Social Distancing New Normal amid COVID 19

What is Social Distancing?

Social distancing is something that we are all being asked to do right now. It is also called “Physical Distancing”, means keeping space between yourself and other people outside of your home to stop the spread of corona vorus.

How to Social-Distance in Your Own Life

The most obvious way to practice social distancing is to avoid crowded public places where close contact with others may occur. These might include movie theaters, religious gatherings, and crowded restaurants.

Of course, it’s not always easy to practice social distancing. In many cases, governments and businesses have decided to close in order to prevent such gatherings from happening at all.

Tips and Tricks

• Opt for online meetings rather than workplace gatherings whenever possible.
• Work from home if you can.
• Postpone major social gatherings and Do not gather in groups.
• Consider video-chatting with friends and family rather than meeting in public places.
• Postpone air travel and cruise ship travel.
• Stock up on vital items so you don’t have to go to stores as often.
• Order groceries from a delivery service.
• Avoiding non-essential use of public transport when possible

The exact spacing or the exact amount of people you should be around is a little bit in flux, but the idea is that we need to be maintaining a safe distance from one another so that the virus does not spread.

As social beings, how could social distancing affect us?

For the vast majority of us, we live a life in which we are physically present around one another, though being social does not necessarily require physical presence.

In many respects, our lives are being upended, but in many respects, they’re not. This is just requiring a shift in perspective to know that we can still be social while maintaining a physical distance.

How can we avoid becoming emotionally disconnected from others during this time?

That’s a very real thing because one part of the social distance certainly means that you’re not going to be having meet-ups with people as often as you would.

The way that we are now being asked to engage socially means that we will have to be very mindful of our decisions about continuing to engage with others. It will just be through different means.

Fortunately, we do live in a time where technology can enable a lot of social interaction, whether through video calls, good old-fashion telephone, social media, or email. There are options for us to continue to engage and be mindful.

Professionally, how can we manage social distancing while working with colleagues?

One thing to recognize is that everyone is in a similar boat of being shuffled around. Some are now working from home in perhaps a really cramped setting with no privacy, and others might be isolated, or have limited connectivity or resources at home. Everyone is adjusting to this and going through some challenges.

Below rules can be exercised for social distancing in professional envoronment

• Exercising caution with person–to-person engagements by keeping your distance (1 – 2 meters)
• No hand shaking or physical personal contact that is not necessary
• Avoiding unnecessary and non-essential in-person meetings
• Preferably, conducting meetings that are necessary by using email, teleconferencing and platforms such as Zoom, Webex, Skype etc. to promote social distancing if that is not possible, conducting necessary meetings in over-sized spaces to avoid crowding
• Avoiding long durations for necessary physical interactions
• Considering ways to get to work that avoid crowded public transit periods. Perhaps flexible hours can be adopted if public transit peak periods can be avoided.
• Promoting eating lunch in personal workspaces rather than attending the cafeteria for breaks and meals.
• Reducing natural social time in shared office spaces such as lounges, lunch rooms, kitchens, watercoolers and photocopy rooms
• Adhering to public health hygiene recommendations by washing your hands after touching commonly used items or coming into contact with someone who is sick.
• Proper hand washing involves thoroughly scrubbing hands with soap and water
• Use hand-sanitizers when washing your hands is not available as a first choice
• Avoid touching your face, nose, mouth, and eyes
• Practice proper coughing or sneezing etiquette
• Properly dispose of anything that comes in contact with your mouth such as tissues or plastic eating utensils

We hope to be back to normal soon, but we anticipate this experience will result in a “new normal.” Moving forward, expect a cultural shift as we recognize that more of our meetings and classes could be covered over email and Instant Messenger and some of our travel could be replaced by web meetings. In the meantime, let’s stay positive. Necessity is the mother of invention as the saying goes. We anticipate that there will be new tools developed to help us adapt to remote work and education at-scale, and we anticipate new technologies will help providers, higher education organizations, and companies become more elastic at rapidly scaling their infrastructure up and down.