“I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#291

Post by michaelt » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #283

simiones wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does wearing a glove really achieve? You can't get the virus through direct skin contact, so virus living on your skin is not going to infect you. Touching your face while you have virus on your skin is how you get infected, and touching other surfaces while your hand is dirty is how you help spread the infection. Both of these work just as well if the virus lives on a glove rather than your skin. So no, gloves…

You're exhibiting exactly the kind of non-science-based attitude I was talking about. Droplets, oh no, run away! Let's say you're unknowingly infected, like all of those people who were hanging out at bars as though they're invulnerable this weekend. So you have virus on your skin already. Are you more likely to pass it on to others via surfaces if your skin is bare or if you put a glove on it? The answer's pretty ob…

> The answer's pretty obvious.

It's not particularly obvious to me how gloves are all that different to hand-washing.

In both cases, your hands are disease-free until you touch something that isn't disease-free.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#292

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #276

marcus_holmes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Asia, where mask-wearing is common (part of the culture, nothing to do with COVID), sick people wear masks. It's very practical, and also a social signal that "I am ill". As a manager of a business in SE Asia, people coming in sick but wearing masks was awesome. The mask-wearing reduced their infectiousness (because the mask stops saliva-borne virus communication) and made it OK to come in to work if you're feelin…

> To use masks effectively, we need to stop wearing them when we're scared, and start wearing them when we're infected. But I think the social change to do this will be difficult. Not exactly. Just make it mask season and make everybody wear it. You don't know when you are contagious/infectious, and it might not be at the same time when you are feeling sick. So just make sure everyone wears it.

I don't think it's practical to insist that everyone wears a mask all the time.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#293

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #269

marcus_holmes wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Situation: Infected person coughs near a non-infected person. If the Infected Person is wearing the mask, all good. Cough contained in mask, no virus spread anywhere, everyone OK. If the Non-Infected Person is wearing the mask, they're still covered in virus-laden cough mess. All they have to do is touch their face once in the next 3 days to catch the virus. Washing their hands will remove the virus from the hands, b…

And then the virus just dies on non-live surfaces like clothes in a couple of hours. Like we said several times, masks provide some protection (decreased risk) for a healthy person, they don't protect from getting infected 100%. No one ever said that mask is more effective on healthy person than on the infected one, I am not sure who you are arguing against. But it is the popular for some reason notion that a mask do…

The difference in effectiveness is huge, to the point where it's ridiculous to be healthy and wear a mask. Like I said, they don't put masks on surgery patients.

And don't forget the social signal part; if everyone wears a mask all the time, then we don't know who actually considers themselves to be infectious. Whereas if just the infectious people wear masks, then we know who they are and can act appropriately (being grateful that they self-identified as infectious and kept the rest of us safer, for a start).

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#294

Post by nec4b » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #210

mcsb4 wrote: post #85

I don't understand why we are not trying to interrupt the transmission vectors with masks and hand sanitizer like the Chinese do. They ramped the daily production from 10M to 100M and even advised the use of make-shift masks. The reaction in the west: masks are not protecting 100% and also we don't have any and we are too lazy to produce them, although they are much cheaper than the economic impact covid-19 has. 1. y…

In Asia, where mask-wearing is common (part of the culture, nothing to do with COVID), sick people wear masks. It's very practical, and also a social signal that "I am ill". As a manager of a business in SE Asia, people coming in sick but wearing masks was awesome. The mask-wearing reduced their infectiousness (because the mask stops saliva-borne virus communication) and made it OK to come in to work if you're feelin…

Masks do protect you from getting sick.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30229968

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#295

Post by DCKing » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #223

DCKing wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an American, but the United States and its allies - and actually probably even most of its enemies - derive enormous economic value and peace from its military control of the world, which it achieves by its navy controlling the world seas and general striking power of its armed forces [0]. The United States determines the "world order" by being the remaining world's superpower (China is only beginning to challeng…

> Like it or not, the U.S. armed forces underpin the world's current economic system and its relative peace. Maybe that was the case before USA clearly displayed its military inaptitude in nearly every conflict it has chosen to involve itself with over the last decades. People of the world now strongly suspect that USA military underpins peace no more than bullys presence underpins calmness in the playground.

I don't think many people on HN believe that the US armed forces underpin peace. But that's your soapboxing, and not what I was trying to say or even my opinion.

The utter dominance of America's armed forces has achieved extraordinary peace and prosperity since World War II, since its dominance has prevented numerous smaller scale conflicts or new world wars. Me saying this isn't trying to diminish the terrible suffering that has happened in the world since World War II, but it's pointing out that historically speaking the suffering and stupidity should have been far worse.

The US armed forces don't embody peace in the slightest, but they do achieve it just by virtue of existing and being so dominant.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#296

Post by gwd » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #251

gwd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't get sick if you aren't exposed. The problem isn't the short-term; the problem is the long term. Are you suggesting the entire world work from home and interact only over the internet for the rest of our lives? One of the biggest questions in this thread is specifically what kind of immunity we can have from the virus. If catching it gives you 10-year immunity, then slowing things down might work. But what…

Are you suggesting the entire world work from home and interact only over the internet for the rest of our lives? No, of course not. But some people who are especially vulnerable can work from home permanently. We can permanently crack down on things like cashiers licking their fingers to help them open bags. I have a compromised immune system. The gross behavior of cashiers is one of my single biggest headaches in l…

> We can... [big list of good ideas]

Those all sound like good ideas[1]. But exactly how will those affect the R0 of the virus if we all keep going to the pub, and the club, and church, and the office, and schools, and concerts, and sporting events? Particularly if we ride the bus and the tube and trains and airplanes to get there?

Fundamentally, not enough to keep it from saturating the population at least once. And if immunity doesn't last long enough for it to die out after that, not enough to keep it from saturating the population over and over.

Which isn't to say we shouldn't do all the things you suggest. But simply slowing things down isn't our ultimate goal. Going back to some semblance or normalcy is our ultimate goal: Perhaps with tiles instead of carpet and bowing instead of shaking hands, sure, but not everyone holed up in their homes permanently. And towards that goal, there's not a clear path.

[1] Except for "move to passive solar design", which I didn't really understand.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#297

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

QuesnayJr wrote: post #265

scotty79 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is the fear of starvation the only thing that makes people do things?

I don't get what you are advocating. If you don't pay people to do jobs, then most jobs that make up a complex society won't get done. We have complex institutions, that involve lots of people doing boring tasks that keep the institutions running. Without the institutions, society will in fact return to subsistence-level. If you just mean that we should guarantee a certain level of income, like a UBI, then that will…

> If you don't pay people to do jobs, then most jobs that make up a complex society won't get done.

I'm advocating for paying people enough to not die even if they don't do any job.

And I'm not saying that it will immediately do away with all bullshit jobs. But I'm saying that it will reduce supply of work available to those jobs and it will broaden the choice for workers to choose more meaningful jobs by giving them safe harbor.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#298

Post by simiones » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #283

simiones wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does wearing a glove really achieve? You can't get the virus through direct skin contact, so virus living on your skin is not going to infect you. Touching your face while you have virus on your skin is how you get infected, and touching other surfaces while your hand is dirty is how you help spread the infection. Both of these work just as well if the virus lives on a glove rather than your skin. So no, gloves…

You're exhibiting exactly the kind of non-science-based attitude I was talking about. Droplets, oh no, run away! Let's say you're unknowingly infected, like all of those people who were hanging out at bars as though they're invulnerable this weekend. So you have virus on your skin already. Are you more likely to pass it on to others via surfaces if your skin is bare or if you put a glove on it? The answer's pretty ob…

> people touch their faces less often with gloves on

Is that true? I would assume people usually touch their faces because something itches or to adjust glasses/hair/a mask. I would expect gloves to have a minimal impact on this compared to just paying attention to never touching your face. I am open to seeing numbers on this, but don't know where to look for any.

> every time you change gloves the probability drops back to near zero

I think that's only true if you handle the gloves somewhat carefully (not that it's hard to do, but you do have to pay some attention). But washing your hands or using hand sanitizer also achieves the same. So the question comes back to "how often do people wash their hands/use hand sanitizer compared to how often they change gloves?", which is an empirical question I have no clear intuition for, but do expect for differences to not be that large.

> That's why health care professionals use gloves even when dealing with respiratory diseases like COVID-19.

I think healhcare professionals wear gloves for a number of reasons, chiefly because, if you're used to it, you can be more efficient when changing gloves than when washing your hands: medical professionals normally put on a new pair of gloves before touching you, then throw those away after they are done. Most people are not used to it, they do not constantly change gloves, and do not have to deal with moving from patient to patient. So just as I don't think it's useful to tell people to wear surgical overalls and change them every hour, I don't think we can tell them to use gloves the way they are used in a hospital.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#299

Post by simiones » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #274

simiones wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the virus lives on non-live surfaces for up to 3 days. This alone invalidates the rest of your argument.

We still don't know how long it lives on clothing. On doorknobs, plastic, stainless steel it can live for 72 hours, yes. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/8116090...

Fair enough, but I wouldn't assume the difference goes from 72 hours to 3 between different inert surfaces.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#300

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

DCKing wrote: post #295

scotty79 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like it or not, the U.S. armed forces underpin the world's current economic system and its relative peace. Maybe that was the case before USA clearly displayed its military inaptitude in nearly every conflict it has chosen to involve itself with over the last decades. People of the world now strongly suspect that USA military underpins peace no more than bullys presence underpins calmness in the playground.

I don't think many people on HN believe that the US armed forces underpin peace. But that's your soapboxing, and not what I was trying to say or even my opinion. The utter dominance of America's armed forces has achieved extraordinary peace and prosperity since World War II, since its dominance has prevented numerous smaller scale conflicts or new world wars. Me saying this isn't trying to diminish the terrible suffe…

US military dominates in expenses only and gear money can buy. When it comes to successful military actions recent conflicts don't show this dominance.

Does USA really prevented more wars since WWII than they caused?