My Thoughts On Social Distancing

#277: New Ideas and Observations
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#1.  If you've ever tried to extricate yourself from a prior relationship, you know how the insidious habits of yesterday are best conquered by a simple ban.  Rather than moving from intimacies to 'being friends', it's easier to shut a relationship down.  So, too, with social distancing in a pandemic.  Otherwise, the little tells that indicate friendliness, sharing and caring (touching, breathing the same air, removing a mask to smile, laughing excitedly in close quarters) evince themselves out of habit.

#2.  The odds that everyone will isolate are poor.  It would be a miracle if young people, only just discovering their need for another, can stand to cut all physical contact for a month, let alone what may be a year or more.  This is especially true for the physically fit, susceptible to arguments of relative invincibility (that they may become asymptomatic dangers to their parents and grandparents is not a natural first thought).

#3.  There are financial reasons for failures in social distancing.  Those who find themselves at home--or homeless--without an income, are unlikely to worry too much about keeping their distance.  For example, we forget that widespread bribery is a fact of life in many poorer societies.  A person with a fever, who feels he must feed his family, might offer a bribe to the person scanning temperatures at a factory gate.  Or a person in quarantine, feeling asymptomatic, might claim--and demonstrate--perfect health when offering homemade goods to a vendor.

#4.  What if social ritual determines exposure?  When I meet a friend I often raise my hand and greet them from a distance.  But I'm somewhat standoffish.  Many people shake hands as a matter of course, inhaling each other's breath in the process (the next time you're in a crowd, notice when you breathe).  Or, shaking hands involves a half-embrace with faces less than a foot apart.  Or, friends' hands engage in an elaborate ritual of habitual clasping and release in quick succession.  Or, some people have a 'normal' distance when speaking that is truly different; I've known people who thrive on the intimacy of tête-à-tête communication.

#5.  A definition for those 'droplets' that can spread the virus: If you can smell what a person ate for lunch, or what perfume/cologne they wear, you're too close.

#6.  What if anxiety is partly responsible for susceptibility to the virus?  How else to account for the death of the Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, just 34, who courageously resisted the State's interest in hushing up the emerging epidemic.  If anxiety were indeed a factor, extending health care insurance (in this country, not all states are participating in ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion) would be a smart move.

#7.  Perhaps the most troubling possibility is that 'immunity' from the virus may be temporary, with the virus more like the common cold, or like HIV, rather than like the measles.  This could, I suppose, mean that a vaccine is problematic, and the virus would then become more than a pandemic.  Covid could conceivably be a permanent presence, requiring massive social change.  Even so, social distancing will be necessary for the foreseeable future, if not for any other reason than to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.