Coronavirus tips: The do’s and don’ts of social distancing
LA TimesShoppers keep their distance while waiting in line outside a supermarket in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. As health officials in the United States work to slow the spread of COVID-19, they’ve asked Americans to do one important thing: practice social distancing. Life without its interaction can be trying, but public health experts insist that each person’s commitment to social distancing is key to taming the new coronavirus — and ultimately saving lives. Social distancing aims to reduce the last two items on that list, which would in turn reduce the reproductive number and slow a disease’s spread, said Dr. Jeffrey Martin, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at UC San Francisco. Ideally, social distancing looks a lot like self-quarantine or self-isolation, except there’s no particular time frame involved, Watson said.