Social distancing

Physical distancing

Description

Social distancing is a community mitigation strategy of preventing the spread of disease and infection that involves maintaining a physical distance of at least 2 meters (6 feet) from other people. Other mitigation strategies that fall under the umbrella of social distancing include: school closures, workplace closures, canceling mass gatherings, travel restrictions (i.e. limiting and or shutting down mass transit, air travel), isolating burial and treatment zones (cordon sanitaire), protective sequestration (completely closing off small towns and/or communities), self-shielding (limiting face-to-face contacts) and quarantining possible cases.

Context

The goal behind social distancing is to reduce the basic reproduction number (R0), which is essentially the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person, in a population where the disease is novel. If R0 is above 1, then the disease is contagious, if it's below 1, then the infection is probably not contagious. If R0 is 3, then every case will create three new cases on average. Global researchers and epidemiologists have estimated the R0 number from the most recent coronavirus outbreak to be anywhere from 1.5 to 5.

When social distancing is followed, the number of infected people is reduced thus decreasing the possible rate of infection and outbreak.

Implementation

Social distancing has been encouraged and mandated as a way of mitigating outbreaks thoughout history. Dating back to the N.Y. polio epidemic in 1916 and the influenza epidemic of 1918, mass cancellations of public and private gatherings and school closures helped the spread of the epidemics. More recently, social distancing measures have been put into place all across the world as countries continue the fight against the raging COVID-19-20 pandemic. The effectiveness of social distancing measures is directly correlated to when the measures are put into place. If a community or city waits too long to mandate these measures, then they become much less effective, and as some would argue even dangerous.

Claim

A 2007 PNAS study found that cities that deployed multiple interventions at an early phase of the pandemic—such as closing schools and banning public gatherings—had significantly lower death rates.