Six feet and 15 minutes became coronavirus gospel. The NFL had data that showed otherwise: The virus could be spread in under 15 minutes and from over six feet.

The NFL’s Covid-19 Finding That Saved the Season

The coronavirus gospel of ‘within six feet for more than 15 minutes’ wasn’t enough—and the NFL had the data to prove it.

It was early October, and the NFL had a problem. It wasn’t just that players and staff for the Tennessee Titans were continuing to test positive in an outbreak that shook the NFL’s season. It wasn’t even that the league was learning that the virus was able to rush through holes in its protocols. 

The NFL was slowly discovering something far deeper: a core tenet of Covid-19 transmission wisdom—how to define when individuals are in “close contact”—was just wrong. 

The safety of interactions during this global pandemic had been for months measured by a stopwatch and a tape measure. The guidance was that someone had been exposed to the virus if they had been within six feet of an infected person for more than 15 minutes. It was drilled into everyone for so long it became coronavirus gospel. 

But that wasn’t proving true during the NFL’s outbreaks. People were testing positive for the virus even though they had spent far less than 15 minutes or weren’t within six feet of an infectious person—and the league had the contact-tracing technology to prove it...

...The NFL told teams to take meetings virtual, avoid indoor gatherings, even if they were distanced and quit eating together. If someone had done any of these things with a person who subsequently tested positive, they had to be isolated, regardless of how brief their interaction had been... 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/super-bowl-nfl-covid-cdc-11612104460?mod=e2tw