The many variations on a graphic illustrating the impact of non-pharmaceutical measures to mitigate pandemic influenza that have appeared in recent news reports about COVID-19 suggest a need to better explain the mechanism by which social distancing reduces the spread of infectious diseases. And some reports understate one benefit of reducing the frequency or proximity of interpersonal encounters, a reduction in the total number of infections. In hopes that understanding will increase compliance, we describe how social distancing (a) reduces the peak incidence of infections, (b) delays the occurrence of this peak, and (c) reduces the total number of infections during epidemics. In view of the extraordinary efforts underway to identify existing medications that are active against SARS-CoV-2 and to develop new antiviral drugs, vaccines and antibody therapies, any of which may have community-level effects, we also describe how pharmaceutical interventions affect transmission.

关于COVID-19的最新新闻报道中出现的许多图解说明了非药物措施缓解大流行性流感的影响的图形上的许多变体，表明有必要更好地解释社会距离减少传染病传播的机制。一些报告低估了减少人际交往的频率或距离的一种好处，即减少了感染的总数。为了希望能增进依从性，我们描述了社会疏远如何（a）减少感染高峰期的发生，（b）延迟该高峰期的发生，以及（c）减少流行期间的总感染数。鉴于正在做出巨大的努力来确定对SARS-CoV-2有活性的现有药物并开发新的抗病毒药物，