Instagram Shots from the Pandemic Age
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| Michelangelo. Nonostante il Covid / Despite the Covid |
Quotes from YALE Medicine.org Glossary
SOCIAL
DISTANCING
Putting
physical distance between yourself and other people. This means avoiding groups
of people (parties, crowds on sidewalks, lines in a store) and maintaining
distance (approximately 6 feet) from others when possible. This is a key
strategy for avoiding COVID-19 infection and to flatten the curve.
SHELTER-IN-PLACE
ORDER
This is a
decree, usually from a government official, for people to stay in their homes
with exceptions that include going out for essential needs, such as groceries,
as well as outdoor activities like walking and biking in public spaces. People
who work in critical services, like health care or law enforcement, or
essential businesses, are usually excluded from these mandates.
SELF-ISOLATION
Basically a voluntary agreement, this means you are to remain at home and not go to work or school. You’ll be expected to limit your movements outside (you can go for a walk and go shopping, though) and monitor your health for 14 days after returning from travel to a place known to have high numbers of COVID-19 infections
ISOLATION
On a larger scale, isolation involves keeping people with confirmed cases of a contagious disease separated from people who are not sick. If you have a confirmed case of COVID-19, for example, you may be put into isolation for public health purposes—it may be voluntary or compelled by federal, state, or local public health orders.
QUARANTINE
Unlike isolation, quarantine involves separating and
restricting the movements of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to
see if they become sick. The government may impose a quarantine on someone who
was exposed to COVID-19 to avoid spread of the disease to others if they get
sick.
CLUSTER
A collection of cases occurring in the same place at the
same time.
COMMUNITY SPREAD
Circulation of a disease among people in a certain area with
no clear explanation of how they were infected—they did not travel to an
affected area and had no close link to another confirmed case. This is sometimes
referred to as community transmission.
TRANSMISSION
Although scientists are still learning about COVID-19 as
more data becomes available, the virus is thought to be spread mainly from
person-to-person contact, as well as when a person touches a surface or object
that has the virus on it and then touches the mouth, nose, or possibly eyes.
FLATTENING THE CURVE
Slowing the spread of the virus. If you map the number of
COVID-19 cases over time, the expectation is that it will peak at some point—on
a graph this peak would mirror a surge in hospital patients. “Flattening the
curve,” which involves strategies to decrease transmission of the disease,
would result in fewer patients during that peak period. This, in turn, would mean
hospitals would be better able to manage the demands of patients who are sick
with COVID-19 and other illnesses.
OUTBREAK
This shares the same definition as epidemic, with one
exception—an outbreak usually refers to a more limited geographic area. COVID-19
started as an outbreak in Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei
province in China at the end of December 2019, when the Chinese government
confirmed that it was treating dozens of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause.
