Loneliness, we know from the research, can be as bad for your health as smoking. “Look, I wash my hands a lot,” says Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies that followed more than 300,000 people for an average of eight years, researchers found that positive social relationships gave people a 50 percent greater chance of surviving over time compared with people with weak social ties. So far, I’ve seen that same tendency play out among friends and neighbors, despite social distancing, and we all have to work to keep that going. My son and another kid on our street created fliers offering to help run errands for anyone who can’t go outside.

Source: Washington Post March 17, 2020 21:03 UTC