Doh! Just realized lockdown, quarantine, + isolation are ALL social distancing measures to confine spread w/in different scopes.

To do each safely takes skill. To change scale, need more/better info.

Following @rocza to understand the nuances.

THREAD: Documenting my initial understanding BEFORE reading the in-depth material @rocza is sharing on a parallel thread.

Will revise + correct once I do. 1/16

Social distancing at any of these levels divides the world into bubbles.

You share risks of contagion with anyone who's inside your bubble. Smaller bubbles are less risky. Bigger bubbles are more likely to pop. 2/16

Isolation = you're currently contagious. You get your very own bubble until you're not.

Caring for you humanely while preventing others from getting infected requires extra precautions. Never pop this bubble. 3/16

Self-isolation = variant where you're not currently sick enough to need hospitalization.

Can potentially recuperate at home without infecting your family, if everyone's super-careful. Bubble within a bubble. 4/16

Quarantine = you might be contagious (usually because you've been exposed).

Keeps you away from (most) others to keep from infecting them. But increases risk that infection spreads among people you're quarantined with.

Similar to isolation, but less intense. 5/16

Home quarantine = you might be contagious, but can stay with your family if you're careful.

Smaller bubble, so if you're not already contagious, reduces odds that YOU get infected by others in your bubble. But if you are, increases THEIR risk. 6/16

Lockdown = home quarantine across a wide region, when we don't have good enough info to know who needs it + who doesn't.

Protects everyone who can #StayHome diligently from everyone else. Lots and lots of small, soapy bubbles. 7/16

All these levels of social distancing can be done well, badly, or somewhere in between. How effective each is depends on how carefully they're done. Skill + training matter.

Sloppy or broken bubbles don't protect anyone. 8/16

We're all human beings who crave contact + connection. We don't want to be any more distant from each other than we absolutely have to.

So how do we safely minimize the number + kinds of bubbles needed? 9/16

A well-maintained bubble is a boundary. It protects people on either side from infecting each other.

The more accurately we know who is or might be contagious, the more precisely we can draw those boundaries. 10/16

When can you leave isolation for a bigger bubble? When you're no longer contagious.

How do we know? Some mix of time, symptoms, + test results -- information you get from your doctor or some other public health official? 11/16

When can you be released from individual quarantine? When is it safer for you to join your family in their bubble with fewer restrictions?

Same answer. When there's enough info (symptoms, time, +/or tests) to confirm that you're not contagious. 12/16

Now for the trillion-dollar question. When and to what extent can at least some of us be released from lockdown?

Unfortunately, we currently don't have anywhere near enough of that information. 13/16

We don't have enough tests to quickly and thoroughly identify everyone who's infected. So just isolation isn't enough.

We don't have enough contact tracers to identify everyone who's been exposed + just quarantine them. So people could be infected and not know it. 14/16

Worse, there's evidence that people who get infected can be contagious for several days before experiencing symptoms.

So we can't just ask people to self-quarantine once they start feeling sick. 15/16

Thus instead of just putting SOME people in bubbles -- both to care for them + to protect everyone else -- we've wound up trying to put EVERYONE in bubbles.

The only way out will be to get a lot more information. #TestMore, #TraceMore, so we can #IsolateLess. 16/16