Tuesday takeaway: Social distancing matters. It is one thing that we can do that matters, and helps others, our community and the world.
TED Connects is a free, live, daily conversation series featuring experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom.
So, Tuesday’s (4/7) guest was Dr. Esther Choo, and her talk was “Life on the medical front lines of the pandemic.” Dr. Choo is a powerhouse, a Yale-trained emergency physician and advocate for more multiculturalism and diversity in medicine. Her research focuses on women’s health, intimate partner violence, substance use disorders, and technology-based interventions. She is Past President of the Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine, a member of the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians (AAWEP) and Associate Editor of Social Media for the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. She started the #DoctorsSpeakOut project capturing the opinions of physicians about the Senate health care bill. She also created the #thatsbias hashtag to advance discussions of gender bias in medicine, and #codehate to raise awareness about racism in the healthcare setting.
Her twitter feed is now Esther “Stay Home” Choo, and today she reminded us that social distancing, or the deliberate increasing of physical space between people matters, and lessens the chance of contracting the virus. It is a way that we can individually rise to the challenge and stop the spread of Covid-19.
Why does it spread so fast? Most likely because of the movements of people with no or very mild symptoms, who are unaware that they even have the virus (MNT, March 24). “One preliminary study from Germany suggested that people had high viral loads in swabs taken from their noses and throats during their first week of symptoms after contracting the virus. This means that although they may initially experience few to no symptoms, people who have contracted SARS-CoV-2 may still be able to pass it on without realizing. Another study in the journal JAMA, showed that one person who had no symptoms of infection actually passed the virus on to five other people.”
Rather than thinking about not getting it from someone else, maybe we all need to shift our perspective to think that if we are carrying the virus we do not want to give it to anyone else. How can we break the chain of contagion? How can we be the single match that bends away and stops the flame? What if I have it but feel fine? I do not want to give it to anyone else. This is compassion. This is focusing out. This is how we can take care of each other.
