How Can Social Distancing Save Lives?

When infectious diseases have the potential to break out, keeping your distance from other people means you’re helping protect everyone -- and helps our medical system not get overwhelmed. Learn why -- and how to do it -- in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff. Lauren Vogebam here. This episode is part of
the miniseries we're doing on some health and safety topics
surrounding the novel type of coronavirus that was identified in
which causes what's there for being called COVID nineteen. Because
everything is a little less scary when you understand it better.

(00:25):
So for today, we're talking about a phrase that's new
to most of us, but not to the world of
public health, social distancing. But what exactly does social distancing
mean and how do we put it into practice? Simply put,
social distancing is a community strategy used by public health
officials to put space between individuals in an attempt to

(00:47):
limit the spread of any highly contagious infectious disease like
COVID nineteen or ebola or stars. The US Centers for
Disease Control or CDC, defines social distancing as remaining out
of congregate settings, avoiding mass gatherings, and maintaining distance approximately
six ft or two meters from others when possible. Many viruses,

(01:11):
including coronavirus, spread primarily through droplets that can remain in
the air for a couple hours after someone's sneezes or coughs,
though over time the viruses in those droplets become less
and less likely to infect you, as we discussed in
yesterday's episode. However, the potential for air and surfaces harboring
infectious viruses is why creating space between individuals is critical.

(01:35):
Community mitigation strategies are especially important before a vaccine or
drug is widely available to prevent diseases from spreading, and
we don't have any such fix for COVID nineteen yet.
Social distancing is typically used in communities where an outbreak
of a virus like COVID nineteen has not yet occurred,
because it's difficult to stop once it's started. Think of

(01:58):
it like when firefighters clear are large swaths of brush
to create a firebreak that will stop wildfires from spreading
out of control. If there's no fuel for the fire
to burn, it'll go out. If there's no one for
the virus to infect, the infection won't spread. You may
have heard that the goal of social distancing is to
flatten the curve. The curve in question here is a

(02:20):
graph of how many people are likely to get sick
and the period of time over which they're likely to
fall ill because, look, a COVID nineteen is a new illness.
None of us has an immunity to it, meaning that
our immune systems are all unfamiliar with it, so they
don't perceive it as a threat right away. So our
immune system doesn't know to start destroying it as soon

(02:42):
as it enters our bodies, so the virus has a
chance to replicate, and by the time our immune systems
know something's wrong, they have to launch a full scale attack,
which is what creates fever and weariness and other symptoms
of being sick. The period of time between when you
pick up the virus us and thus might spread it
to other people and when you start to show symptoms

(03:03):
of being ill is called the incubation period, and no
one knows how long it can last yet with this
novel coronavirus, but medical researchers are saying to give it
two weeks to be safe now until we develop a
fix for COVID nineteen to prevent it from spreading. It's
safe to say that most to all of us will
become infected. A chunk of the population will never have

(03:25):
any symptoms, many will have mild symptoms, and a small
portion will get seriously sick, either due to the virus itself,
which attacks cells in and reproduces in the lungs, or
due to other illnesses that we're more susceptible to when
our lungs have been thus damaged, like pneumonia. So when
people talk about flattening the curve, that means slowing down

(03:48):
the spread of the disease so that those relatively few
people who are going to get seriously ill don't get
seriously ill all at once. That would be a tall
peak in the curve of illness is over time, and
it would be bad because it would overwhelm our health
care system. By avoiding contact with people until your potential
incubation period of a couple of weeks is over, you're

(04:12):
helping to flatten that peak. The same number of people
will be infected or sick or seriously sick over time,
but you're helping spread those cases out so that the
health care system will be able to respond to some
before the next ones come in. And that's why officials
are telling us to stay home when we can. But

(04:32):
don't think of it like you're trying to avoid getting infected.
I mean that would be great but think of it
like you're already infected and don't know it, and you're
trying to avoid spreading it. Examples of social distancing include
closing or suspending schools and moving to online or distance learning,
canceling public events such as conferences, weekly meetings, or places

(04:53):
of worship, implementing commute practices for businesses where it's practical,
closing child care centers, suspect ending or canceling sporting events,
concerts or festivals, and closing down seating at bars and restaurants.
Mass transit may also be affected. The important thing to
note is that if your children are out of school,
it's not time to set up playdates with the neighborhood kids,

(05:15):
or to visit the local public library or park if
they're even open. Contact with people outside your home should
be limited, and the same goes for adults. It's not
time to set up office at the local coffee shop
again if it's open, or to have people over for
a party. When implemented correctly, social distancing can have the
desired effect of preventing the spread of a virus. It's

(05:37):
been proven in the past, but only when people take
it seriously. A study published in the two thousand seven
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that during
the nineteen eighteen Spanish influenza pandemic, cities that put social
distancing measures in place earlier had significantly lower death rates
than those that did not. Today's episode was written by

(06:01):
Patty Resmussen and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on
this and lots of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
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