
WHO Changes 'Social Distancing' to 'Physical Distancing' - walterbell
https://nerdist.com/article/social-distancing-changed-physical-distancing/
======
jsight
Good... the word "social" was always a bit strange as it has nothing to do
with the colloquial usage of the word "social".

~~~
chrismeller
There are also many cultures that are renowned for being “socially distant”,
even if they’re very small, very compact, and very public transit-reliant.

This seems like globalizing a term that was originally very western- (and
particularly English-speaking-) centric.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Is the term "social distancing" being used in other languages? I assumed
they'd have appropriate translations.

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fyp
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://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-28/coronavirus-
spread-in-china-mostly-among-families-report-says)

[https://youtu.be/e3gCbkeARbY?t=37](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.

~~~
xxpor
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.

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

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

~~~
cameldrv
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.

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robocat
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!

~~~
nabla9
Here:

1) Exposure to influenza virus aerosols during routine patient care.
[https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/207/7/1037/2192312](https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/207/7/1037/2192312)

>HCPs within 1.829 m of patients with influenza could be exposed to infectious
doses of influenza virus, primarily in small-particle aerosols.

2) Short-range airborne transmission of expiratory droplets between two
people.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27287598](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27287598)

>The threshold distance of about 1.5 m distinguishes the two basic
transmission processes of droplets and droplet nuclei, that is, short-range
modes and the long-range airborne route.

It seems that depending on conditions < 2m is a good practical threshold for
droplet transmission. Probably more if person is really sick.

The goal is to get as small dose viruses at once as possible. Immune system
can usually fight off small exposure.

Sometimes even healthy people who inhale huge amount of viruses into their
lungs at at once can get very seriously sick because their immune system
struggles with the large sudden attack and goes into overdrive.

~~~
lawlessone
>The goal is to get as small dose viruses at once as possible. Immune system
can usually fight off small exposure.

This is interesting, i had always thought it was binary, either you get
infected or you don't

~~~
throwanem
Nope. The higher the dose you get at any given time, the likelier it is that
enough virions will establish footholds in enough cells to overwhelm the local
protective response and survive to replicate.

To be clear, that's not an antibody-mediated immune response, which takes
longer. Before then, cells penetrated by virus particles often undergo
apoptosis, self-destructing to defend the larger organism by preventing the
virus from hijacking the cell's machinery to reproduce itself. Sometimes the
virus wins, though. So the more particles you're exposed to, the higher the
odds that one or more will establish itself and start making you sick.

For more, see e.g.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517702/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517702/)
\- but if you don't want that level of detail, you can just think of it as
"flattening the curve" on an individual scale, and not really go far wrong.

 _edit:_ More accurate use of "immune" now that I'm not commenting from a
phone with a small screen. Apoptosis isn't initiated by the immune system, but
rather within the affected cell itself, and doesn't only occur in response to
viral invasion; many types of cellular injury or damage can cause it,
including most of the ways that a cell can become precancerous. (Which happens
a lot more often than you might think! But most such cells self-destruct
before they can give rise to a tumor.)

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mc32
I prefer the term Physical Avoidance. but yeah, I think it’s a better yet than
social distancing although “social distancing” has better recognition because
“social” is more “au currant” as a term.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
It's also a novel term which likely gained it some extra needed attention
though obviously not enough judging by the amount of non compliance.

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wenc
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_distancing)

~~~
humblebee
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...](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000793)

[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.

~~~
shrikant
I found an earlier reference (May 2006) in the context of transmission
prevention here [0]:

> The idea that within a week or two of a pandemic's initiation we could
> quench it by saturating a ring of at-risk population with oseltamivir,
> achieving 90% coverage and high compliance, and at the same time impose
> movement restrictions and social distancing—all this depending on the causal
> virus having an Ro <2·0—is simply fanciful.

[0]
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS014067...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606686650/fulltext)

It's also referenced here [1] in the context of the SARS pandemic, but I'd
argue that the usage isn't quite the same.

[1]
[https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/bsp.2004.2.265](https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/bsp.2004.2.265)

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jmilloy
Ha. Now I think it's redundant. The default meaning of distance is "physical"
distance.

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fenwick67
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"?

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

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malandrew
I think social distance was better than physical distance because social
distance to me suggest static clustering.

It's not a bit deal for you to be physically close to people as long as it's
very few people and that cluster doesn't intermingle with other clusters. A
household is a good example of a physically close cluster that can be socially
distance from other clusters.

The key thing is to try to prevent contamination from cluster to cluster.

Also, "social distance warrior" is a more amusing way to describe those people
on social media that can't stop posting about social distancing.

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comicjk
What about a more visual description, like "safety circle"?

When I was a Boy Scout learning to use an axe, they called the danger zone
within reach of the axe the "blood circle". A bit overwrought, but it
certainly stuck in my mind. I think they say "safety circle" now.

~~~
spaceprison
I have been thinking "blood circle" this whole time!

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ravenstine
What other kind of distancing is there? Why not just call it "distancing"?

~~~
jonnycomputer
I replied to you. I broke social distancing in a small way; but our physical
distance remains approximately the same.

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guscost
Probably a good idea - someone out there must think it means burying your face
in your cellphone while out with friends.

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aceman22
I guess someone mentioned to them "Social Distancing" was a bit too Orwellian
a term.

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ourmandave
And once this is over I can go back to being Emotionally Distant.

Come to think of it, I never actually stopped.

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BenoitEssiambre
You mean I can no longer just ignore people around me?

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DoreenMichele
You can. You just can't justify it as "But the WHO told me to!"

(That's not just snark. I have a compromised immune system. I have been
enjoying giving people withering looks and having them walk the hell away and
stop breathing on me and what not. That's never really worked before.)

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lazyant
what about "Stay home. Buy groceries once a week at most"? all this social
distance etc seems ambiguous, why not be really specific ?

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dleslie
I prefer the term Quarantine.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Quarantine does not accurately describe what the WHO is asking people to do.
Quarantine is when you take potentially infected people and isolate them from
the rest of the population, allowing all the unexposed people to go about
their days normally.

Edit: Updated to clarify that quarantine is about potential and not actual
infection.

~~~
lazide
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/quarantine/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/index.html)

~~~
daveFNbuck
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.

~~~
dleslie
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_.

~~~
daveFNbuck
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire)

