The Importance of Washing Your Hands

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The goal of social distancing is to decrease the number of contacts you have per day. Each person incubating this virus, who has it and can spread it to others, will spread it to somewhere between two to three people on average. So if you're only in your house, only with your family, at least you will have a minimal number of contacts with other individuals who could potentially spread that virus. And again, not only do we want to decrease transmission of the virus, but because we want to mitigate those serious infections.

This is a special episode of Mindscape, thrown together quickly. Many thanks to Tara Smith for joining me on short notice. Tara is an epidemiologist, and a great person to talk to about the novel coronavirus (and its associated disease, COVID-19) pandemic currently threatening the world. We talk about what viruses are, how they spread, and a lot of the science behind virology and pandemics. We also take a practical turn, talking about what measures (washing hands, social distancing, self-isolation) are useful at combating the spread of the virus, and which (wearing masks) are probably not. Then we look to the future, to ask what the endgame here is; Tara suggests that the kind of drastic measure we are currently putting up with might last a long time indeed.

Tara Smith received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Toledo. She is currently Professor of Epidemiology at the Kent State University College of Public Health. She has researched and written extensively about diseases such as ebola and MRSA. She is an active science communicator, and writes regular columns for SELF magazine.

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