Translations: Russian (перевод) | Spanish (Español) | Portuguese (Portugues)
For those thinking that COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is not something to worry about, I want to encourage all of you to implement social distancing. If (or when), this virus begins to spread rapidly through the population in the US, the medical systems can rapidly and easily become overwhelmed. This can have consequences that are not readily obvious that extend beyond just caring for the infected patients. Those consequences include the following:
- Beds in hospitals become unavailable for treatment of other emergent patients (new heart patients, kidney patients, stroke patients, and so on)
- Ventilators and assisted respiratory systems go to infected patients and then become unavailable for new patients with respiratory failure due to infection or other causes
- Intensive care units get swamped with patients with respiratory failure
- Oxygen becomes limiting and patients in need whether because of infection or other conditions will not have access
- Operations are cancelled or postponed
- Emergency departments are overwhelmed and begin to triage patients who would normally receive care
- Doctors in many specialty areas are diverted to seeing patients suffering respiratory symptoms and on noninvasive ventilation
If you doubt, please see this from a doctor in Northern Italy:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1237142891077697538.html
Even if you are not in a high-risk category, consider that you could become infected and spread the virus to others without becoming seriously sick yourself. You may not realize that a person near you is immune compromised or in a high-risk group or lives with someone who is.
We need to protect our most vulnerable members of society by protecting ourselves. Social distancing is the solution when vaccines are not available. This is how we protect our most at-risk members of our families and communities.
What is social distancing? To put it simply, it means limiting interactions with others. It is not as strict as quarantine, but it is a step in that direction.
Steps you can take:
- Avoid hugging or kissing or shaking hands when greeting people who do not live with you or who do but returned from outside the house and have yet to wash their hands
- Avoid gatherings where the space between people will be less than 3 feet
- Avoid eating in restaurants, going to crowded bars, attending church services, commuting on public transportation during peak crowded hours
- Basically, stay home as much as practical, limit contact with people when outside the home, and avoid crowded spaces
What other steps can you take?
- If you use public transportation or shared computers, carry sanitizing wipes and clean the surface you will touch
- Use hand sanitizer after touching a shared surface or wash hands thoroughly with soap and water after touching a shared surface
- Wash hands after being outside of the house and before touching places in your home
- Wash hand towels frequently or switch to disposable paper towels
- Try to avoid touching your face when outside of the home
Social distancing at work
- Teleconference as much as possible
- Use large meeting rooms for in-person meetings, sit >3 feet apart, don’t shake hands
- Avoid unnecessary travel
- Avoid socializing in small spaces where people will be closer than 3 feet
- Avoid eating in crowded lunch rooms or restaurants, bring your lunch to work
A great PDF that could be posted at the office is available from SHRM: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/pages/social-distancing-guidelines.aspx
If we take these steps ourselves, we won’t have to wait for the government to dictate closures. We can “flatten the curve” as the epidemiologists would say. We can keep the rate of new infections slow enough to avoid swamping the medical care system.
Cover image details
Cite as: N. R. Gough, Social distancing can save your life and someone else’s. BioSerendipity (10 March 2020) https://www.bioserendipity.com/social-distancing/
Related article translated into Spanish: Guardar la distancia social resulta clave para ralentizar la propagación del COVID-19
Also of interest
N. R. Gough, Social distancing is working in Maryland. BioSerendipity (7 April 2020) https://www.bioserendipity.com/social-distancing-is-working-in-maryland/.