Social Distancing

For up-to-date information regarding COVID-19 coronavirus, including prevention and treatment, please visit CDC.gov.

About

Social Distancing is a practice encouraged to help mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus involving staying indoors and avoiding crowded areas such as bars, restaurants, concerts, sporting events, etc. The practice was widely encouraged on social media and caused people to self-isolate, which in turn led to humorous posts and video representations of people dealing with being stuck indoors.

Origin

On March 5th, 2020, amidst the Coronavirus outbreak, the CDC recommended "social distancing" as a strategy for mitigating the spread of the virus.^[1][4] The strategy involves encouraging workers to work from home if possible, banning large gatherings of people, and ultimately attempting to maintain a 6-10 foot physical distance from others wherever possible. A drastic iteration of the strategy was implemented by China in late January of 2020,^[2] who put entire cities in quarantine. It proved effective in slowing the rate of new cases of the illness.^[3]

Spread

Western news publications began writing articles about social distancing and its effectiveness shortly after the CDC's recommendation, with pieces appearing in USA Today,^[5] The New York Times,^[6] The Atlantic,^[7] and others. Major cities and states soon implemented drastic measures related to enforcing social distancing as well. For example, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut placed restrictive measures on restaurants and banned gatherings of more than 50 people.^[8]

Day X of Quarantine

As people began practicing social distancing, internet users began making jokes and humorous videos about their time in isolation, often with the snowclone, "Day X of Quarantine." For example, Twitter user @loveofhuns^[9] posted an image of show called Loose Women discussing how an earthworm would wear a bra, gaining over 1,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @Michael1979^[10] joked that he'd immediately broken quarantine to get a Twix, gaining over 140,000 retweets and 970,000 likes (shown below, right).

Others posted videos illustrating the humorous cabin fever they'd been going through due to the outbreak. For example, Twitter user @MorphineDreamzzz posted a blind pillow fight, gaining over 930 retweets and 4,800 likes (shown below, top). User @keddie44 posted a clip from Jelle's Marble Runs, gaining over 17,000 retweets and 49,000 likes (shown below, bottom).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References