I think this is a matter of opinion (not about you being clueless, about what is 'safe interaction'
).
Social distancing is great but it is not 'the fix'. If anyone along the supply line of your orders is carrying the contagion, it is almost certainly on your food / groceries. Which I assume you will handle directly as soon as you get home. The only way to maintain real, 100% 'social distancing' is to also break the chain with anything handled by ANY other human with a period long enough to make sure the virus that may (and certainly will be in some cases) be on the packaging / products you take possession of. Are you getting mail (post for the Limeys (that is for you, Jim) )? Do you wait at least 9 days after the mail is delivered? If not, you are at some risk of inert material transfer through objects.
The point is that it is almost impossible to truly isolate ourselves. It is the same as doing everything we can to prevent motorcycle accidents- we can do whatever we want and as much as we want but the risk is never eliminated as long as one rides a motorcycle. So by refusing to allow strangers (and perhaps even friends?) into a six food space around you, you reduce but do not eliminate your chances of contracting this virus.... or even any other transmittable disease. BTW- wouldn't it be ironical (a favorite word) to contract something like typhoid in the middle of this COVID outbreak? Back to the point- you can swing the odds but not stack the deck to be 100% assured of avoiding the disease while still living anything like a normal, first- world life. Same goes for getting the virus as well; you could do anything (easy boys) regarding contact with an infected person and still not be 100% guaranteed of contracting the virus either.
So no, I do not think you are clueless but I do think you may be putting a bit too much emphasis on a single rule of behavior. We (Andrea and I) go to stores and shop pretty normally and I fully understand the risk that I / we could contract the virus for either the people around us as well as handling the food packaging, which may well be contaminated from almost anyone along the line that handled the product as well as previous customers who may have handled the package(s) and be infected. BTW, the same goes for washing our hands- it is a great step in the right direction to reduce the presence of the virus on our hands but it is NOT 100% assured that we have removed all of the potential virus. Again, a percentage will be washed away but some virus will be left. So probably a good idea but certainly not any kind of guarantee that you just made COVID disappear from our paws.
All of that said, I believe we should all do what we think best for ourselves and others, within the confines of whatever rules are in place, of course. If you choose to maintain some physical distance between yourself and others, that is certainly a sensible and reasonable choice. But it still comes with risk of infection as long as you are passing inert things between yourself and others. So each of us has to judge what is a reasonable mode of behavior given the circumstances. All in my opinion, of course.
On a different note, it looks like China has reached 'burnout' of virus transmission and should now be on the downside of infection rates (though not illness / death rates yet perhaps). It looks like Italy has also reached the 'knee of the curve'. The US is still in the climb though with no indications that we are peaking, at least from what I have seen and can understand from the data I have been able to find. This one is gonna' sting and we still cannot tell how much it is going to swell before it goes away....
Just be thankful that Mary Ann and I are not in TX, 'cause should we all happen to meet up, you know I could not resist that special hug I have.
Brian (COVID free as a boy can be..... I think)
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Am I the one that's clueless here?
Why is it the folks on TV telling us that we need to social distance 6 feet from each other (national or local doesn't seem to matter) often do it from a stage where people are all crammed together behind them to ensure they are all in the camera shot? To top that off, many of them in the back are constantly touching their faces!