Health Expert Warns Against Expanding 'Corona Bubbles,' Says It's Too Soon To Stop Social Distancing And Hang Out With Friends
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- For the past two months, we've been wearing masks and social distancing in hopes of ending the spread of the coronavirus, but when will it be safe enough to hang out in larger groups mask-free?
Your "corona bubble" is the imaginary bubble created around you, or you and your quarantine crew, to slow the spread of COVID-19.
With quarantine fatigue weighing heavy, people, like friends Jill Strickman and Farah Khan, are talking about expanding their corona bubbles.
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"This has been going on a long time," Strickman said.
"Jill and I were just texting ... about, like, our comfort level on getting together," Khan said.
"I'm always like saying to her, 'Maybe you can come over and we can have a dinner and be far apart,'" Strickman said.
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Lisa Jordan, of Mendham, New Jersey, stuck to the rules and stayed home all alone for weeks, until the anxiety became overwhelming, and her closest friend invited her over.
"She goes, 'Come on, Lisa, we have been here, nobody's been in this house for 40 days,'" Jordan said. "We did hug. I said, I can't anymore, and she's like, 'Lisa, you needed this, you have to look out for your mental health, too.'"
She expanded her corona bubble just a smidge.
"I felt guilty. I felt almost like you were cheating on your husband or something," Jordan said.
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Dr. Waleed Javaid, director of Infection Prevention and Control at Mount Sinai Downtown, says he knows it's getting harder to realize we are still dealing with a pandemic with shops opening and more people out and about.
"If a friend came up to you and said, 'Hey, I'm thinking of hanging out with some friends I haven't seen since pre-quarantine this weekend,' what would your response to them be?" CBS2's Vanessa Murdock asked.
"Not at this time," Javaid said. "It's not an easy thing and I totally know it ... We've come so far, it's important to kind of give it a few more days, maybe a week or so."
Dr. Javaid urges everyone to wait for word from health officials because if we don't and we move too quickly, we might have to do all of this all over again.