We’ll get together through this…apart

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By Michele Rutledge, M.D.

Welcome to the new normal. Corona virus has come to Minnesota, turned life as we know it upside down and created a chaotic pattern of constant change that has a lot of us feeling off balance. Many of us headed into Lent planning to give something up for 40 days, but I’m pretty sure none of us thought we’d be giving up school, work routines, and our overconfidence in the nation’s toilet paper supply.

The news changes daily, along with the guidelines and recommendations, the numbers and the latest list of what’s short at the store. More changes will inevitably come, but knowing some basic principles that guide those changes can help ease your mind and keep you focused on the important things in the weeks and months ahead.

Why is social distancing important?  What does “flattening the curve” mean?  Here’s the explanation in a graphic from the March 9, 2020, issue of The Lancet.

The short explanation without the big vocabulary words is this: Social distancing slows the rate at which the infection can spread through the community, though it cannot stop it.

  • The tallest peak on the graph above is the first surge of illnesses that occurs in a pandemic with no social distancing measures taken. This big peak would overwhelm the available local medical resources, and patients might not be able to get needed ICU or ventilator care.
  • The shorter peak just below the tall peak represents the “flattened curve” achieved with social distancing. The same number of people eventually gets sick, but it occurs over a longer period of time instead of all at once. The health care system can take care of everyone in turn without being totally overwhelmed. Notice that the flattened curve doesn’t drop again as fast as the tall one; the tradeoff with this strategy is that the pandemic takes longer to run its course, potentially several months.
  • There’s one more catch we need to keep in mind. See that third peak?  If we stop social distancing too soon, everyone who was able to avoid the virus at home risks catching it when they resume social exposures. We could see a second wave of illness like the first one (unless a vaccine becomes available, but that is likely 12-18 months away at the earliest).  It’s critical for us to remember this risk when we have cabin fever and desperately want to get out of our homes before it’s time.