you don’t have to wear a mask or social distance

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GoodTaste

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Harvard University tweeted:
The CDC now says that if you are fully vaccinated, you don’t have to wear a mask or social distance, except when required by law or other regulations. But what do you do if you have children who aren’t vaccinated?
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It seems to me that "you don’t have to wear a mask or social distance" should have been "you don’t have to wear a mask or keep social distance" - That is, "keep" should not be omitted.
Do you agree?
 

emsr2d2

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Initially, people said "socially distance" as the verb but I've been seeing "social distance" as a verb more and more recently.
 

GoesStation

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English is generally very quick to adopt new phrasal verbs. They don't always stick, of course.

One day my high school had a ski outing. Kids in my bus were talking about how nice it was when they got a row of seats to themselves. A girl said, "One time I one-seated it the whole way!" I'm sure none of us had ever heard the verb she'd just invented, but we all immediately understood what she meant.
 

tedmc

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I think the action 'to practice social distancing" is more common though "to social distance" is catching up.
 

Phaedrus

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I think the action 'to practice social distancing" is more common though "to social distance" is catching up.

Interestingly, as the pandemic draws to a close (knock on wood), some people have started to speak of "social closening" as the opposite of "social distancing."

I doubt we'll ever have "social closen" as a verb, though!
 
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