Creating your own COVID-19 bubble

by Zaid Aleem

As COVID-19 cases rampage through the country, it is becoming increasingly important to form a social bubble to ensure reduction in the spread of cases. While the value of bubbles is seldom spoken about by physicians, now during this catastrophic COVID-19 wave, they are encouraging all Americans to hunker down in their bubbles.

Bubbles of social isolation will help you remain safe and secure by seeing other human beings in person. But they only operate well if the same strict rules are followed by everyone.

The following will explain what a bubble is, what the ground rules should be, how to deal with tricky conversations with friends and family, and what happens if someone breaks the bubble (or bursts it):

A COVID-19 bubble is made up of a select few friends or family members you can socialize with and enjoy a meal with, mask-free. But the most important rule is no one can socialize in-person with anyone outside the bubble, especially without face masks. It’s critical to keep this bubble as small as possible, according to Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“The fewer, the better,” Khan said. “Your bubble consists of everybody that your entire bubble is in contact with. So even if you’re only including one other person in your bubble, but that person has 10 people in their bubble, you’ve now got 11 people in your bubble.”

“If you bring 10 people together, there’s a high likelihood one of them is going to have COVID-19,” Dr. Peter Hotez added, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Bubbles are of high importance now, especially with hospitals nationwide running out of capacity in a lot of states. Additionally, health experts believe that the next few months will be the worst yet of this pandemic.