The Im­por­tance of Prac­tic­ing So­cial Dis­tanc­ing

MISHAWAKA – Just two weeks ago, col­lege stu­dents from all over the coun­try cel­e­brated spring break, ig­nor­ing the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) and ne­glect­ing warn­ings from health care of­fi­cials and the au­thor­i­ties to prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing.  

In Florida, though stu­dents were warned of the risk of large so­cial gath­er­ings, and health care of­fi­cials had made clear the risk that gath­er­ings of more than 10 peo­ple posed, throngs of young peo­ple gath­ered in tight quar­ters on the many pop­u­lar beaches in the state. Florida state au­thor­i­ties took mea­sures to of­fi­cially close the beaches, putting up fenc­ing and kick­ing out beach­go­ers. Still, peo­ple ig­nored these mea­sures to en­joy some time in the sand. Sim­i­lar sto­ries were re­ported from beaches in Mex­ico and Cal­i­for­nia as well. Now, just un­der two weeks later, the health care sys­tem is see­ing the ef­fects this care­less­ness has had on our coun­try.  

As a re­sult of these spring break trips, ac­cord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post on April 1, 28 stu­dents from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas have tested pos­i­tive for the virus. Less than 24 hours later, ac­cord­ing to the New York Times on April 1, that to­tal jumped to 44 stu­dents. Tec­tonix GEO, a data firm that has de­signed lo­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy for gath­er­ing high-vol­ume lo­ca­tion data, took to their so­cial me­dia ac­counts to share cell phone ac­tiv­ity of spring break­ers in Florida. This video shows the im­pact and move­ment of these stu­dents and the po­ten­tial im­pact they could have on the spread of COVID-19. The video was posted with the cap­tion, “One per­son can make a huge im­pact on pro­tect­ing our health­care sys­tem and es­sen­tial ser­vices.” 

Ac­cord­ing to the South Bend Tri­bune in a story pub­lished on March 26, a Saint Mary’s stu­dent who took a spring break trip to Spain re­cently tested pos­i­tive for the virus. When she first ar­rived in Spain on March 6, there were only 200 con­firmed cases in the coun­try, but by the time she headed home on March 12, just 6 days later, that num­ber had grown to nearly 3,000. By March 17, she started to ex­pe­ri­ence symp­toms of COVID-19. Now, she is urg­ing fel­low Gen­er­a­tion Z peo­ple to take these so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures se­ri­ously.  

On March 6, the state of In­di­ana con­firmed the first of­fi­cial case of COVID-19. Now, less than a month later, that num­ber has jumped to 4,411 with 127 con­firmed deaths (as of pub­li­ca­tion date).  

“This virus does­n’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween groups of peo­ple. … Every sin­gle per­son is a po­ten­tial ves­sel to spread this virus,” said In­di­ana Gov. Eric Hol­comb on Thurs­day af­ter­noon. On April 3, Gov. Hol­comb of­fi­cially ex­tended the In­di­ana stay at home or­der un­til April 20. 

So­cial dis­tanc­ing has been proven to slow the spread of the virus. Be­cause the in­cu­ba­tion pe­riod of the virus is up to 14 days, those in­fected may be pre-symp­to­matic car­ri­ers of the virus for up to two weeks. This means that a per­son may be spread­ing the virus to any­one they en­counter, even if they aren’t ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms.  

Data from those aboard the Di­a­mond Princess cruise ship shows that more than 45% of those who tested pos­i­tive for the virus were not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms at the time of test­ing, while 18% of those who tested pos­i­tive re­mained asymp­to­matic through the en­tire ex­tent of the ill­ness, mean­ing that they never showed symp­toms. Data like this sug­gests there are many silent car­ri­ers who will never know they are sick but spread the virus to oth­ers. The Im­pe­r­ial Col­lege Group, Lon­don, sug­gests that, on av­er­age, the virus will spread to some­where be­tween 1.5 and 3.5 peo­ple per in­fected per­son. In com­par­i­son, In­fluenza A and B will spread to 1.3 peo­ple per in­fected per­son.  

The longer so­cial dis­tanc­ing warn­ings are ig­nored, the longer re­stric­tions will be in place. Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol, so­cial dis­tanc­ing means avoid­ing close con­tact with those who are sick and stay­ing home if you are feel­ing un­well; cov­er­ing your mouth when you cough or sneeze; clean­ing fre­quently-touched sur­faces daily; wash­ing your hands with soap and wa­ter for at least 20 sec­onds; cov­er­ing your mouth with your arm or a tis­sue when you cough or sneeze; choos­ing a “sick room” in your house if some­one in your house­hold is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms; avoid­ing con­tact with any­one who is not part of your house­hold; avoid­ing hav­ing guests in your home; and stay­ing at least 6 feet apart at all times. So­cial dis­tanc­ing is a sim­ple, im­por­tant step we can all take to slow the spread of COVID-19.  

New York has be­come the epi­cen­ter of the virus for the United States. In an ad­dress on Wednes­day, Gov. An­drew Cuomo posed the ques­tion: “Who else has to die be­fore you un­der­stand you have a re­spon­si­bil­ity?”