I am not a health care professional. My degrees are all in Psychology which is why I view the COVID-19 Pandemic from a social perspective.  I was thinking about China and Italy areas that have been most widely impacted by the virus.  I wondered what makes these areas of the world so different than the U.S. in terms of spread of the virus.

I was walking outside one day last week when a runner went to pass me and instinctively I moved over to let her.  I wasn’t consciously thinking of socially distancing myself, this was an action that was engrained in me as a fellow runner, a social nicety for someone moving faster than me.  It was in this moment that I remembered hearing one of the common criticisms about Bostonians and people who hail from the North East part of the United States- we’re cold.  We like our space.

This thought started snow balling as I recalled my own interactions with my relatives who visited from Italy when I was younger.  I was constantly backing up in my conversations with them as they moved forward.  Their idea of personal space was so very different from mine.  The customary kiss on the cheek as a hello and a goodbye I adopted over time when they visited, but the need to be close in conversation was something I couldn’t get used to. I guess I was already a little “too New England”.

As an adult I met exchange students from China, who rather than sit in the chairs on the other side of my desk, walked over to where I was seated at my computer and leaned into me as I typed on the screen.  They didn’t give their actions a second thought- to them culturally it was very normal.

The students described the densely populated areas they lived in and being crammed together on their subway and transit systems much like New Yorkers.  They found the “spacing out” here in the suburbs of Massachusetts to be strange much like birds on a wire.

As a climbed the hill on my walk I started to wonder if part of the reason the virus spread so quickly through China and Italy is because their normal social distance is so different than ours?  Six feet is the recommendation from the Center for Disease Control-certainly a much further social distance than we are used to practicing in the United States- let alone other countries.

We can learn from China and Italy.  We can do it differently in the United States now that we have this knowledge. So let’s take what we know and and put it into action.

This is not a time for group sleep overs or partying on spring break on beaches. Go outside to get some fresh air- walk, bike, run or hike. Get groceries if you need them, support your local businesses if you’re so inclined by getting  take out, pick up paint at the hardware store for that project around the house but please keep your distance.  Don’t forget what we have already learned from other countries. Let’s be the first to flatten the curve.

#washyourhands #flattenthecurve