Even the coronavirus task force can't stop touching their faces. What chance do you think you have?

The Washington Post’s Katie Shepherd has collected just a few examples of America's newest hobby: Public health officials and political figures warning everyone not to touch their faces as they ... touch their faces. Wipe their noses. Read off "Don't touch your face" messages before licking their fingers to turn to the next page.

So, yes, we're all going to die. Or 2% of us, anyway. It's going to be very, very, very hard to teach all of humanity to keep their hands away from their heads in a matter of days or weeks. It is encoded into our mammal DNA. Would mittens help? What about mittens covered with pushpins, to really bring the (cough) point home if you forget? No? Hmm, probably not.

Which leads us to the next solution: If you're the sort of person who will never, ever remember that you cannot touch any public surface and scratch your own chin unless you have washed your hands very, very thoroughly between those two things, you're probably going to want to banish yourself into the social distancing group. Stay home. Avoid contamination in the first place. Oh, you poor, poor extroverts of America: You're in our lane now.

If you are not used to the ways of isolation, here are a few tips on surviving social distancing, or what we should be calling limited preemptive self-quarantine. If you are currently on the internet, you probably don't need this advice because, well, look around. But you might print it out and send it to your more extroverted, potentially soon-to-be-desperate acquaintances. (Before handing it to them please laminate it, wash it in a mild bleach solution, and dry it in direct sunlight on a day with an ambient air temperature of at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of less than 30%)

Help! I want to self-isolate because I am a horrible failure who cannot stop touching my face like Mike Pence does, but I don't want to go stir crazy in my own house. I want to see my friends. The hermit life will kill me.

A common plea. Don't worry: There are plenty of ways to entertain yourself in your very own home. For example, you could read a book.

...

Gotcha—that one's not going to fly. You need something more ... audiovisual, and I’ll assume you’ve already binge-watched everything that can be binged. In that case, play a video game?

It’s not the same, and you know it. It doesn't really compare to the experience of going to a crowded bar or club with your friends, a place where you can't really communicate or hear much of anything over the din and everything is somehow too dark and too bright, both fun and relaxed and low-key threatening.

Ah. Play an online video game.

I’m not sure. Will that really match the experience of being repeatedly challenged by drunk, clearly underaged kids who loudly claim they're going to kick everyone's ass before falling over a table and passing out?

Play Call of Duty.

What about the walk home? What can you offer me in the "We've had a great night, now it's time to dodge a tweaked-out half-naked man who comes out of an alley wielding a broomstick and screaming in what seems to be incoherent Russian” area?

Play Dark Souls.

Fine, fine, I've got your point. But there are other aspects of society that aren't so easy to replicate with a video game. There's the question of food, for starters. Even on nights I'm staying home, I like having meals delivered when I can, but I gather that's not going to work out either, since those food and delivery workers are probably more likely to catch the new virus than most people in society.

This is where introverts have you covered. What you have to do is imagine that initial phone call to the takeout place. Let's pretend that making that phone call is, to you, potentially deadly. For whatever reason, there’s let’s say that there’s a good four-in-10 possibility that somewhere during that phone call, your heart will give out and you will die. Your throat tightens up. You rehearse the few terse sentences you want to say, knowing that the slightest deviation from the other side will render your preplanning useless again. Do you feel that tension? Do you feel that light sweat? Good, hold that feeling.

Now look in your cabinets to see what you have that you could shove into a bowl, microwave, and make a meal of if it meant you didn't have to make that call.

How will I know when it's safe to return to society?

You won't. None of us will. It's a crapshoot. We're going to assume you aren't listening to the news because listening to the great gibbering Hate Pumpkin go on even one more time about how everything's fine, a vaccine is around the corner, and the director of the CDC personally told him that the vaccine was going to also give everybody superpowers … we're going to assume you've been ignoring that.

Honestly, what's going to happen is that everybody's going to self-isolate for however many days they can, but then they're going run out of household items and raw patience and head back out the door. Not just for the bare necessities, but for the sporting events and mall runs and concerts and movie theaters and all the other places that they should VERY MUCH BE AVOIDING but can no longer be without. Mankind has evolved to need those interactions, to crave them and to seek them out, and the world population will eventually decide, person by person, that it will risk a potentially deadly new disease in exchange for those important things.

Except for the introverts.

The introverts will, still, be staying home.

They will be waiting. And watching. And touching their faces whenever they want to because there are no public surfaces to contaminate them to begin with.

Biding their time.

For now.

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