#flatteningthecurve #socialdistancing #WTF What it REALLY means
By: Ian Gotts
Tags: Virus, Corona, Socialdistancing

These are 2 terms everyone seems to be talking about. Companies are making people work from home. Events are being cancelled. Governments are locking down cities. This short blog hopes to make sense of it for people — from a practical perspective.

2 questions: Why? and What should I do?

Spoiler alert: washing your hands is NOT enough

FLATTENING THE CURVE

There are 3 important points which explains the exponential growth of the virus:

The virus is spread by individuals who have NO SYMPTOMS YET because it takes 2–10+ days for the symptoms to be noticed

It is caught by touching a surface that has been touched by someone who is infected (but probably doesn’t know — point1) and it can live on surfaces for several days.

It is estimated that a large % (50%+) of the population will be infected — young and old (due to points 1 & 2 above).

Some people who are infected will need hospitalization. The exponential growth means that our medical system could be rapidly overwhelmed as we have already seen in other countries. This will increase the number of deaths.

Flattening the curve means slowing the exponential growth so that our medical systems can cope.

We are seeing the exponential growth tracking in a similar way in every country. If you want to read a longer data-rich article https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

SOCIAL DISTANCING

This requires a change in behavior from all of us. BUT WHAT?

Most people are assuming that carrying on as normal and regular hand washing will solve the problem. It will help, but will not make enough difference.

The mistaken assumption is the behavior should be “I need to make sure that I don’t catch it” when in fact the assumption should ALSO be “I assume I have ALREADY got the virus, so I need to make sure I don’t give it to others.”

You feel fine. You want to get one with your life. BUT you need to behave as though you have the worst infectious disease ever and you don’t want to pass it on to anyone else.

What does this mean:

Don’t go out and touch surfaces with your bare hands that will be touched by other people (let that sink in for a moment….. door handles, shopping trolleys, elevator buttons, ATM machines, petrol pumps, chairs…

Don’t let people come into your home and touch anything

This sounds paranoid and impossible. It is. But we need to minimize these contact points. Hence social distancing.

BUT I WASH MY HANDS and DON’T TOUCH MY FACE

A quick scenario which shows why handwashing and not touching your face does not do enough. Remember the 2nd “flattening the curve” point:

It is caught by touching a surface that has been touched by someone who is infected (but probably doesn’t know) and it can live on surfaces for several days

Let’s assume that you don’t have the virus and nothing you own has it on its surface.

1. You wash your hands

2. You get out your phone

3. You then touch someone/something with your bare hands that hasn’t that hasn’t been sterilized since last infected person touched it:

supermarket trolley handle/ door handle / ATM or payment PIN machine / elevator button / kettle in office / meeting room chair / bus or train grab handle / petrol pump / magazine / library book / glass in restaurant / Starbucks cup.

4. You have now got the virus on your hands

5. You touch your phone

6. Your phone is now carrying the virus

7. You wash your hands again

8. You touch your phone again

9. Your hands are carrying the virus AGAIN…..

Now replace the “phone” in the above scenario with credit card / wallet / your car door handle and then steering wheel / backpack / laptop. See the problem? This seems far fetched, but as more of the population is infected out there touching things, then the chance of catching it exponentially increases.

ACTING TODAY WORKS. EVERY DAY MATTERS.

Whilst virtually everyone around you at the moment is not infected and are not touching things that will pass it on to you. But with exponential growth every day those chances increase. How many people touched the Starbucks PIN pad, door handle, shopping trolley before you did!!!

At the moment this is very high probability that everything you own is NOT infected . So we need to minimize external contact to keep it that way and slow the growth.