Save your life, save others, stay at home!

If you think the coronavirus will not infect you and you can continue to roam around bars, markets, jump into crowded matatus and generally live your life normally, you are wrong.

By doing this you are not only a risk to yourself but to your loved ones, friends and colleagues.

You need to dramatically change your social habits. Stay at home, wash your hands regularly with soap and water and work remotely if you can.

This is the new normal. It is the way coronavirus is changing our lives. Accept the new way and save lives.

The pandemic could be with us for months. We don’t know when our world will return to normalcy, if it ever does.

The world is experiencing something unprecedented, a pandemic that has no cure and has killed thousands of people from China, to Italy and in Africa.

Wash your hands with Soap

It’s this simple: If you wash your hands correctly, you’ll lower your chances of getting Covid-19. 

Your hands carry a lot of germs, which you pick from shaking hands, touching things or using the toilet and not washing your hands thereafter.

Pay attention to all the germy surfaces you touch — matatu seats and rails, elevator buttons, door handles, a shopping basket, armrests on a chair and someone else’s phone among other things.

It’s almost inevitable that you’ll later touch your face unconsciously. Periodic washing throughout the day will keep whatever was on the escalator handrail or supermarket self-checkout machine from getting inside your body. Think of the extras as bonus washes. If you’re nowhere near a sink, use hand sanitiser.

Even if you’re not sick, wash your hands after blowing your nose, sneezing or coughing.

But you can’t just splash some water on your hands and think you are done as we have witnessed in many parts of the country.

When you only half-wash, you’ve still got plenty of potentially harmful germs on your hands.  So please sing the entire happy birthday song (20 seconds) as you start to wash.

Social distancing

The government has asked all of us to keep a distance of at least one metre. But matatu owners are making nonsense of this requirement. They are still filling up their vehicles as if they are immune to the disease.

In Kangemi, Kibra, Mathare and Mukuru kwa Njenga, social distancing is a joke. 

Those in affluent areas of Kileleshwa, Lavington, Runda, Karen and Muthaiga with some cash to spend, are flocking to bars and crowding around tables or even holding each other’s unwashed hands.

Upcountry, others are still roaming market centres with their boda boda riders as if the coronavirus is afraid of them. Wake up.

Experts say that during the Covid-19 pandemic the goal of social distancing is to slow down the outbreak to try and reduce the chance of infection among high-risk groups and ease the burden on health care systems and workers. 

They describe this as "flattening the curve," which refers to the potential success of social distancing measures to prevent surges in illness that could overwhelm the health care system.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe, governors and other politicians have been calling for people to stay at home, avoid funerals, avoid crowing and wash or sanitise your hands. Just do it.

Stop shaking hands

One of the most visible changes to societal norms since the coronavirus hit has been the call to avoid handshakes. We must all shift from the culture of greeting one another.

Shaking hands, high fives, hugs, and kisses are modes of greeting to be abandoned at this point.

Stop spending on luxuries

As the pandemic takes hold across the country, some businesses are getting crushed, job cuts are looming; those who will be lucky to keep their jobs will most likely have pay cuts.

Now this means that you must review your budget, cut what is a want so that you can stretch the savings you have for as long as possible.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on economic activities as public health officials warn against in-person interactions.

On the brighter side coronavirus is boosting almost anything that can be done online or with minimal human contact — grocery deliveries, online learning, takeout food, streaming video, even real estate closings done with online notaries.

Meanwhile use the time you have to think of an online business.

(edited by o. owino)