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

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

#341

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…

> So no, gloves are entirely useless for protection from this kind of virus. Gloves, even if they do nothing else, act as a strong reminder not to touch your face. Breaking that habit alone can strongly reduce your risk of transmission.

You know what else stops you from touching your face?

A face mask.

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

#342
post #4

> How long immunity lasts for following covid-19 infection is the biggest unknown. Comparison with other Coronaviridae suggests it may be relatively short-lived (i.e. months). Anyone have sources for this? I've been skeptical of the rumors about reinfection, because they seem to be based on tests coming back positive after recovery, but the tests are rt-PCR based, and your body will be shedding leftover bits of RNA a…

I remember reading they expect immunity to last as little as 6 months for Covid-19, found this paper about the SARS outbreak of 2002 which was also a type of corona virus, saying patients had an average immunity of 2 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/

Just to note if you are going to use SARS as a comparison:

SARS-CoV-1 completely disappeared after two flu seasons and hasn't been seen in decades now.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So no, gloves are entirely useless for protection from this kind of virus. Gloves, even if they do nothing else, act as a strong reminder not to touch your face. Breaking that habit alone can strongly reduce your risk of transmission.

You know what else stops you from touching your face? A face mask.

...ok?

I was more responding to the person about gloves, but what you say is also true.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what else stops you from touching your face? A face mask.

...ok? I was more responding to the person about gloves, but what you say is also true.

Just trying to combat all of the people discouraging face mask use, since apparently everyone in America is of the opinion that face masks are useless.

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

#345

There absolutely is an acceptable way out of this. China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, at least, are going to be just fine. They are focused on suppressing and controlling the virus. Once they get few enough imports from travel (presumably by restricting travel from countries where the virus is uncontrolled) and eliminate local transmission, they can resume life-as-usual, apart from being on high alert for impo…

You can have as many nines of reduction as you want; they are all worthless the moment the social graph reconnects. I'm skeptical that "life-as-usual" is a serious possibility.

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Simple thought experiment: you're about to be in a situation where, despite any efforts to the contrary, you expect to be in contact with a hundred other people. It's not that uncommon e.g. in retail. Would you prefer that to be skin to skin, or glove to glove? Would you literally bet your own life and others' on that "entirely useless" claim, or would you take that cheap and basic precaution?

I would definitely prefer free hands IF I also have access to hand sanitizer. I would be much more confident that I have successfully covered my entire hand in sanitizer than if I were to sanitize gloved hands.

I would admit that I would probably feel safer with a mask on though, despite the problems with wearing masks as well.

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

#347
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not aware of any place that has a completely open boarder . What are you referring to here?

I am not aware that I claimed any place would have completely open border. I am certain that you know what I am referring to, but want to avoid a serious discussion by playing with technicalities. No thanks.

I’m genuinely not aware of what you’re referring to.

I live in a relatively small city on the island state of Tasmania, and am probably way behind on some aspects of global politics.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple thought experiment: you're about to be in a situation where, despite any efforts to the contrary, you expect to be in contact with a hundred other people. It's not that uncommon e.g. in retail. Would you prefer that to be skin to skin, or glove to glove? Would you literally bet your own life and others' on that "entirely useless" claim, or would you take that cheap and basic precaution?

I would definitely prefer free hands IF I also have access to hand sanitizer. I would be much more confident that I have successfully covered my entire hand in sanitizer than if I were to sanitize gloved hands. I would admit that I would probably feel safer with a mask on though, despite the problems with wearing masks as well.

So you're going to use hand sanitizer a hundred times, on average every five minutes? Color me skeptical.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have zero strong feelings about anything you wrote, no holy cows, no anything else – but I do despise downvote-martyrdom. Please, let's not make this place reddit.

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ;)

I did not comment on the voting on a comment. I commented on the content of a comment.

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

#350
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bioinformatician here (well, former): I would never say something is impossible but the way these things are tested right now, it pretty much is impossible. We need to amplify some molecules and run a process called PCR on them for which you need a full lab setup. It would take nothing short of a revolution in detection to achieve this.

What would the cost be to set up testing machines every few blocks? People just get a swab, drop it into the machine, and get a code (just take a picture of a QR code) that they can later check for results.

We have testing machines which can pump out 900 results/h (in batches of 900). The issue is that nobody is using them for disease testing, they are instead being used for drug discovery by big pharmaceutical companies.
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