Save lives: Please keep heeding pleas for social distancing

Powering through at work when sick may have been badges of honor, but now considerate, lifesaving solitude needs to take its place.

Socializing can help you live a longer, happier, healthier life. But in a viral outbreak, research shows that “social distancing” can benefit your own health and that of entire populations.

Knowledge of the exact dynamics of COVID-19’s spread is still limited — its progression from person to person and contagion patterns within communities. But we do know some similarities with the spread of seasonal and pandemic flu: People transmit coronavirus when they cough, sneeze or talk, sending droplets through the air, or when they put the virus on surfaces. An infected person may experience no significant symptoms yet infect others.

Add in for COVID-19 the possibility that droplets remaining in the air could infect others even after the sick person is gone.

All this is enough knowledge to take action, and social distancing — voluntary quarantine or self-isolation — is one of the most effective nonmedical interventions for slowing the spread of infectious disease.

Think of an infected person with symptoms like a dry bush on fire. If there are other dry bushes nearby, the fire is likely to spread, and the more dry bushes, the faster and farther the spread. Putting a wall or water around the burning bush stops the spread.

Viral spread dynamics are similar, but unlike bushes, people can also move around. On a positive note, those who have been infected and recovered may be like bushes with armor that offers protection from catching or spreading fire again.

Social distancing is most effective when people who are sick with symptoms stay home until they have gained that immune system armor. In addition, people with a sick household member should stay home, even if they do not have symptoms themselves, to reduce community transmissions from not only symptomatic but also asymptomatic infected individuals.

Research on pandemic flu at the Georgia Institute of Technology shows that if enough people voluntarily socially distance, they can slow the spread of infection, the “infection attack rate”; lower the “peak infection,” the point in the outbreak with the highest number of people infected; and delay the timing of the peak. Delaying the peak is important because it gives communities, businesses and health systems more time to prepare to cope with the stresses of an outbreak. Reducing the peak reduces the strain on limited resources, especially health services, and reduces the possibility of major disruptions in supply chains and the delivery of products and services, including in health care and medicine, and the resulting damage to the economy. Reducing the total number of infections most importantly reduces the death toll and the population’s need for medical care.

In addition to individual interactions, social distancing should expand to the community level with caution about social gatherings and high travel volume. While airplanes might be relatively safe due to high levels of air filtration, the same is not necessarily true for airports or other spaces where masses of people gather, breathe the same air and touch the same surfaces.

Social distancing usually reduces work absenteeism: If a few people take sick days and do not pass the virus to their colleagues, fewer employees end up sick and off the job. Powering through at work when sick may have been badges of honor, but now considerate, lifesaving solitude needs to take its place. Pinar Keskinocak is a professor at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech and the director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems.

Keskinocak