A: Social distancing will remain important when shelter-in-place orders are lifted.
For many regions, the elements needed to reopen society have not yet been achieved: declining rates of infection, adequate testing supply, and the ability to trace the contacts of new infections to appropriately isolate and treat. When shelter-in-place orders are lifted, restructuring social networks is one approach to minimizing the spread of infection.
A social network includes all the people you come in contact with during daily activities. Think about housemates, co-workers, friends, and extended family. Expanding social networks outside households could be challenging as many social networks (and their germs) overlap. Think about the Kevin Bacon degrees of separation game. Resuming pre-Covid social networks exposes large numbers of people to infection, risking future widespread lockdowns.
Scientists are studying a variety of approaches that would allow for broader social contact by strategically designing social networks that make it more difficult for pods or bubbles to connect. How a social network is expanded really matters. Here are some of the approaches scientists are studying and why they are useful to consider.
Geographic constraints – Geographic constraints would liberalize contacts within a defined area like a neighborhood but would decrease the ability of a virus to travel to the next geographic area.
Repeat contacts – Interacting with the same group of people repeatedly, like co-workers or family members, decreases the number of encounters with other social networks.
Similar contacts – Individuals with similar profiles, like individuals who live alone or families with small children, joining pods or bubbles to reduce isolation while limiting contact with other networks.
It’s exciting to consider seeing friends and family again, but expanding social networks has many hurdles. First, they are difficult to apply broadly to real social networks of mothers, grandchildren, best friends, and co-workers. Second, the risk for infection within expanded pods remains. One infection could spread quickly through a pod with potentially devastating consequences. Third, and perhaps most important, the pods RELY ON TRUST. Expansion of pods requires all members to follow the same rules of exclusivity.
More to come on this important topic. One of our very own nerdy girls is an author on the study referenced in this CNN article!
