I found this Atlantic Monthly article written by a public health expert to be helpful: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vac...
Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
211–220 of 566 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Masks don't help because of low quality and people lack proper training... you shouldn't touch the mask, you shouldn't reuse it, you should properly dispose it, etc. A saner advice is to wash your hands frequently and to avoid touching your face when in public. Because you can get this virus by touching infected surfaces and then touching your face. It doesn't seem to be an airborn virus, but it does survive on surfa…
is it possible to reuse a mask if you put the mask through an autoclave?
I assumed the reason not to re-use them is that the paper mask structurally wears out and no longer creates the proper seal on your face.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#213I'm not. If I get it, I get it. I'll probably be fine. I'm a healthy twenty-something. If it hits hard, I'll wear my lightly used N95 respirator I use for housework, and gloves everywhere I go, hand sanitizer if I don't, limit my travel and exposure to the public. If it gets epidemically bad, I'll hide in my basement with my ham radios and 2mo of food stores for my wife and cats until it all blows over. I have been c…
If you're 20 something, you have around 60 years of life left meaning that 2 months is about .3% of your remaining life. The probability, likewise, of dying of coronavirus if you get coronavirus is on the order of .1%, it seems. Spending 2 months of your life trying to not get the coronavirus seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, to me.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish people stop calling that Spanish Flu where it's totally unrelated to Spain...
Yeah! Coronavirus doesn't even have anything to do with the beer!
Since you made me wonder:
> corona: "crown" (from latin corōna, meaning "crown")
> virus: "poisonous secretion" (from latin vīrus, meaning "venom" or "poisonous secretion")
> Coronavirus, the virus responsible for 30% of common colds, as well as SARS, has the appearance of a crown (corona) under electron microscopy, due to the spike proteins that coat the viral surface. Viruses, being so small, might have been thought of before they were discovered, to be poisonous secretions (virus) of unknown origin, hence their name.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely good to be prepared, but AFAIK there is no such thing as being "statistically overdue" for an earthquake.
Yeah there is. It is not like saying that if black hit on roulette 10x in a row that one would be statistically overdue for red. Because those are completely independent events with equal probability on each trial. With earthquakes if statically speaking a massive earthquake hits on a roughly 1 in 500 year interval, the stresses at the plate boundary are much more likely to be greater at year 600 than at year 1 after…
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Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you're technically burning through your body's food supply when you fast. While that has survival implications, that's not really the point. The average American overeats like crazy and is addicted to junk food. Fasting helps to break that addiction so that you're more likely to use your crisis food wisely and not feel hunger pangs. When I tell people that I comfortably fast for 4 or more days, they think it's c…
What fasting method do you practice? It sounds interesting!
I don't have much of a specific method, but usually I try to go at least 48 hours and limit myself to a 1 hour eating window. The key is getting your electrolytes. It's amazing how big a difference they make. Otherwise, I just take fasting day by day. I try to be conscientious and recognize whether I'm genuinely hungry or just desiring food because I'm bored. If it's the former, I'll break my fast. I eat pretty healthy when I break my fast, but I don't make a fuss about too much carbs or whatever because I'll get satiated too quickly to even get close to overeating.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#217You just need to look at China for its worse. Prob no worse than what’s happening there. Prepare accordingly, don’t hoard 4 months worth of stuff, if things does get that worse you have bigger things to worry about
What can be bigger than that? I have seen interview with a person in Wuhan and his biggest problem is running out of food.
Other people coming to take your food. If there are major food shortages and you have a big stockpile, you better hope you have a way to keep yourself secure.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not too farfetched if you read a lot of news and see what is going on in other countries that are affected.
Meh, I'm in Italy and there's not much going on: some small panic in some parts of the population, school closed and stuff. Nothing worth preparing for. All the deaths were very sick people Edit: apparently OP by "other countries that are affected" meant "the most badly hit places in Wuhan" and thinks it's going to happen everywhere in the world. I repeat that in Italy there's no apocalyptic scenario going on
Think of it this way. You are currently living in Wuhan circa mid-to-late January. Extrapolate from there.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#219Shifting my graduate students from other projects to work on coronavirus work.
Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this to be pretty alarmist. "If the pandemic hits" ... the virus has already hit. The WHO itself has backed off the Pandemic classification [1]. The virus has an overall 98% survival rate, and most diagnosed cases in the US, are not actually showing any symptoms (which itself is a cause for concern re: spread). The annual Flu, MERS and SARS were far far worse. The flu kills between 26,000 and 52,000 annually i…
> the virus has already hit. It's now an epidemic, not at pandemic level.
Not true. In the colloquial sense, and actually every sense of the word, this is a pandemic. At the point it became undeniably a pandemic per the WHO definition, the WHO announced they were "no longer going to use the category pandemic." The coronavirus is on every continent but one now.