{"title":"Perceived Corona virus exposure as a function of interpersonal distance and time of a conversation.","authors":"Ola Svenson","doi":"10.1007/s44155-022-00027-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>During the COVID-19 pandemic people were asked to keep interpersonal distance, wash their hands and avoid gatherings of people. But, do people understand how much a change of the distance to a virus infected person means for the exposure to that person's virus? To answer this question, we studied how people perceive virus exposure from an infected person at different distances and lengths of a conversation.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>An online questionnaire was distributed to 101 participants drawn from the general US population. Participants judged perceived virus exposure at different interpersonal distances to an infected person in a face to face conversation of different lengths of time. A model based on empirical and theoretical studies of dispersion of particles in the air was used to estimate a person's objective virus exposure during different times and distances from a virus source. The model and empirical data show that exposure changes with the square of the distance and linearly with time.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A majority (78%) of the participants underestimated the effects on virus exposure following a change of interpersonal distance. The dominating bias was assuming that exposure varies linearly with distance. To illustrate, an approach to a virus source from 6 to 2 feet was judged to give a 3 times higher exposure but, objectively it is 9 times. By way of contrast, perceptions of exposure as a function of the duration of a conversation were unbiased. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus is likely to be followed by other pandemics also caused by airborne Corona or other viruses. Therefore, the results are important for administrators when designing risk communications to the general public and workers in the health care sector about social distancing and infection risks.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>People quite drastically underestimate the increase in virus exposure following an approach to a virus infected person. They also overestimate exposure after a move away from an infected person. For public health reasons, the correct function connecting distance with virus exposure should be communicated to the general public to avoid deliberate violations of recommended interpersonal distances.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44155-022-00027-9.</p>","PeriodicalId":29972,"journal":{"name":"Discover Social Science and Health","volume":"2 1","pages":"24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9734792/pdf/","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discover Social Science and Health","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-022-00027-9","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic people were asked to keep interpersonal distance, wash their hands and avoid gatherings of people. But, do people understand how much a change of the distance to a virus infected person means for the exposure to that person's virus? To answer this question, we studied how people perceive virus exposure from an infected person at different distances and lengths of a conversation.
Method: An online questionnaire was distributed to 101 participants drawn from the general US population. Participants judged perceived virus exposure at different interpersonal distances to an infected person in a face to face conversation of different lengths of time. A model based on empirical and theoretical studies of dispersion of particles in the air was used to estimate a person's objective virus exposure during different times and distances from a virus source. The model and empirical data show that exposure changes with the square of the distance and linearly with time.
Results: A majority (78%) of the participants underestimated the effects on virus exposure following a change of interpersonal distance. The dominating bias was assuming that exposure varies linearly with distance. To illustrate, an approach to a virus source from 6 to 2 feet was judged to give a 3 times higher exposure but, objectively it is 9 times. By way of contrast, perceptions of exposure as a function of the duration of a conversation were unbiased. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus is likely to be followed by other pandemics also caused by airborne Corona or other viruses. Therefore, the results are important for administrators when designing risk communications to the general public and workers in the health care sector about social distancing and infection risks.
Conclusions: People quite drastically underestimate the increase in virus exposure following an approach to a virus infected person. They also overestimate exposure after a move away from an infected person. For public health reasons, the correct function connecting distance with virus exposure should be communicated to the general public to avoid deliberate violations of recommended interpersonal distances.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44155-022-00027-9.
期刊介绍：
Discover Social Science and Health is an interdisciplinary, international journal that publishes papers at the intersection of the social and biomedical sciences. Papers should integrate, in both theory and measures, a social perspective (reflecting anthropology, criminology, economics, epidemiology, policy, sociology, etc) and a concern for health (mental and physical). Health, broadly construed, includes biological and other indicators of overall health, symptoms, diseases, diagnoses, treatments, treatment adherence, and related concerns. Drawing on diverse, sound methodologies, submissions may include reports of new empirical findings (including important null findings) and replications, reviews and perspectives that construe prior research and discuss future research agendas, methodological research (including the evaluation of measures, samples, and modeling strategies), and short or long commentaries on topics of wide interest. All submissions should include statements of significance with respect to health and future research. Discover Social Science and Health is an Open Access journal that supports the pre-registration of studies.
Topics
Papers suitable for Discover Social Science and Health will include both social and biomedical theory and data. Illustrative examples of themes include race/ethnicity, sex/gender, socioeconomic, geographic, and other social disparities in health; migration and health; spatial distribution of risk factors and access to healthcare; health and social relationships; interactional processes in healthcare, treatments, and outcomes; life course patterns of health and treatment regimens; cross-national patterns in health and health policies; characteristics of communities and neighborhoods and health; social networks and treatment adherence; stigma and disease progression; methodological studies including psychometric properties of measures frequently used in health research; and commentary and analysis of key concepts, theories, and methods in studies of social science and biomedicine. The journal welcomes submissions that draw on biomarkers of health, genetically-informed and neuroimaging data, psychophysiological measures, and other forms of data that describe physical and mental health, access to health care, treatment, and related constructs.
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