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All Rights Reserved Subscribe | (BUTTON) Sign In (BUTTON) BETA This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here Edit Story Coronavirus|Oct 26, 2020,04:50pm EDT| Let's Stop Talking About Social Distancing John Drake John DrakeContributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Science I’m a professor at the University of Georgia. * Share to Facebook * Share to Twitter * Share to Linkedin Physical distancing Physical distancing is important for preventing the spread of Covid-19 getty Although the practice of quarantine is ancient, the term “social distancing” is actually quite recent. The problem with “social distancing” is that it points to the wrong thing: It’s not social connections that spread Covid-19, flu or any other infectious disease, but physical contact. And, right now, as Covid-fatigue sets in and the mental health costs of the Covid-19 pandemic are skyrocketing, what we need to be emphasizing is physical distance and social connectedness. When and why did we start talking about social distancing as a means to control infectious diseases? (The phrase has actually long been used with a completely different meaning, i.e. shunning by individuals for social control.) It’s quite possible that epidemiologists have used the term colloquially for awhile. But printed uses of the term originated with the first SARS pandemic (2003), and even more with respect to the subsequent concern over the possibility of influenza pandemics. Use of the exact term “social distancing” is rare in reports from 2003, but gained currency over the next couple of years. In the essay Preparing for the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century published in The Lancet in 2005, British virologist John Oxford wrote: Given the lack of both antivirals and vaccines, our forebears struggled with the global outbreaks of the past with a mixture of masks, quarantine, and social distancing. [In the same essay, Oxford also wrote: “There is no evidence that this entirely sensible defence had any effect whatsoever.” This latter claim was quite mistaken as shown by subsequent studies of the 1918 flu pandemic published in reputable journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.] MORE FOR YOU Donald Trump’s Presidency Will End On The Day Of A Comet, A Meteor Shower And A Total Eclipse Of The Sun The Northern Lights May Glow Across The U.S. Tonight & Tomorrow – Here’s Where & How To See Them Paleontologists Find 27-Million-Year Cycle In Earth’s Mass Extinctions Around the same time, CDC scientist Marty Cetron and Yale University bioethicist and pediatrician Julius Landwirth wrote about social distancing in an essay entitled Public health and ethical considerations in planning for quarantine that was published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Interestingly, even though Cetron and Landwirth provided a series of relevant definitions, they did not define “social distancing”. The closest concepts they define are words and phrases like “isolation” and “community-wide quarantine”, which is reminiscent of the term “community quarantine” used in Toronto with respect to the containment of SARS in 2003. Even though Cetron and Landwirth did not define “social distancing” (or “social distance”), they used the phrase a total of five times in their writing. For instance, they wrote that: Modern public health places quarantine within a broader spectrum of interventions generally referred to as “social distancing.” An editorial by Donald G. McNeil Jr. in the New York Times from a year later also emphasizes the newness of the term, now solidly in the context of planning for a flu pandemic: If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine." From there, references to social distancing become quite commonplace. A 2006 article in the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases is entitled “Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza”. World Health Organization recommendations concerning pandemic flu appearing in the same journal earlier in that year included the following conclusions, worth quoting at length because of the obvious relevance to Covid-19: If the pandemic is severe, social distancing measures such as school closures should be considered. Nonessential domestic travel to affected areas should be deferred. Hand and respiratory hygiene should be routine; mask use should be based on setting and risk, and contaminated household surfaces should be disinfected. Additional research and field assessments during pandemics are essential to update recommendations. Legal authority and procedures for implementing interventions should be understood in advance and should respect cultural differences and human rights. These are not all of the examples. Indeed, from 2006 “social distancing” has become standard language in the technical literature about infectious diseases and their control, just as in 2020 this phrase began to enjoy widespread usage in ordinary language. But, the problem remains that it is wrong. It is not social distancing that we should desire, but physical distancing with social connection. Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. John Drake John Drake … (BUTTON) Read More I’m a scientist. I work at the University of Georgia where I’m a professor in the Odum School of Ecology and Director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases. I fell in love with nature as a young child and with theoretical biology as a young adult. My research uses mathematics, statistics, computer models, and experiments to understand the dynamics of biological populations. I’m especially interested in ecological tipping points, the ecology of emerging infectious diseases, and extinction. My goal is to do science that matters to people, places, and the planet. (BUTTON) Read Less * Print * Reprints & Permissions ____________________ (BUTTON)