social distancing Archives - How to Kill an Hour

Social Distancing Dancing: The Social Dis-Dancing

16th July 2020/in Entertainment/by billywright

Social Distancing Dancing – Which dance routines are the most difficult to learn?

Much of the UK is still in lockdown, with indoor gyms and leisure centres are remaining closed for now. So, many people have found new ways to get and stay active. One of these ways is with dancing. Iconic dance routines have been unearthed and replicated over and over on social media. Viral challenges have sprung up on Tik Tok. So, whether it’s to keep fit, to get likes or to get views. Dancing has become one of the most popular internet crazes of 2020. Leading to many of us heading to the various apps on mobiles available to us to check out the latest challenges and dance routines. Social Distancing Dancing!

Routines

USwitch have crunched the numbers on the top 10 most popular routines at the minute. Allowing you to get involved and work your way through the various difficulties of the difference dances. Ranging from beginner to expert. Allowing you to get fit and active whilst doing it.

USwitch have taken the top 5 most iconic dance routines and the most popular TikTok dance challenges. With the help of expert dancers, Jane White, Dance Course Leader and Senior Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth and dance teacher to the stars, Andrea Rose, USwitch rated them on a difficulty scale of 1-10, with one being the easiest to learn.

Furthermore two experts rated each dance independently with average ratings taken from both. Which focus on length of routine, the amount of moves and difficulty of transitions. Calories burned was also worked in each routine, with the experts predicting how long the routine would take to master, using a calorie counting formula to work out a figure. The full research can be found below:

Social Distancing Health Benefits

So, in just 5 minutes, TikTokers can be raking in the likes after mastering the ‘Out West’ challenge. Though those that want to go the whole hog and make use of the time that we have on lockdown. MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’ routine could be the antidote to life without a gym. Why? As you can burn a huge 35,269 kcal in the process of learning the routine. Which is the equivalent of the average person running for more than 54 hours on the treadmill or cycling for 137 hours!

More than just likes, dancing has a lot of other wider benefits. Personal Trainer, Nutritionist, and Author Stuart Robert explains:

“Dancing is one of those rare forms of exercise that ticks all the boxes. As well as improving cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, joint mobility, coordination and balance it’s also something you can do at any time of your life.

“Most types of dancing are low impact which minimises the risk of injury. And by putting less pressure on the joints it’s great for older people. It’s also a great form of exercise for improving motor fitness. This is your body’s ability to transmit impulses from your nervous tissue (nerve cells called motor neurons) to your muscular tissue. Improving the efficiency of these nerve cells can help to:

Increase agility

Improve balance

Enhance coordination

Increase muscular power

Improve speed of movement

Enhance reaction time

“As well as the many physical benefits, dancing has a host benefits for mental health. Learning a new dance routine and then perfecting it provides a great challenge and focuses our attention. Concentrating on learning the steps enables us to switch off from our day to day concerns and forget about the news headlines for a while. Our brains have the ability to learn and grow, even as we age, making new neural connections. This ‘neural/brain plasticity’ can help to maintain and build cognitive skills such as memory and spatial recognition.

“Dancing can also make us feel happier by boosting our mood and has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety. The physical exercise releases mood enhancing endorphins and the feel-good hormone serotonin, whilst reducing stress hormones such as cortisol. Another great benefit is that dancing provides us with a challenge.”

Rehan Ali, mobiles expert at Uswitch.com commented on the research:

“If you are looking to take on one of these viral challenges and then share it with the world, you are going to need the right equipment. Ensure you have lots of space to practice. You might want this to be somewhere private for the outtakes! You’re going to need a handset that can record quality video, with a big display in order to analyse the dances you are trying to replicate. If you already have the phone, you might need to ensure you have the ability to stream these videos over and over again while you learn the moves, so ensure that you have a data package that can handle the demand! Good luck!”

(USwitch)

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Coronavirus: Are you helping to flatten the curve?

22nd April 2020/in Gadgets / Tech/by billywright

Drastic measures have been put into place to stop the spread of Coronavirus. Every country affected by the Coronavirus have put in varying levels of lockdown to help dampen and flatten the curve until many of us can go back outside again. But what would happen if we do go out?

Coronavirus Explainer: What if you go out?

You go out and visit friends and family
However, you don’t display any symptoms of COVID-19 and think that you are safe.
Turns out you have COVID 19 but don’t show any symptoms whatsoever
When visiting friends and family you pass it on to 2 of your friends and a grandparent
Each of those go on to visit their own friends and members of their family
According to scientific modelling, those affected, on average, without social distancing in place, will pass on the virus to 3 other people.

Spreading Coronavirus

As a result out of one infection, cases will soon start to spread quickly and far outside your own network
Most of those infected, however, would experience either mild symptoms or have a nasty flu like experience, making a full recovery. Some would require hospital treatment.
According to scientific modelling by Imperial College London, about 4.5% of those infected would need to be admitted to hospital
The same model predicts that out of 100 people, 30 would need a critical care bed.
However the NHS face problems as out of those 30 people only 1 person can receive a bed once the pandemic hits peak
Therefore NHS doctors face dilemma’s as to who does and who doesn’t receive the bed
Should Patient A, a 78 year old retired teacher and grandmother of 7 get the bed. Or Patient B, a 68 year old retired fire fighter who is the sole carer of his wife who has Alzeihmers disease?

Overcoming the disease

The Imperial team have assessed various different ways of reducing the number of people needing the NHS’s critical-care beds.
The team discovered that if people experienced symptoms and those who lived with them. Stayed home for 2 weeks. Whilst those over 70 reduced social contact and kept it to a minimum. The impact on the NHS would be reduced.
However, even with this measure it still leaves 8 patients needing 1 bed.
Therefore the team discovered that if social distancing measures applied to everyone. Schools and Universities closed. The two week quarantine period applied to households who had people living in them that showed symptoms. Then the NHS can cope.
This would then lead to the NHS being able to cope with the number of patients in their wards at the peak of the pandemic
However, despite all these measures. Those in places where demand happened to be above average, NHS services would still be be strained.
The research undertaken by Imperial College has been very influencial. The approach explained here is similar to what UK government ministers have implemented. The NHS, so far, has not been overwhelmed largely because of social distancing and lockdown measures.

2nd Wave

Though, we have to be careful.
As, as soon as the measures are lifted, the research predicts that another outbreak could occur. Which would be just as bad if we had done nothing this time round.
There are only 2 ways out of lockdown. A development of a vaccine. Or a more effective way of testing people, tracing all those who had come into contact with those who were tested positive.
Since the research was released, so far there has been a huge effort to increase the number of critical care beds available, up from 5,000 that the NHS had at the time
To keep the curve flat, we must stay at home and work from home where possible. It is vitaly important.

(BBC)