Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

helpwithcovid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 218 posts

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#91

Post by spott »

yiyus wrote: post #5

This is a great initiative, but it looks to me like most of these projects are directed to help the US. That's totally understandable, but there are many people all over the world willing to help with this, and it would be great if we could also collaborate to help everyone. For example, as an engineer, I was interested in helping with the 1M ventilators project, but reading the description it looks like the goal is…

So, the 1M ventilator project is going to be open-source, and have two stages: A crowdsourced, local 3d printing stage for getting devices into the hands of hospitals as soon as is possible, and a mass-produced stage with a large supply chain.

The first one is global... all you would need is the files and a 3d printer. The second one is going to need a lot of work for getting it into every country that needs it.

You can contribute to both, and recruit anyone you can to work on the supply chain issues for getting it into spain.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#92

Post by idoby »

dominotw wrote: post #63
eezurr wrote: post #45

Please consider reaching out to your elderly neighbors and offering your time to gather groceries/supplies for them. Or posting a note near the entrance of your apartment complex with your number. This alone will have a huge impact. They have a very real chance of dying if they contract covid-19. Take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you could not safely leave your home. A lot of us have the amazing comfort…

> please consider reaching out to your elderly neighbors I live in a densely packed city. I have no idea who lives in my neighborhood. I would be glad to help anyone at anytime though. I am just not clear how to go about it.

> I live in a densely packed city. I have no idea who lives in my neighborhood.

This is ironic, but I hear it a lot from people living in big cities. I live in a sparsely packed city, but mostly know who lives in my neighborhood. We were unhappy with the last city government, so we replaced them, and it took a lot less people to do so, in absolute terms (which matters because the relative size of your movement only comes into play if you can manage to have a movement at all, and that depends on the absolute size of the movement (1000 people are easier to convince and coordinate than 10K)). My metropolis-dwelling friends keep sharing how lonely they are all the time.

I never got the logic behind living in the perpetual cocktail party/high school that is a big city.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#93

Post by orbifold »

hdkrgr wrote: post #40
omarhaneef wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are right, but it likely reflects the node we sit on in the internet. If this were not hacker news, but some german equivalent in the german language, I am sure you would find a german focused effort. I think it makes sense that most of the efforts would be local (someone has to distribute and man the ventilator). The global effort should be focused on design, and best practices.

FWIW, the German federal government (of all people), is organizing a distributed hackathon this upcoming weekend: https://wirvsvirushackathon.org/ Seems like it's supposed to be (mostly) in German language as well. If they do and market this right this might actually be an opportunity to get non-tech people to contribute important PROBLEMS that can be solved by tech right now, so we don't just get another few dozen n…

Just to clarify because it is not obvious from the homepage: This is not actually organized by the government, but by a private non-profit startup funded by the federal government. That makes some difference and now I've given my email address to a random Berlin startup.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#94

Post by idoby »

Is the purpose of this site to connect me with a project needing help as fast as possible, or to collect data?

If the former, why do I need to sign up to join the project? Just link to whatever wiki/github/slack/trello/whatever it's using or a point of contact.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#95

Post by prox »

tbronchain wrote: post #35
yiyus wrote: post #5

This is a great initiative, but it looks to me like most of these projects are directed to help the US. That's totally understandable, but there are many people all over the world willing to help with this, and it would be great if we could also collaborate to help everyone. For example, as an engineer, I was interested in helping with the 1M ventilators project, but reading the description it looks like the goal is…

I am french and currently stuck in lockdown. I've had similar feelings with these projects being mainly directed to the US (not that it is a bad thing at all, more that I don't find it directly relevant). As much as I would also love to help the whole world, I have a feeling that I will personally be more efficient working on small projects trying to solve relevant local issues. I am not sure where to start, but if a…

I think a pan european one would be nice? Is there one?

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#96

Post by freeone3000 »

idoby wrote: post #92
dominotw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> please consider reaching out to your elderly neighbors I live in a densely packed city. I have no idea who lives in my neighborhood. I would be glad to help anyone at anytime though. I am just not clear how to go about it.

> I live in a densely packed city. I have no idea who lives in my neighborhood. This is ironic, but I hear it a lot from people living in big cities. I live in a sparsely packed city, but mostly know who lives in my neighborhood. We were unhappy with the last city government, so we replaced them, and it took a lot less people to do so, in absolute terms (which matters because the relative size of your movement only c…

Access to high-paying jobs within walking distance. Increased cultural events (concert tours stop in your city, your city makes new concerts...). Better public transit. "cocktail party/high school" sounds like an odd descriptor, especially since those two situations are defined by social interactions, the one thing city living has significantly less of.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#97

Post by guscost »

OakNinja wrote: post #60
brookside wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined a community group that is doing just this, and as an hour ago have a list of older neighbors to check in on, and possibly help with obtaining food and medications. I do wonder if at 39 i am in fact young enough to be in the most-likely-to-survive-if-exposed group.

As long as you don’t have any other diseases, you’re statistically sort of “safe”. 0.2% risk of dying for your age group regardless of physical health according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... Wash your hands, stay safe.

> Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%).

Nonsense! Unless we can count every death caused by the virus, and correctly diagnose every infection, then this is a ridiculous (and irresponsible) guess. The number for "all cases" comes from the CCDC paper:

> A total of 72,314 patient records—44,672 (61.8%) confirmed cases, 16,186 (22.4%) suspected cases, 10,567 (14.6%) clinically diagnosed cases (Hubei Province only), and 889 asymptomatic cases (1.2%)—contributed data for the analysis.

Another more recent study guesses that 86% of cases are asymptomatic and/or otherwise undocumented:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/scie...

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#98

Post by prox »

randunel1 wrote: post #75

Here at https://www.coronawiki.org we are also looking for help. I am Dr. Riciu Andrei, board certified dermatologist with a strong interest in infectious diseases I put together a team of medical professionals, researchers, programmers and data scientists and we're trying to create the most accurate Coronavirus / COVID-19 resource (data stats and accurate medical information). With this project I am trying to help a…

I think a global information hub is very much wanted! I may have some links that might prove useful.

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#99

Post by ejstronge »

bronipstid wrote: post #65
OakNinja wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you don’t have any other diseases, you’re statistically sort of “safe”. 0.2% risk of dying for your age group regardless of physical health according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... Wash your hands, stay safe.

For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. That's why governments are finally admitting "Herd Immunity/Flatten the Curve" without total containment is not an option.

> For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country.

I’m not sure why you’re comparing the all-age mortality of flu to the age-specific mortality of COVID-19.

The relevant metric would be about 0.02% [1]

1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

Re: Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

#100

Post by evv »

CodiePetersen wrote: post #86

I don't know who made the website but shouldn't the least volunteered ones be at the top.

Looks like the project was started by Sam Altman, Radu Spineanu, Tinnei Pang (YC folks, it seems).

According to https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/1

PSA, the Discord is getting more active: https://discordapp.com/invite/mgupDG

Post reply on HN