By now, most everyone has heard the mantra: Avoid crowds. Stay six feet apart. Only go out when necessary. Work from home if you can. Social distancing is our new reality. 

The younger you are, the less likely you are to suffer from serious complications should you come down with Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. That doesn't mean that younger people [ahem, college students] don't have a responsibility to practice social distancing in an effort to better protect those in at-risk groups like the elderly and immunocompromised. Ariana Grande even got in on the fight. Now you know it's serious. 

Brian Labus, assistant professor of public health who teaches courses on infectious disease epidemiology, warns that now is the time to take action, even if the threat seems remote to you.

"I don't think we know exactly how this is going to play out and when all of this is over, I would much rather have people say that we overreacted rather than underreacted now and have people die that we could have prevented from dying," he said. 

• Why practice social distancing? "Younger people that are lower risk, but they can serve as a source of infection for the people they live with, for their, their elderly grandparents, for people in the house that have an immunocompromised situation. If one of their parents is on chemotherapy or something like that. They can bring the virus home." 
• The potential for asymptomatic spread still isn't fully understood. "It's a concern that we have with any outbreak, that you can spread the virus before your symptoms start. That adds an extra challenge in controlling an outbreak because people are walking around looking healthy and spreading a disease.We're talking about a disease that has probably a five- to six-day incubation period, so it's not like they're going to be shedding this thing for weeks before they actually get sick. They could be shedding it and infecting other people potentially before the onset of symptoms. But we don't really know for how long, and we don't know how easily they can share that virus with others before their symptoms start."
• How to approach social distancing. "You have to think of everything around you as having a potential for infecting you. Take steps that are going to protect you from being exposed to other people. So whether it's not being in crowded spaces or not hugging or shaking hands when you see your friends and things like that. Distance you from another person and stop that infection from, from going from one person to the next."
• How close is too close? "We know that the droplets [from coughs or sneezes that can be carrying coronavirus from one person to another] fall out of the air after about six feet. It's a larger droplet particle and six feet is about the typical maximum distance. The farther away you are from a person, the less likely you are to be exposed. If you can't stand six feet away, five feet is better than four feet."
• What if you don't have a choice about public interaction? "It's about reducing your contact with other people. The guidance that's come out is basically if you can work from home or have school from home, do that. If you don't need to be there in person, don't take that risk, for yourself or for others. But many of our students work full time. So if you're working at a grocery store, you can't avoid work right now. You're needed. If you do go out in public, you have to take steps to protect yourself and, and the business has to take steps to protect their employees."
• Soap and water are your first line of defense. "Hand-washing is obviously the biggest one. If you don't have access to soap and water — if you can find it at this point — hand sanitizer is a nice alternative to that. The other thing you can do is think about anything being on your hands and how it's going to get into your body. We're trying to get people to stop touching their faces, which is a really challenging thing to do because you do it all day long and don't even think about it. If you're keeping it off your hands in the first place and not touching your face, you can really reduce your risk of being infected right now. On the other side, you have to think about how you can transmit disease to other people. If you're coughing, cover your cough [with your elbow or tissue]. If you're sick, absolutely stay home."

On campus, UNLV has put a number of social distancing measures in place. Though we've gone to remote teaching, many operations are continuing to ensure students have access to technology. In the labs and library, every other computer has been shut down to enforce more distance between users. The Student Union thinned out seating, and in Student Recreation and Wellness Center, you have to use every other machine to get your workouts in.