Social Distancing

I’ve summarized some COVID-19 information which I have found to be useful to help us all see the light at the end of this global pandemic.

Stay positive and trust that we will make it through these times.

COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is a microscopic organism that is not alive. It consists of a strand of RNA wrapped in a protein coat.

The virus is very fragile outside the human body, which means you can’t get it from a package or an envelope. For a virus to remain viable, it needs a combination of specific environmental conditions such as temperature, lack of UV exposure and humidity.

Seek the sunlight when you are able to.

The COVID-19 particles are very heavy and usually fall to the ground right around a sick person, rather than lingering in the air, becoming airborne, hence the 6 foot distance recommendation.

Contracting the virus occurs by what is called a viral load; when your host cells come in contact with many of the organisms at once. Think of a science fiction movie where the alien plant sprays spores into the face of one of the characters.

Face masks are meant to protect people around you. While they can inhibit some amount of vapor from entering your airways, they do very little to help protect you from a viral load.

COVID-19 is primarily spread through direct person-to-person contact, via inhalation of small water droplets that the infected person has released via a cough or sneeze.

If you are breathing in, when near someone who is infected, sneezes or coughs in your direction, there is a high probability COVID-19 will enter your airways.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we need to prevent it from hijacking our living cells which are located in our breathing apparatus (nose and mouth). COVID-19, thrives in our upper respiratory system which is why it spreads more readily and can be released when someone sneezes or coughs. In 2003, SARS (SARS-CoV) lived in the lower respiratory system so it was not as contagious.

The only defense we have to fight this pandemic is to stay away from people. We may have it and don’t know it, so we need to inhibit the virus from finding a host. Without hosts, the virus will become unviable as a contagion and will become inactive.

The 14 day social distancing recommendation is to allow the virus to run its course if a host has it. The symptoms show up between 5 and 12 days.

People may have the virus beyond that time before their body can eradicate it completely. So it is not unreasonable to be quarantined for longer periods of time even.

No one knows for sure when we will see the case curve start to flat line, but there is evidence that social distancing works as can be seen in China where the cases have started to flat line around 80,000.