Abstract
Pestilence is not a new feature of urban life, and neither are the public health practices devised to prevent large segments of the population from perishing. The cosmopolis is the perfect ground for the proliferation of the highly contagious and fatal epidemic diseases because the defining features of cities rest in descriptions of congregate human settlements. Municipalities are founded on the ability to attract and to retain large numbers of people who forsake rural life to seek livelihoods and sustenance among a collection of urban amenities. Until the advent of COVID-19, what is referred to as “social distancing” was called “physical distancing.” This essay examines the premises of the traditional public health practice “social distancing” from the perspectives of the urban context of disease, the origin of COVID-19 in an urban envelopment that triggers the unleashing of previously isolated animals, mitigation, the theoretical basis of social distancing, the use and abuse of social distancing over time, and the psychic cost of social distancing.
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Overman, E.S., Roberts-Lewis, K. (2021). Social Distancing. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_4166-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_4166-1
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