COVID-19 – Making Sense of the Rules

hand washing

As COVID-19 spreads throughout the world, you may be asking why social distancing? Why the 6 foot rule?

In medicine the most important question is always WHY. Instead of following rules you don’t understand and running into situations you don’t understand, learn the WHY so you can figure out what to do in any situation.

First, let’s start by defining what a fomite is. Fomites are any objects or materials that are capable of harboring infectious diseases and transferring them to another host. Like counter-tops, handrails, phones, and menus, for example.

Here are the why’s:

The 6 foot rule is to keep you outside the typical cough/sneeze blast zone so you don’t get an infected persons mouth/nose (oropharyngeal) secretions on you. The radius is arbitrary, sure, but it’s taking an average distance just to keep you safe.

But what if healthy people get together? Surely young adult people don’t need “social distancing” do they? They’re healthy and probably won’t even be symptomatic. Social distancing accomplishes what?

Remember, it’s not just about you.

The elderly man who lives with his daughter who you just hung out with because, well, you’re both young and healthy, he’s the one we’re concerned about. Although the death rate is about 1-3% overall, the average in the over 80 age group is significantly higher. So he’s staying isolated, staying away from danger, but his daughter can bring the disease home. Here’s  how.

You’re both hanging out. Maybe helping a church with a live-stream during this crisis. Supposed I touch my lips while thinking. Then I grab my phone and put it on the table. The table now has a low viral load on it. The virus can survive for some time now making that table a possible source of infection for everyone else who sits there after me. It’s not just hugging and shaking hands. Truth is, shaking hands is low risk as long as you wash your hands immediately after shaking, before you touch anything else. Now think about surfaces that have not been disinfected-chairs, tables, hand rails, movie theaters, gym equipment. Now you know why they are shutting these all down.

This isn’t to scare you but to help you understand the WHY of these recommendations so that we can operationalize some tactics to reduce becoming a vector. It’s all about preventing the spread of germs not only for COVID, but for the common cold and other communicable diseases.

5 Tips To Avoid Spreading Infectious Germs

  1. Wash your hands with soap and water a lot (20 seconds and make sure you get your thumbs and nails). After contact with anything and everything.
  2. Its better to cough into your hands with a tissue and then toss it and wash your hands. Coughing into your elbow just deposits virus on your sleeve so that the next time you do an elbow bump you spread it to your buddy. Do NOT use a cotton handkerchief. That’s like Linus dirty blanket in the Peanut gang.
  3. Stop touching your face. Humans touch their face 2-3000x a day! Eyes, nose, lips. They all are moist surfaces that can shed virus. If you catch yourself touching your face please wash your hands.
  4. Clean your phone often especially when you change locations-home to work (to not bring infection from home to work), work to home.
  5. After you use a computer or any other common use item wash your hands. You can relax a bit at home because those are mostly your own or common germs/bacteria/virus

Stay clean, stay healthy!

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Harvey Hahn, MD, FACC

Dr. Hahn graduated from Loma Linda University in 1994. He is currently the director of the Cardiovascular Fellowship Training Program at the Kettering Medical Center in Kettering Ohio.

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