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Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#541

Post by jnbiche »

Buttons840 wrote: post #61
Someone1234 wrote: post #2

I'm not. There's no meaningful preparations for avoiding what is essentially a really dangerous variant of the common cold at an individual level. Now governments and the medical field should be preparing for it. But most of that is logistical problems (e.g. number of hospital beds, preparing quarantine plans, test kits, etc). You can order a bunch of masks if it makes you feel better, but countries with common mask…

Do not overstock on masks or other supplies. Masks especially should be available to the sick. It's ironic that (I'm sure) someone out there will stock up on 10,000 masks and it will cause them to be in even greater danger because the sick people around them will have fewer masks. The CDC recommends that sick people wear masks to keep droplets in, and that people who directly interact with sick people wear masks whil…

I agree strongly that we shouldn't overstock on masks.

That said, I'd urge everyone to get a few P95 [1] masks for themselves and their family members, in the event that you have to accompany them to a hospital, or even to wear in public if you live in an urban environment.

1. P95 have same filtering capacity as N95, but last for much longer.

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#542

Post by jnbiche »

disabled wrote: post #436
lapinot wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic lottery is 1 in 14 million winning. I guess "citation needed", having that exact winner on hn is pretty low probability. This is an irrational comment in an irrational subthread. I'm not sure adhesive tape doesn't have high germs density but i'm pretty sure there is little correlation between your finger sticking to a material and a germ sticking to that same material. This message has no positive outcome besid…

It does attract bacteria plus other pathogens, plus makes them hard to remove. For example, in the 90s, roll tape (versus now: single use sterile IV tape) was sometimes used to secure IV lines. Here is a study on IV lines (not central lines): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1496597/ I was phenomenally stupid and also phenomenally lucky not to go in to sepsis for this move. I do know. Even though I am cur…

> You would be surprised to know that I am doing well and prospering, especially if you knew my health situation

As someone who is in the midst of a difficult medical situation right now (and who cheated death myself 2 years ago during the episode that sent me to ICU and gifted me with yet another chronic condition), I'm very happy for you and hope I can join you in your wellness in the coming months.

Some 15 years ago, I almost fully recovered from a serious medical condition that left me partially paralyzed, in severe pain, and out of work for many months. This time around it's a lot harder, and is taking years instead of months.

Aging sucks.

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#543

Post by kaybe »

Simon_says wrote: post #539
kaybe wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wonder how we started to have the toilet and place for washing up in the same room. Especially when you have more than one person it is so much more convenient to have them separate.

Some people like to wash their hands after they poop.

This solution is pretty nifty:

https://images.victorianplumbing.co.uk/images/Alaska-Combine...

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#544

Post by dfsegoat »

jacquesm wrote: post #286
gonehome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Flu mortality rate is 0.1% and Coronavirus is 2%? That seems pretty dramatic, the earlier article about the disease in China stated that some percentage of people that get infected require ICU attention to oxygenate their blood or they die (and it doesn't seem like it's limited only to old or at risk people). That seems a lot worse than the seasonal flu? With SARS and MERS we got lucky because they didn't…

The higher mortality rate of SARS and MERS - counterintuitively - helped to contain it, as well as the fact that it was only spread by people showing symptoms.

Not implying anything: But this tracks with my understanding of how USSR and USA wanted to select bacterial/virologic bioweapons [1]:

An agent that killed very quickly e.g. Ebola is actually not a very good bioweapon. You want something with a long incubation period that is infectious before people are symptomatic.

Things that incubate in short order + kill hosts quickly "burn the epidemic out" before it can spread.

Ideally it also can survive outside of a host for some period of time as well.

1 - Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#545

Post by tmaly »

I was thinking about this thread and came up with a potential useful suggestion.

We use our phones quite a bit. In hospitals, they are considered pretty dirty because the pick up a lot of germs.

We do not always have the opportunity to wash hands and their is a good chance we transfer germs to our phones.

I thought it might make sense to wipe the phone down at the end of the day with a chlorox wipe or rubbing alcohol. Then immediately wash your hands.

Side note, I tend not to handle those wipes directly as the chemicals are not great for your skin.

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#546

Post by ricg »

mercer wrote: post #516
pmoriarty wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to go to the gym to exercise. Plenty of bodyweight exercise (like push-ups, L-sits, planks, burpees, etc) can be done at home without any equipment. Investing in a little bit of equipment, like barbells or maybe a pull-up bar, can let you do even more exercise at home.

While I could Google this, I often prefer asking people I 'know' even as tangentially as via HN comments: any suggestions for resources about this? I'd like to exercise more, and I have an entire room available, but I'm not sure where to start. I have the one-handed weight thingies, for one, but a pull-up bar is not an option. I heard one of those ball thingies with a handle is useful?

https://darebee.com is another good site. They have lots of videos explaining various exercises. Just make sure you start with the entry-level exercises to slowly build up your strength.

I'd even recommend to not worry so much about timing your workouts as this causes too much stress, just focus on the exercises themselves in the beginning to make sure you do them properly.

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#548

Post by ttcbj »

jackjeff wrote: post #160
ttcbj wrote: post #114

Over the last few weeks, we have acquired enough food/supplies to stay isolated at our house for about 2 months (a combination of bulk rice/beans/grains, and pre-purchasing anything we use regularly which has a long expiration date). We also have medicines/toiletries/etc to last that long. Maybe 10-12 years ago I read the book 'The Great Influenza'[1], and there are enough similarities between that outbreak and this…

I was under the impression that the Spanish flu was very different from the regular flu and COVID-19, because it was the young/old people that survived it and the healthy 20-50 year old that died the most. Most people died of the Spanish Flu because of their immune response. It looks like COVID-19 is really mild* for lots of people in that age group. Am I missing something? Did the Spanish flu start like COVID-19 and…

Yes, the book says the 1918 flu hit healthy robust people the hardest. There are many other differences. For example, that flu had a super short incubation time, so it swept through communities in 7 weeks, and military bases in 4-5. On many bases thousands could become ill in a single day. It's spread was much more rapid.

But there are lots of other similarities as well: Hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed. With both flu and coronavirus, it is the pneumonia that is dangerous (also, apparently true of measles). Some people died very quickly of their own immune response and massive lung damage (SARDs, severe acute respiratory distress) while others succumbed later to secondary bacterial pneumonia. Health authorities were reluctant to acknowledge the problem for fear of creating panic. Many people and communities attempted to self-isolate, with very limited success.

There are some possible similarities that have not yet played out - notably multiple waves of infection with different mortalities and characteristics.

Overall, the book has a lot of detailed scientific explanations that I enjoyed. One of my favorite parts was a detailed explanation of the significance of "H" and "N" in flu names (e.g. H1N1), and why flu mutates so rapidly, and is so likely to cross over in certain animals. Overall, I recommend it if you like detailed but comprehensible scientific explanations.

Re: Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?

#549

Post by dangom »

specialp wrote: post #100
dangom wrote: post #41

Earlier 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…

Quoting from Corral 2006:

"the longer since the last earthquake, the longer the expected time till the next". "the belief that the longer the time to get an earthquake,the bigger its size, is false".

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