'Social Distancing'

It's scary watching COVID-19 unfold and spread across global communities. It's absolutely intriguing watching governments handle the health crisis and juggling to manage the burden on the already overloaded healthcare systems. I'm relieved that I live in Singapore and if I'm ill for any reason, I have efficient and prompt access to a high standard of care.

Singapore has fended off the first wave from China. After a week of calm, we now have to fend off the greater wave from the region, and Europe and US. We've only just begun the fight. The previous weeks were simply used as rehearsals and prepping for what's to come. This is the beginning of the apocalypse. The travel restrictions have kicked in. You can fly out, but where will you go, and are you prepared for that 14-day quarantine when you return? It has to be a trip of absolute necessity to put yourself and everyone else at risk.

It's a relief that Singapore is tiny and the government is pro-actively handling it, mindful of the great impact any measures have on our economy. Our healthcare system is strong and it's still equipped the handle the current and conservative projected increases. What we can't handle, is a five-fold increase in foreigners and residents who are irresponsible, coming here while they're ill or not staying in. I"m terribly glad this isn't Ebola. Although I'm not sure which is more brutal when we do the death count at the end of it. I hope I'll be still alive then.

I hope the citizenry can see that our government is doing its best to keep a semblance of normalcy in these extraordinary times. This painful dance between fighting fire and pre-empting future clusters meant that we needn't do a full lockdown or shut down every business and store. Hours are shortened and people work from home more. Wonderful. It's a currently lovely and delicate balance in a horrible global situation. Let's enjoy it before it tips over and zombie apocalypse kicks in full and heavy. BUT. We need to be mindful to keep to some rules of 'social distancing'.

Since I'm referencing so many American articles, I should state that imho, America's political system seems to be hindering the management of COVID-19, especially diagnosis and treatment. America is really not an ideal model of how democracy has evolved and developed. People stock up toilet rolls, sure, and also, guns.

The political leaders' indecisiveness over the right course of action reflects the inequality of their healthcare and social systems. (Let's not even discuss their inept and confounding President.) So out came a not-so-new phrase — 'social distancing'. I can't read a page of anything without that phrase popping up. It's a way of life that everyone will do well to live by, for the next few months at least.

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner interviewed primary care physician and public health care researcher and director of Ariadne Labs, Asaf Bitton who wrote a handy sheet about 'social distancing'. He recommends keeping a distance of six feet between you and the person. The interview was published on March 17, 2020, titled 'How to Practice Social Distancing'.

Yeah. The piece that I wrote that got some traction—and I have to give credit to my wife, Liz—really came out of a huge number of people calling and asking, “If our school is closed, we can still do play dates, right?” Or “Let’s have a six-family picnic in the park,” or “How about a sleepover with only four kids?” That is pretty much the opposite of social distancing. Social distancing isn’t some external concept that applies only to work and school. Social distancing is really extreme. It is a concept that disconnects us physically from each other. It profoundly reorients our daily life habits. And it is very hard. We have all these built-in human needs and desires because we are social creatures who connect with each other, and I think one of the profound challenges, and one of the ways we will know whether we are meeting this crisis head-on, is whether we can sustain this very unnatural—from a human perspective—physical separateness. 

But I want to really emphasize that social distancing is really about that physical separation. It is not—and, in fact, it won’t work if it means—an actual disconnection socially from each other, which would have tremendous, tremendous effects pretty much on everybody, but especially kids and the elderly and other vulnerable populations. 

Social distancing is a matter of maintaining as much personal space as I can between humans. I've always done that! I don't like my personal space invaded in trains, buses, gigs, wherever! I especially hate people sniffling and coughing with open mouths (very prevalent) and how Singapore has no concept of 'don't go to work if you're not well'. We're supposed to reduce the frequency of visiting one another's homes, and also reduce the frequency of us visiting restaurants, stores and coffee shops. Although I dunno how takeouts can be more hygienic.

I generally stay away from strangers, and even acquaintances. (They're not friends wat.) Hahaha. Unhygienic humans and their secretions are the reason why we fall ill all the time, especially when we hang out indoors in central air-conditioning. Nothing is ever very clean. Nothing can be, but I don't ever need to touch a surface or something with an active whatever virus lurking. With a dog now who also excitement-poops, my cleaning habits have drastically changed too. My already clean-freak tendencies are in overdrive.

Also, I work with old folks whose immune systems are weaker. On the usual days I'm already mindful not to carry germs and viruses to them. With COVID-19 present, I'm even more careful of personal hygiene. While my lungs are compromised, I don't think my immune system is that much weaker from last year's relatively light bout with deviant cells. The medical in January cleared me for the year. If I practice anymore 'social distancing', it will be literally 'self-isolation', and adhering to Singapore's 'Stay-Home Notice'. I should have bought a house and built a bunker.

All of the infectious-disease modelling would suggest that something is better than nothing, and a lot of somethings are better than fewer nothings. In some ways, this is akin to voting. In a lot of states and cities, especially ones with predominant parties, people say, “Well, what does my vote count?” If everyone thought that way, we would have a more dysfunctional democracy. Your vote does count. A couple of years ago, we had a local town election here where I live decided by one vote. The way I look at it for social distancing is that you never know what your individual action, especially a preventive action, can and will do. It is very hard to quantify a negative of something bad not happening. 

But we do have good evidence of what doing nothing will cause to occur. That has become really stark. There are curves and numbers, but you can look at that video that came out from Northern Italy, where, in the newspaper L’Eco di Bergamo, on February 9, 2020, the obituary section was about as long as usual, a page and a half. On March 13th, the obituary section was ten pages long. That is ten pages of people’s real lives affected and ended by this thing. We need to drive home the idea that this is not some fanciful or theoretical social construct. This is really a reality, and we all have a role to play in mitigating worse spreads.