Ask HN: How can I help the Coronavirus situation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I help the Coronavirus situation?

25 pointsdaenz40 comments

Beyond simply slowing the spread by practicing good hygiene and avoiding exposure.

I was just at a pharmacy where I asked the cashier to use hand sanitizer because she kept touching her damn nose every minute or two and she blew me off and told me "I've been using hand sanitizer all day."

If you could smack a few million people upside the back of the head and get them to actually, in fact, practice the hygiene stuff that gets repeated all the time and utterly ignored, you could save thousands of lives.

Stop touching your face.

Train cashiers to practice actual germ control.

Don't let them lick their fingers to open bags. Fire them if they do stuff like touch their nose and then immediately handle money or lick their fingers to open bags.

The single biggest obstacle to germ control is the fact that most humans don't want to actually practice it. Making it a widespread habit would nearly put a stop to most epidemics all on its own, but we are too busy sticking our heads up our butts to do that.

The amount of people who do not wash their hands in any way while in the bathroom is sickening. I hope coronavirus helps raise awareness regarding the basics, so more people get into the habit of regular hand washing.

From your lips to God's ears and all that.

I'm not holding my breath. People are amazingly stubborn about clinging to their bad habits and acting like I'm just a bitch and meanie face for trying to foster positive change or even just protect myself from their horrifying behavior.

We are going to hell and most of us deserve it.

Some people get lung cancer rather than change bad habits.

There is a nonzero chance that my nosepicking habit kills me over the next couple months. Yet for some goddamned reason it doesn't stop me.

> Don't let them lick their fingers to open bags.

How else would you do it? I stopped myself when I was just about lick my fingers to open a plastic bag for fruit the other day, realizing maybe it's not good to do in these times, but I couldn't figure out an alternative and gave in.

I persist and wrestle with it. You eventually get better at it and figure out how bags actually work.

They actually have tabs built in designed to help you open them. If a bag is particularly stubborn, move on to a new bag.

Some cashiers have damp sponges or similar to help them open bags without licking their fingers because they aren't heathens. They are the rare exception.

You work at it hard. Like, really hard. Hard enough that you start to sweat. Then you've got moisture on your hands...

;-)

Non-germy moisture. The only acceptable kind.

Use a fingertip friction compound like SortKwik

https://www.amazon.com/10132-Sortkwik-Fingertip-Moisteners-P...

It seems like bad hygiene even without coronavirus. Most places I know use damp sponges. Experienced cashiers can open them fairly easily. Also it's 2020 and we've really cut down on plastic bag use in Asia.

If you know of a way to get me to stop touching my nose that lets me keep my life and all my fingers, I'll pay you $470 for it.

A. Deal with your respiratory problems. You probably do it because your nose itches because it's low grade infected all the time.

B. Deal with your circulatory issues. Hands, feet, nose and ears get shorted first when you have circulatory issues.

C. Pick your nose in the shower while your hands are clean before sticking fingers in your nose and can be promptly recleaned afterwards without contaminating anything else. You probably have that nasty habit mentioned in another comment because of low grade chronic sinus infections. Mucus firms up like cement to trap stuff, at which point picking your nose makes more sense than blowing it.

D. Get better salt in you and stay adequately hydrated. Both salt and water are major components of mucus and mucus is your respiratory system's first line of defense against invaders.

E. Don't know how to fix your health issues? Try fasting. It likely frees up immune cells to address other issues while your gut is empty of pesky foreign invaders brought in via the food you eat.

F. While addressing all that, have something you can fiddle with to occupy your hands so they are doing something else. Let me recommend that your fiddle stick/toy/thingamajig be made of copper or silver because they are both antimicrobial.

G. You may also need to up your environmental hygiene. Dust everything or get rid of nasty carpets, etc.

I take PayPal and Venmo. I look forward to receiving payment in a month.

Do you have suggestions for:

Deal with your circulatory issues. Hands, feet, nose and ears get shorted first when you have circulatory issues.

Walk more.

You should walk at least thirty minutes a day. I recommend running errands on foot, stop circling the parking lot like a vulture looking for the closest parking space and just park in the cheap seats, and take the stairs occasionally instead of the elevator.

Also, make sure you are getting enough iron and b vitamins. Both are critical to production of red blood cells.

If you work at a desk all day, get up every hour on the hour and walk around. A trip to the bathroom or vending machine (or printer.. etc) is a good excuse. Sitting for hours on end does terrible things to your circulation. Get up periodically. It's important.

Also, stay hydrated. Blood is mostly water. Most people aren't adequately hydrated. They just aren't.

Wonderfully said. It's scarier to think that people like this work at restaurants and make your food. I recently left a job like that, where one guy would sneeze into the back of his hand and then keep working. I left that job recently but I'm pretty sure he's still there.

While coronavirus won't survive cooking, cross contamination between hot food and uncooked food happens, so it's best to not go out to eat in these delicate times. If you do, make sure to get something that comes out still cooking like a hot bowl of noodle soup or something.

You are right that people won't change :(. A lot of these people literally see nothing wrong with how they act because they aren't even conscious about when other people do it to them. You bet they'll be angered if they actually thought about it. If anything positive is to come out of this crisis, it's that people will become a little more self-aware.

I try to never touch my face while in public but what if your nose itches to pain and your eyes start to tear until you scratch it, then it's difficult

Go to a bathroom and promptly wash thoroughly with soap if at all possible.

Accept that there's a significant chance you're going to get coronavirus.

Educate yourself and be realistic.

Realize that 80% of patients have mild symptoms, only 20% have serious symptoms, and of that 20% only 2% fatalities occur.

Also, accept that nothing in life is guaranteed, appreciate the time with the people you love and care about, and be grateful this pandemic isn't some more virulent version of something more lethal like yersinia pestis.

That's about all you can do.

Minor correction, you make it sound like 2% of 20% which is a .4% fatality rate. The total fatality rate is 2%

Is it? If I understand correctly, it's 2% of the cases we know about. How many of the patients with mild symptoms do we know about? (But if we don't know about them, how do we know that 80% of the people only have mild symptoms? We guess... or so I suspect.)

This is actually a really really good point as well.

It may be far less than reported 2% because the number of people with mild symptoms who may not get tested is so high.

People keep bringing up edge cases like this. If we look at strictly died/(recovered+died) the mortality is 6%. Obviously it's lower because there are recoveries which are not recorded.

I'd tend to believe that the statisticians putting out the 2% figure understand enough about disease dynamics for it to be accurate.

Right my bad. Worded it poorly. It's 2% of all infected.

This is a very balanced viewpoint that I believe is the best one to have as the crisis unfolds. Especially the last part. We subject ourselves to so many unknowns and dangers on a daily basis. It is good, every so often, to take some time to reflect and be grateful for the people in your life.

By keeping an eye on vulnerable people around you and ensuring they have access to life's necessities without risk penalty.

The only thing I'm personally vaguely concerned about is making sure my grandparents have access to basic necessities without having to expose themselves in places like supermarkets.

If you're under 40 and healthy it seems that you don't have much to worry about besides not spreading the virus yourself (self quarantine as soon as you think you might have it).

Parents too

Yes of course. In my case I feel like my grandparents wouldn't feel very concerned if no one was pressuring them and telling them it could potentially be very serious.

Dr. Li Wenliang was healthy and died to the virus at only 33.

I encourage you to write your local politicians to encourage policy changes that would encourage people to self-quarantine or to seek treatment for infectious diseases. I wrote the following to my state senators:

Many people currently are concerned about the corona virus outbreak. I believe that Washington state can take the lead in medical policy decisions that would help to mitigate the effect of the disease on the most vulnerable members of our state.

There are two key legislative gaps that prevent people from seeking proper care for infectious diseases:

1. A lack of legislation protecting peoples’ jobs when taking leave for treatment or diagnosis for an infectious disease.

2. The high potential cost of medical care when seeking treatment or diagnosis for an infectious disease. Although many people have health care in Washington state, many have high deductibles that are so high that they may choose paying their rent over treatment.

I am not a medical professional nor a medical policy expert, but an ordinary citizen of your district and these gaps are frightening. Please help Washington be a national leader in infectious disease policy.

> I encourage you to write your local politicians to encourage policy changes that would encourage people to self-quarantine or to seek treatment for infectious diseases.

Isn't that easier said than done if you have no paid sick leave?

I had this question of software engineers with maybe access to social data. But I think I posted it at a poor time - no replies.

Ask HN: Usefulness of social network data for epidemic management?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440114

But really it seems like a natural reaction to want to help, but I suspect if you aren't already tied in to a network of people/resources with a jump on the issues already, that coming up to speed is more of a idle thought than practical.

You could build insurace infrastructure for people at a high risk of the disease.

https://asindu.drileba.capital/2020/02/fighting-of-disease-p...

I've just purchased the domain name coronavirus.rehab Planning to compile useful content and share it with public

Wash your hands.

Question, should I go to office tomorrow? First case just reported a few hours ago.

You can donate your computational resources to Stanford.

Wash your hands.

Write an app!

On the first screen it poses the question, "Should I buy a bunch of N95 masks?"

On the second screen, it says, "Fuck, no."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com