Social distancing has been a common strategy deployed by governments around the world in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.  Despite their urging, however, not all citizens have so diligently obeyed the guidance.

A new website has been developed by the University of Washington to highlight the importance of the strategy, and specifically how visiting just one person can cause tremendous harm.  The developers highlight that easing social distancing rules so that every household had contact with an additional one or two people would be enough to reconnect households across a community and therefore provide ample means for the virus to spread.

Rapid spread

The site reminds us how easily viruses, such as COVID-19, can spread, which is why officials are urging people maintain a social distance from others, either through staying at home, or keeping two meters apart from others on essential trips.

“There have been lots of discussions and articles about using social distancing to do things like ‘flatten the curve,’” the team say. “We wanted to illustrate these principles at a community level, to help people visualize how even seemingly simple connections aren’t so simple.”

The site takes people on a journey, beginning with a community of 200 households and visualizing how an array of social distancing measures affects the connectivity of those households.

For instance, the image above highlights the community without any social distancing measures in place, with each household significantly connected to the others, which allows the virus to spread relatively easily.

With social distancing in play, this connectivity is hugely reduced, as connectivity only occurs via key workers, such as grocery store employees and health care workers.  This leaves most households free from exposure.

When we visit just one friend, however, we can see how connectivity grows, with 71% of households now reconnected into one large cluster.  A solitary infection can thus spread very easily among this cluster.

“We purposefully keep this quite simple to get the basic idea across to people,” the team say. “It shows why connections can spread more than we realize, and much more than our instincts might tell us.”

The developers hope to illustrate that we don’t need superspreaders in order for COVID-19 to spread throughout a community, and indeed, any type of connection is an opportunity for the virus to spread.  As such, by forgoing a visit to even a solitary friend, we can help to keep ourselves and our communities free from the virus.