [4]
Disease mitigation was challenged by Johns Hopkins academics in 2006. [5]