There is one group of people who may have been taking social distancing and even cocooning very seriously in recent weeks - the second level teachers who live in the communities where they teach and have now been tasked with judging their Leaving Certificate students under the new calculated grades system.
Since the new mechanism was announced two weeks ago some of those teachers have become very anxious about trips to the local Spar, where you never know who you might meet in the aisles.
They will welcome the publication today of guidelines, which will give the granular detail to teachers and schools on the role they will play in calculating grades for students.
Those guidelines will also include a formal prohibition on the canvassing or lobbying of teachers by parents and students.
It's something the teacher unions and school managers have pushed for and they say it can’t come too soon.
One teacher who lives in the school community feels that when she enters her local shop "people stop talking".
The principal of one large school in a large town says he has taken to doing his shopping in a neighbouring town "where no one knows me". That principal also decided early on that he was best off taking his daily local walk after dark, for the time being.
School principals and teachers have told RTÉ News that when news of the new system broke on Friday 8 May the emails from parents and students began.
By the Sunday, one teacher, in a school known for its strong academic performance, had received 50 emails from parents.
A principal said: "Between the Friday and the Monday, I had 17 missed calls from parents, trying to explain why their darling had not worked so hard and wondering what they could do now."
"I’m still getting emails," he added.
"The approaches are subtle, and not so subtle," another principal said.
"One of my teachers got chocolates."
Presumably that’s in the 'not so subtle’ category.
The word went out from schools very quickly. "A firm but friendly message to parents to desist," according to one principal. But teachers and schools want formal centralised measures to drive that message home.
Many schools saw an immediate upsurge in fond emails to teachers from students, with messages such as "I loved your class Miss. You were a really special teacher".
These messages are likely to be true and heartfelt, but with teachers now tasked with using their own judgement, albeit judgement based on evidence, to mark students, approaches like these have now become suspect.
School and teachers are forgiving though. These are the days of school graduation ceremonies, the days when students should be getting their shirts signed, hugging teachers and beginning to call them by their first name, playing celebratory staff versus student football matches, and saying goodbye.
"That’s one of the sad things about all this," another school principal said. "Our young people have been robbed of their opportunity to say goodbye."
Schools are trying to find a balance between continuing to provide pastoral care to students in need while making it clear that contact should be avoided. It’s the 10% of parents - the ‘helicopter parents’ - that teachers are concerned about.
One principal said he laughed out loud at an email from one parent, which gave great detail on a colourful range of hitherto unknown sicknesses and mishaps that had plagued her child throughout the year, especially at exam times.
But there are also parents who have written to schools explaining that their child was sitting the Health Professions Admission Test (HPAT) assessment for their medicine application around the same time as their mock exams, and so the mock exams took second place.
There are four tiers to the new calculated grades system.
Teachers are the first level. Their professional judgement will be worked through with other subject teachers at their school.
Then the school principal will assess the marks those teachers have come up with. After that, those assessments will go to a new special unit in the Department of Education - the executive unit.
They will be standardised there using national data and converted into an actual grade.
But teachers have been placed in a very difficult position and one that the vast majority of them would never have wished for.
It’s the perception they are concerned about - the "Mrs Ryan never liked my Mary" feelings, as one teacher puts it.
But teachers and principals are also very concerned about potential litigation. They have asked for indemnification from the department so that they cannot be sued by parents or students unhappy with a final grade.
One principal said he had heard teachers say that they will mark generously "so that if it comes back to them they won’t be seen to have been unfair or harsh".
Some teachers are concerned about predicted grades that they have already given students.
Students who apply to UK universities need to supply provisional predicted grades from their teachers along with their initial application. These grades would have been arrived at through a very informal process and some teachers acknowledge now that they might have been "a bit generous".
In these cases, what if a student’s calculated grade is lower than the grade the teacher initially predicted? That’s a question those teachers are pondering.
There are many questions still. It’s hoped today’s guidance document will answer them and give teachers a greater level of security.
