We realized we had to adjust how we and our two tiny children lived our lives in early March, as cases of the novel coronavirus were increasing considerably faster than doctors in the United States could identify. Birthday parties, medical conferences, restaurant trips, and our kids’ classes were all canceled. We started welcoming people without making physical contact, which was a difficult challenge for two people who are prone to hugging friends and coworkers. We confined our time outside the house to trips to the store or work. We were among millions of people throughout the world who had adopted the uncomfortable new normal of a physically isolated existence.
As doctors, we recognize that the tremendous reduction in human interaction around the world is our best chance to save lives. Much of the focus on COVID-19 has been on the millions of lives that may be lost, as well as the economic devastation that could result from businesses and households cutting back on their expenditure. However, the epidemic could result in something else: a social recession, or the disintegration of social relationships that worsens as time passes without human interaction. This has the potential to negatively impact people’s moods, health, capacity to work and learn, and sense of community. Social connection is a renewable resource that helps us address the issues we confront as people and as a society, just as a healthy economy protects us all from losses.
Economic slowdowns are easy to detect, and their consequences can endure long after the economy has recovered. COVID-19’s social recession will be even more difficult to quantify, but the damage it causes could be no less significant and long-lasting as people throughout the world retreat behind closed doors and cut relationships with others.
At a distance, life isn’t the same. Nursing home residents are missing out on family visits. Children are unable to play and learn with their classmates and peers. Many high-school and college students will receive their diplomas in the mail rather than attending the jubilant celebrations that have left others with lifelong memories. Weddings that had been planned for a long time are being canceled. So much that we all took for grantedmeals with pals, office banter, rooting for a team, worshiping with a communityis now on hold.
Growing loneliness and isolation are hallmarks of a social recession. Loneliness was common long before the new coronavirus cut people off from one another. According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Economist in 2018, 22% of individuals in the United States are lonely. In the same year, an AARP research found that 35% of persons over the age of 45 are lonely. Loneliness is estimated to be higher than 50% in studies conducted by the health insurance Cigna in 2018 and 2020, with particularly high rates among young adults. The fact that these estimates differ so much demonstrates how difficult it is to quantify social recessions. Despite this, more adults in the United States suffer from loneliness than smoke or have diabetes, according to most estimates. This isn’t just a problem in the United States. Recognizing a serious and widespread problem, Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, and an increasing number of other countries have launched anti-loneliness campaigns to educate the public and promote community-building techniques.
Loneliness is more than an unpleasant sensation. It has a negative impact on our health, ability to function, and sense of fulfillment. Having trusting relationships boosted our chances of surviving as hunter-gatherers. We were in significant danger when we were separated from our tribal members, which generated a stress response in our bodies. This stress response to loneliness has been ingrained in our neural system for thousands of years.
In the short term, loneliness’s stress acts as a natural cue to seek out social interaction, similar to how hunger and thirst prompt us to eat and drink. Loneliness, on the other hand, can be damaging if it lasts for a long time and puts us in a condition of chronic stress. Chronic loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety, according to studies. It’s also linked to a decreased life expectancy. Loneliness has been linked to a higher risk of death than obesity or sedentary behavior. According to a 2010 meta-analysis conducted by Julianne Hold-Lunstad of Brigham Young University, loneliness has a mortality impact similar to that of being a light to heavy smoker.
Chronic loneliness stems from a variety of factors, including increased geographic mobility, the frequently isolating effects of technology, and a culture that defines success as pursuing power, fortune, and fame. When asked what their parents desire most for them, youngsters believe their parents prioritize achievement over kindness to others. However, the less we value interpersonal connections and the lower the quality of our encounters, the more our social muscle begins to deteriorate. It, like any other muscle, diminishes when it is not used. This can make maintaining a high-quality social connection even more difficult.
That is why the possible consequences of physical separation from others are so concerning. Even if it is only brief, forced separation threatens to erode our social muscle, which has already been weakened by the modern world’s well-intentioned but alienating pressures.
Everyone has a responsibility to play in the current dilemma, not simply in slowing the COVID-19 pandemic but also in avoiding a societal recession. We both feel that people may not only retain but significantly strengthen social bonds in this era of alienation. Consider the following four approaches:
To begin, set aside at least 15 minutes each day to communicate with people you care about (other than your immediate family). You can videoconference with them to see and hear their voices, simulating the entire human experience of connection. You can do it throughout a meal and enjoy a virtual lunch or dinner with your friends. Although fifteen minutes a day isn’t much, it will make you feel better right away and enhance your connection to the outside world.
Second, make your time with them as devoid of distractions as possible. Find time to check in with your roommatesaway from the media and your to-do list. Being fully present allows you to be open and vulnerable while also allowing the other person to do so. When communicating with individuals over the internet, try to concentrate on the conversation as if you were sitting across from each other. During a video conversation, looking straight at individuals makes it more difficult to check Instagram or your email inbox. We improve the quality of our interactions with people when we remove distractions. Quality is important, especially when our time is limited.
Finally, make time for isolation. Unlike isolation or loneliness, solitude is a feeling of being at ease and even happy in your own company. However, it isn’t simple to come by. Technology has totally filled the white space we used to have in our livesthose moments when we were waiting for a buddy at a restaurant or on our way to work.
As a result, start small. Every day, set aside a few moments to disconnect from technology and work and enjoy a few moments of silence. This time can be used for meditation, prayer, or a solo walk in the woods. You can allow yourself to notice any complicated emotions you’re experiencing. You can recall something or someone for which you are grateful. One of us, Vivek, had a physician mentor who, before entering a patient’s room, would pause and take a deep breath, using those few seconds to remind himself how grateful he was to be a part of someone’s treatment. Such experiences offer us a sense of rootedness that allows us to connect with others more effectively.
Fourth, extend a helping hand to others. When we help others, we not only strengthen our bonds with them, but we also remind ourselves that we have something valuable to contribute to the world. Call to see how an elderly neighbor is doing. Deliver food at the door of a coworker who may be straining to work remotely while caring for his children. When family members are more irritated and distracted than normal, respond with compassion and understanding. Remember that allowing others to serve by asking for their assistance is also a form of service.
During a crisis like the COVID-19 epidemic, saving lives takes precedence over limiting economic damage. People’s emotional well-being is rarely treated as a top priority in the media. However, because human relationships are the foundation on which we construct healthy, full lives, we must protect them as the possibility of a social recession grows. Indeed, if this crisis can reveal the deeper depths of loneliness that existed before the pandemic, warn us that eroding social ties make us all vulnerable, and compel us to work harder at restoring the human connections in our lives, we may emerge stronger and more connected than ever before.
Is COVID-19 contagious through sex?
When a person with the virus coughs, sneezes, or talks, respiratory droplets are discharged. These droplets can be inhaled or land in someone else’s mouth or nose. Kissing or other sexual practices that come into touch with a person’s spit could expose you to the virus.
COVID-19 can only stay in the air for so long.
COVID-19 is thought to be passed mostly from person to person, according to experts. This can happen in a number of ways:
- Aerosols or droplets. This is the most prevalent way of transmitting information. Droplets or tiny particles called aerosols transport the virus into the air from an infected person’s nose or mouth when they cough, sneeze, or talk. It can be breathed into the lungs by anyone within 6 feet of that person.
- Transmission via the air. According to studies, the virus can survive in the air for up to three hours. If someone with it breaths out and you breathe that air in, it can go into your lungs. Experts disagree on how frequently the virus spreads via airborne transmission and how much it adds to the pandemic.
- Transmission at the surface. Touching surfaces that have been coughed or sneezed on by someone who has the virus is a less common way. You could come into contact with a contaminated countertop or doorknob and then touch your nose, mouth, or eyes. For 2 to 3 days, the virus can survive on surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel. To stop it, clean and disinfect any counters, knobs, and other surfaces that you and your family come into contact with on a daily basis.
- Fecal-oral. Virus particles have also been identified in the excrement of sick persons, according to studies. However, researchers aren’t clear if the sickness can spread through touch with infected people’s feces. If that individual goes to the bathroom without washing their hands, they risk infecting the items and persons they come into contact with.
People who develop symptoms are the most common carriers of the virus. It is, nevertheless, possible to pass it on without displaying any symptoms. Some persons who are unaware that they are afflicted can pass it on to others. Asymptomatic spread is the term for this. You can also transfer it before you show any symptoms of infection, which is known as presymptomatic transmission.
Is depression a COVID-19 side effect?
Even if your COVID-19 symptoms have subsided, you may still not feel totally normal. You may experience chronic headaches, weariness, anxiousness, or a general sense of dread, making it difficult to do everyday duties. While specialists are currently studying the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on the brain, more than half of a COVID-19 survivor group in the United States showed depression symptoms months after recovery, with those who had more severe COVID symptoms being more likely to be depressed.
Furthermore, many COVID-19 survivors reported symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, sleeplessness, and obsessive-compulsive (OC) disorder. Antidepressant prescriptions, intimate relationship violence, and suicide thoughts have all increased since the pandemic began, according to other studies.
After recovering from COVID-19, those who have had the virus tend to have an increased risk of developing a mental health issue.
Is it possible to get COVID-19 by kissing someone?
The coronavirus is well recognized for infecting the body’s airways and other regions, but new research suggests that the virus also attacks mouth cells. Kissing someone who has COVID is not a good idea.
Is COVID-19 more dangerous to men?
There are intrinsic differences in men and women’s immune systems that may affect our ability to fight infections like SARS-2-CoV-2. Females are generally more resistant to infections than men, and this may be mediated by a number of variables, including sex hormones and high expression of coronavirus receptors (ACE 2) in men, as well as lifestyle factors, such as smoking and drinking at higher rates in men than in women. Furthermore, women are more accountable than males when it comes to the Covid-19 epidemic. This could have a reversible impact on the implementation of preventive measures like as frequent hand washing, face mask use, and stay-at-home directives.
COVID-19 was declared a pandemic when?
SARSCoV2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is a coronavirus strain that produces COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory ailment that is causing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus was previously known as human coronavirus 2019 and had a preliminary designation of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) (HCoV-19 or hCoV-19). The World Health Organization labeled the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020, when it was first discovered in Wuhan, Hubei, China. SARSCoV2 is a single-stranded RNA virus with a positive sense that is infectious in humans.
SARSCoV2 is a severe acute respiratory syndromerelated coronavirus (SARSr-CoV) virus that is related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 20022004. It has zoonotic origins and is genetically similar to bat coronaviruses, implying that it originated from a bat-borne virus. The question of whether SARSCoV2 was transmitted directly from bats or indirectly through intermediary hosts is still being investigated. The virus has limited genetic variability, implying that the SARSCoV2 spillover event that brought the virus to humans happened in late 2019.
When no members of the community are immune and no preventive measures are adopted, epidemiological studies suggest that each infection will result in an average of 2.4 to 3.4 additional infections between December 2019 and September 2020. Some succeeding forms, on the other hand, have become more contagious. Close contact and aerosols and respiratory droplets expelled when talking, breathing, or otherwise exhaling, as well as those produced by coughs or sneezes, are the most common ways for the virus to spread. It binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a membrane protein that regulates the reninangiotensin pathway, and thereby enters human cells.
Coronaviruses have been around for how long?
Although some estimates place the common ancestor as far back as 55 million years or more, reflecting long-term coevolution with bat and bird species, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all coronaviruses is thought to have lived as recently as 8000 BCE. The alphacoronavirus line’s most recent common ancestor was around 2400 BCE, the betacoronavirus line around 3300 BCE, the gammacoronavirus line around 2800 BCE, and the deltacoronavirus line around 3000 BCE. Bats and birds are suitable natural reservoirs for the coronavirus gene pool since they are warm-blooded flying vertebrates (bats for alphacoronaviruses and betacoronaviruses, and birds for gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses). Coronaviruses have evolved and spread widely due to the huge number and diversity of bat and bird species that host viruses.
Bats are the source of several human coronaviruses. Between 1190 and 1449 CE, the human coronavirus NL63 had a common ancestor with a bat coronavirus (ARCoV.2). Between 1686 and 1800 CE, the human coronavirus 229E shared an ancestor with a bat coronavirus (GhanaGrp1 Bt CoV). Alpaca coronavirus and human coronavirus 229E diverged more recently, around 1960. MERS-CoV spread from bats to people via camels as an intermediate host. MERS-CoV appears to have split from numerous bat coronavirus species some centuries ago, despite being linked to them. In 1986, the most closely related bat coronavirus and SARS-CoV separated. SARS-ancestors CoV’s first infected leaf-nose bats of the genus Hipposideridae, then progressed to horseshoe bats of the species Rhinolophidae, Asian palm civets, and finally humans.
Bovine coronavirus of the species Betacoronavirus 1 and subgenus Embecovirus is likely to have originated in rodents rather than bats, unlike other betacoronaviruses. After a cross-species jump in the 1790s, horse coronavirus separated from bovine coronavirus. After another cross-species spillover occurrence in the 1890s, human coronavirus OC43 evolved from bovine coronavirus. Because of the pandemic’s timing, neurological symptoms, and unknown causal agent, it’s thought that the 1890 flu pandemic was triggered by this spillover event rather than the influenza virus. Human coronavirus OC43 is suspected of being involved in neurological illnesses in addition to producing respiratory infections. The human coronavirus OC43 began to diverge into its current genotypes in the 1950s. Mouse hepatitis virus (Murine coronavirus), which infects the liver and central nervous system of mice, is related to human coronavirus OC43 and bovine coronavirus on a phylogenetic level. HKU1 is a human coronavirus that, like the other viruses described, has its beginnings in rodents.
In the context of COVID-19, what is the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?
The distinction between an epidemic and a pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is that:
- A pandemic is a disease outbreak that has spread to multiple countries or continents. It’s essentially an epidemic that has spread globally and throughout a larger geographical area.
COVID-19 can live for how long in the air and on other surfaces?
According to a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine by scientists from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UCLA, and Princeton University, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable in aerosols and on surfaces for several hours to days. The researchers discovered that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) could be detected in aerosols for up to three hours on copper, four hours on cardboard, and two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. The findings reveal important details regarding the stability of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and imply that patients can contract the virus through the air or by touching contaminated things. Following the researchers’ placement of the contents on a preprint server to immediately share their data with colleagues, the study information has been widely circulated during the last two weeks.
The researchers investigated how the environment impacts SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1, the virus that causes SARS, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana. SARS-CoV-1, like its successor now traveling throughout the world, arose from China in 2002 and 2003, infecting over 8,000 people. SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated in 2004 after extensive contact tracing and patient isolation procedures. The human coronavirus SARS-CoV-1 is the most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. The two viruses performed similarly in the stability research, which does not explain why COVID-19 has grown into a significantly larger outbreak.
The goal of the NIH study was to simulate virus spreading from an infected individual to ordinary surfaces in a home or hospital setting, such as through coughing or touching objects. The researchers then looked at how long the virus may stay infectious on these surfaces.
- Why is SARS-CoV-2 causing more illnesses if the two coronaviruses have similar viability? According to new research, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be spreading the virus without realizing it or before they notice symptoms. As a result, disease control methods that worked against SARS-CoV-1 might be less effective against its successor.
- In contrast to SARS-CoV-1, the majority of secondary cases of virus transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appear to occur in the community rather than in hospitals.
- Healthcare environments, on the other hand, are sensitive to the introduction and dissemination of SARS-CoV-2, and the virus’s stability in aerosols and on surfaces likely contributes to virus transmission in these settings.
The findings back the public health officials’ advice to employ procedures similar to those used to prevent the transmission of influenza and other respiratory viruses to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2:
- Using a basic household cleaning spray or wipe, clean and disinfect commonly touched objects and surfaces.
Who
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Vincent Munster, Ph.D., a key investigator in the NIAID’s Laboratory of Virology, are available to comment on this work.
A basic scientific finding is described by this media availability. Basic research improves our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is essential for developing new and improved illness prevention, diagnosis, and treatment methods. Each scientific advance builds on previous discoveries, often in unanticipated ways. Science is an unpredictable and progressive process. Without the understanding of core basic research, most clinical improvements would be impossible.
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