Communication skills used to negotiate safe sex are also useful for setting boundaries while socializing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Now, suddenly, we're having to have these awkward, safe sex-type conversations with all types of people that you wouldn't ordinarily have to have these conversations with.".

She's used to explaining to people that when you have sex with someone, you're essentially having sex with whoever else they're having sex with.

Pulling it all off successfully requires some nuanced communication skills.

"If you really want to make sure your partner uses a condom, you have to express why it's important to you and why it's aligned with your values and why that's something that you need from them," says Julia Feldman, who runs the sex education consultancy Giving the Talk.

Sex educator Julia Feldman says the same communication skills she teaches to teens about sex are helpful for everyone during the pandemic.

Similarly, she says, "If you want your mom to wear a mask when you see her, you need to explain why it's important to you and why it's aligned with your values.".

"The more people communicate what they want and what they desire and what they're comfortable with, the more we actually get what we want," Feldman says.

"Because if you show up at someone's house and they have a beautiful spread and they're expecting that you're just going to dig into a platter of food with them, and that's not what you're comfortable with, there might be disappointment on their part," Feldman explains.

But it really was only because she was cognizant of articulating that need and I was able to take time to accommodate it," she says.

"You start tying people up without consent, and it just goes south right away — you just can't do that," says Carol Queen, the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, a sex toy and sexual health company based in San Francisco.

Queen says we need an equivalent checklist for the coronavirus pandemic.

Queen has the star role in the 1998 instructional video/feminist porn film Bend Over Boyfriend, and in the film she stresses that point repeatedly: "It's deeply important that you are verbal with each other and say, 'Yes, no, faster, I'm ready, I'm not ready.' It's very important because if you're going on your partner's wavelength, you're going to have a greater experience."

"The idea that it's OK to be that talkative, in the service of safety and comfort, really is what we learned from that," Queen says

"It's a very important lesson in sex and, these days, under most other circumstances."