During Covid-19 people are maintaining social distancing. Social distancing is a non-pharmaceutical infection prevention and control intervention implemented to avoid/decrease contact between those who are infected with a disease causing pathogen and those who are not, so as to stop or slow down the rate and extent of disease transmission from one person to others. This eventually leads to decrease in spread, morbidity and mortality. Why it is not called as physical distancing instead social distancing?
I think it's a wrong approach, the terminology had to be physical distancing
Fahim Aslam Thank you for the reply. Definitely the term "social distancing" was also used during Spanish Flu in 1918. But I get confusion regarding the appropriateness of the terminology, because it can spread from a person to others may be to family members also.
Social distancing makes more long term effects on personal discouragements, also it may affect finally unacceptable social and mental illnesses. Physical distancing will be temporal and knowing preventive measures of peoples without disturbing their social behaviors. Especially in social distancing was earlier used terminology to make physical barriers among the community in this kind of highly infectious communicable disease.
Endashaw Workie
I partially agree with you. The World Health Organization (WHO) has started using the phrase "physical distancing" instead of "social distancing" as a way to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus from people to people, a move widely welcomed by experts as a step in the "right direction".At a daily news briefing on March 20, officials of the global health body said while maintaining a physical distance was "absolutely essential" amid the global pandemic, "it does not mean that socially we have to disconnect from our loved ones, from our family."
Shan Lakmal Edirisinghe
Technology, right now, has advanced so greatly that we can keep (are keeping) connected (connecting) in many ways without actually physically being in the same room or physically being in the same space with people," WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said on March 20. "We're changing to say physical distance and that's on purpose because we want people to still remain connected," she added.
"Social distancing makes it sound like people should stop communicating with one another, while instead we should be preserving as much community as we can even while we keep our physical distance from one another," (Jeremy Freese, professor of sociology at Stanford University in the United States).
As mathematician and physicist I do not have anything against the term social distancing.
It is probably semantics but we are distancing ourselves from social situations. We can still be around people like our families but we distance ourselves from friends, stores, and restaurants.
G Srinivasarao
Sir, I back to differ because it spreads from a person to other even our to family members also.It is not concentrated with in a group or society.
Because then people are not recommended to socialize with each other, that means to participate in all social activities. Social distancing means more than physical distancing (one of dimensions of social distancing).
Therefore, because the term physical distance is characterized by too large a range of individualism and the problem is of a general social nature. In this regard, the name social distance was adopted to suggest the social nature of the suggested anti-pandemic security instruments, which in many countries include restrictions on the movement of citizens in public places, recommendations to remain in quarantine at home, etc.
Greetings,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
I suspect the term "social distance" was carefully chosen because, as some of the above posts indicate, it more clearly refers to groups outside the immediate family. If the term "physical distance" were used, it could mistakenly be taken to imply that, even within families, distance should be maintained at all times - and I suspect that such a requirement would have been unreasonable. Having said that, I think that physical distancing was probably advised within families where some members were known to be positive for COVID-19.
I believe that social distance is not only a distance of 2.0 meters between people but also distrust, fear and suspicion towards another person.
The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and the greatest challenge we have faced since World War Two. Since its emergence in Asia late last year, the virus has spread to every continent except Antarctica. Cases are rising daily in Africa the Americas, and Europe.
Countries are racing to slow the spread of the virus by testing and treating patients, carrying out contact tracing, limiting travel, quarantining citizens, and cancelling large gatherings such as sporting events, concerts, and schools.
We are in uncharted territory. Many of our communities are now unrecognizable. Dozens of the world’s greatest cities are deserted as people stay indoors, either by choice or by government order. Across the world, shops, theatres, restaurants and bars are closing.
Every day, people are losing jobs and income, with no way of knowing when normality will return. Small island nations, heavily dependent on tourism, have empty hotels and deserted beaches. The International Labour Organization estimates that 195 million jobs could be lost.
It should be called Physical Distance. It is better that Social Distance.
See this Link Please:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wired-love/202004/social-vs-physical-distancing-why-it-matters
See This Link Too:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/social-distancing.html
Social distancing has created lots of psychological problems in society and I have used the term social therapy is important to get rid of it in my published paper as well.
Social Distancing is a wrong choice -- like very very wrong. It's precisely physical distancing. In a COVID-19 column that write in my native language, I have mentioned this and I use a term that is the exact translation of physical distancing.