As Americans and people around the world are being asked to help halt the spread of the coronavirus, we have frequently been told to practice social distancing. The idea is to “flatten the curve,” or slow the spread of the virus, decreasing the number of people who get sick at one time and the risk of overwhelming our medical system. In practice, social distancing mostly means avoiding close contact with people who do not live with you, and also public spaces, where surfaces may be contaminated. But, no matter how often we have been given such advice, it can be hard to totally change our habits, and the specific advice about how to behave can be confusing and overwhelming.

In order to get some tips on how we should all be going about our daily lives, I spoke by phone with Asaf Bitton, a primary-care physician, public-health researcher, and the director of the Ariadne Labs, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He has produced a handy sheet outlining the best social-distancing practices, and most of my questions for him were about how to follow them. In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what to do when you go outside, how often to shower, the importance of walks, how to respond if someone you are sheltering with gets sick, the pros and cons of ordering food, and the unsung heroes at American medical facilities.

What has been the biggest thing that you think people do not understand, or have misunderstood, about social distancing?

The fact that there is an incredible need for speed. We need to do it now and yesterday and not next week. It was deflating and disconcerting to, on the one hand, finally see state, local, and some federal response over the last five days, coupled with images of bars being filled to capacity on Saturday night across cities, and huge lines with a crunch of people at airports that took in international travellers. That was a disconcerting incongruity.

What about in terms of how people are socially distancing? When you talk to people in your own life, is there something they seem to not understand about it?

Yeah. The piece that I wrote that got some traction—and I have to give credit to my wife, Liz—really came out of a huge number of people calling and asking, “If our school is closed, we can still do play dates, right?” Or “Let’s have a six-family picnic in the park,” or “How about a sleepover with only four kids?” That is pretty much the opposite of social distancing. Social distancing isn’t some external concept that applies only to work and school. Social distancing is really extreme. It is a concept that disconnects us physically from each other. It profoundly reorients our daily life habits. And it is very hard. We have all these built-in human needs and desires because we are social creatures who connect with each other, and I think one of the profound challenges, and one of the ways we will know whether we are meeting this crisis head-on, is whether we can sustain this very unnatural—from a human perspective—physical separateness.

But I want to really emphasize that social distancing is really about that physical separation. It is not—and, in fact, it won’t work if it means—an actual disconnection socially from each other, which would have tremendous, tremendous effects pretty much on everybody, but especially kids and the elderly and other vulnerable populations.

You write, “Exercise, take walks/runs outside, and stay connected through phone, video, and other social media. But when you go outside, do your best to maintain at least six feet between you and non-family members. If you have kids, try not to use public facilities like playground structures, as coronavirus can live on plastic and metal for up to three days, and these structures aren't getting regularly cleaned.” Can you discuss this more? There is a lot of fear about the coronavirus living on surfaces. Does going outside at all increase the risk?

Going outside in and of itself doesn’t increase the risk. It is really proximity to other human beings, and specifically to their secretions—their sneezes and droplets. So the recommendation is to please go outside if you can. Please take walks, please bike, with a helmet. Interact with your family members outside. But really the key is don’t interact with people outside of your home unit—whoever you are already in close contact with. The C.D.C. is recommending maintaining a distance of six feet, because that is as far as they can tell droplets can travel. And don’t touch other people.

And in terms of playground surfaces and sitting on park benches, it sounds extreme, but we do know that it lives on surfaces for a long time—some studies have found nine days, some studies have found three days—and we don’t clean those surfaces regularly. You will want to not touch those surfaces.

But the key thing is that you are going to want to go outside, and I am concerned that people are misconstruing social distancing as a recommendation to not get fresh air. And I don’t think that is healthy for people. It is really a matter of maintaining as much personal space as possible.

You write, “Take-out meals and food are riskier than making food at home given the links between the people who prepare food, transport the food, and you. It is hard to know how much that risk is, but it is certainly higher than making it at home. But you can and should continue to support your local small businesses (especially restaurants and other retailers) during this difficult time by buying gift certificates online that you can use later.” How do you weigh this? If you get takeout, there is a whole supply chain where people could be interacting. Should people not do it at all?

Here is where I stand on this. I think that, if a person is really trying to minimize their risk—like, let’s say they are older, or have a respiratory or cardiovascular condition, and they’re trying to minimize all possible risks—then not taking out from restaurants and minimizing that chain of people touching your food might be a good idea. What I am saying is it is not standard practice, but there have been no public-health guidelines for restaurants that remain open to basically have all of their chefs and cooks and people who handle the food wear masks. And so, given the fact that that is not a guidance, there is at least a theoretical, if not probable or likely, somewhat increased risk of transmission from food delivery. I am also a realist and a pragmatist, and I get that, especially in dense urban areas, it is not practical for everybody to cook every meal on their own. And so this is where we have to make our best guess and judgment about that titration of risk and benefit. It’s not about doing everything a hundred per cent all the time. It’s about doing as much as you possibly can and contributing your own personal discomfort or inconvenience to protect yourself and to protect others.