Over the course of the past month, life for most people around the world has been incredibly strange and stressful. Perhaps most stressful of all is that we continue to see many disturbing cases of people failing to participate in social distancing.

This needs to stop.

There are a variety of reasons that these failures have been occurring but, by far, the most significant reasons have been misinformation and a lack of understanding. It is crucial, however, that everyone understands the value of social distancing and the reasoning behind it.

The reason for social distancing is actually very simple: it keeps people apart and gives the virus fewer chances to spread from person to person. When people break social distancing practices, they open up more chances for the virus to spread. Although social interaction may initially only infect one person, it gives the virus the opportunity to spread to many more people.

Social distancing is especially important in the case of COVID-19 for a variety of reasons. For starters, according to the World Health Organization, someone with COVID-19 can take up to two weeks to show symptoms. During this time, they can spread the virus to a considerable number of people. This means that quite a few people in a community can already have the disease and be spreading it before the first person even shows symptoms. This also means it is very difficult to track those infected; therefore, we all have to stay home if we want to slow the spread.

The average person with COVID-19 can infect between two and three people. Meanwhile, someone with the flu will infect, on average, 1.3 people. This means that if someone gets COVID-19, they can often infect two people who will each infect two more people and so on. If this pattern continues, the disease can quickly reach hundreds of people.

In addition, according to the WHO Director-General, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer and 1% of those infected,” Not only does COVID-19 spread faster than many other diseases, it is also far more deadly than many others and a single person with the disease can spread it to many others before symptoms show. For this reason, if we even want a chance to prevent serious damage from this virus, it is imperative that we stay home and prevent it from spreading.

We know that COVID-19 will infect a large portion of the world population. In addition to far fewer people becoming infected, preventing everyone from "getting it at once" will also help keep our healthcare system from being overloaded. Social distancing is that prevention measure. It is crucial to saving countless lives, and it is essential that everyone participate.