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WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

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Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#71
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't avoid a lot of that, given the physical constraints within a home. This just means it's even more critical for people who live with others to do physical distancing so they don't bring it home.

Wuhan avoided it with a centralized quarantine. If you were positive, you weren't allowed to go back home and infect your family.

Where did they go? Are there 80k hospital beds in Wuhan?

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#72
post #6

Good... the word "social" was always a bit strange as it has nothing to do with the colloquial usage of the word "social".

A quite similar term, "social distance", also existed for a long time (dating to the 1920s), referring to social-status-distance rather than physical-separation-or-hygiene-in-public-and-social-contects.

The epidemiological term seems to date to 2006 and a US Government planning document.

I've found the term vague, confusing, and inconsistent with established usage.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=social%20dista...

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#73
post #17

I wonder: who came up with the term "social distancing"? The wikipedia [1] article doesn't say. Was it widely used prior to this? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_distancing

My friends and I had the same question. I did a little searching and found an interesting paper[0]. The oldest reference it has is from 2009[1] [0] https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... [1] Kelso J,Milne G,Kelly H (2009) Simulation suggests that rapid activation of social distancing can arrest epidemic development due to a novel strain of influenza. BMC Public Health 9: 117.

May 2006: "National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza: Implementation Plan", US Department of Homeland Security

https://books.google.com/books?id=4rnZeV0YhvUC&pg=PA171&dq=%...

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#74
post #57
post #46

In china, a lot the spread isn't from stranger to stranger but family to family: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-28/coronavir... https://youtu.be/e3gCbkeARbY?t=37 How do you do physical distancing within your home? Eat meals alone? Don't share cups/plates? Wear gloves for doorknobs? I feel like there's currently no solution for this.

> How do you do physical distancing within your home? Eat meals alone? Don't share cups/plates? Wear gloves for doorknobs? I feel like there's currently no solution for this. I don't think you really need to. Say the average household size is 3. If everybody locks down just within their household, the maximum spread of infection is 3x the current level. If that's done early enough, things will be pretty much fine in…

Treat the household itself as the security / hygiene perimeter.

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#75
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wuhan avoided it with a centralized quarantine. If you were positive, you weren't allowed to go back home and infect your family.

Where did they go? Are there 80k hospital beds in Wuhan?

Football stadiums, convention centers, that sort of thing. They set up a bunch of cots and people laid there to recover. If you started to deteriorate, they sent you to an actual hospital.

There's talk about doing this maybe with all of the empty hotel rooms in NY.

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#76
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, quarantine is when you isolate a group of people for a period of time. It is used to see if they MIGHT be sick, or when people are known to be sick, to allow it to burn out. The original usage was specifically when ships were required to stay in port for 40 days before being allowed to dock, so that any sickness could burn itself out or be apparent. You can also see the CDC definition - https://www.cdc.gov/quaran…

Thanks for the correction. You're right that quarantine does not require knowing whether people are actually infected. However, it's still about isolating specific people or things to protect the rest of the population and not about asking the whole population to change its behavior.

In the present case, we are isolating everyone to protect everyone; and Quarantine can apply to entire populations and has.

Ie, whole towns under _cordon sanitaire_.

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#77

So what is the term for things like "don't go over to your friend's house for beers this Friday" or "don't throw a house party"? Just "stay in"? What about "don't take your whole family to the grocery store"?

Well, the latter is unavoidable, though with harsh hygiene measures one person would reduce risk. Somewhat.

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#78
post #59
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only study I know on aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982637v1.... (it doesn't support such simplistic advice of 1.5 meters distance, that advice seems pretty bad and dangerous)

Isn't this virus transmitted via droplets, not aerosols?

No - it's transmitted by both according to the experts https://metafact.io/factchecks/1490-are-aerosols-the-dominan...

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#79
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the correction. You're right that quarantine does not require knowing whether people are actually infected. However, it's still about isolating specific people or things to protect the rest of the population and not about asking the whole population to change its behavior.

In the present case, we are isolating everyone to protect everyone; and Quarantine can apply to entire populations and has. Ie, whole towns under _cordon sanitaire_.

A sanitary cordon is not a quarantine.

The Wikipedia article for cordon sanitaire [1] mentions quarantine as an alternative way to handle disease spread.

> Public health specialists have included cordon sanitaire along with quarantine and medical isolation as "nonpharmaceutical interventions" designed to prevent the transmission of microbial pathogens through social distancing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire

Re: WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing'

#80
post #2

I am hoping we have good science behind the “1.5 metre” distance rule... Does anyone have links to videos that show how breath swirls around, especially in outdoor areas? I guess I could get some pollen and try and model it myself!

Just read this which is relevant: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852
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