Coronavirus: the second-weirdest solution? | Hacker News Reader

Coronavirus: the second-weirdest solution?

scottaaronson.com

37 pointsingve50 comments

There's actually a Scrubs episode which did precisely what the author suggests: https://youtu.be/PdrrgVVi-9U

The spread of a disease throughout the hospital is visualized as a green slime passed on between people.

I think that's one of my 'favorite' saddest episodes/storylines in Scrubs. That and the ones with Brandon Fraser.

The only practical takeaway from these suggestions IMO is that "you might still derive great personal benefit from imagining them so covered".

In the real world, there are a few things that could help prevent these outbreaks from bringing the whole of society to a grinding standstill, namely the invention of something that kills targeted viruses directly (thought I read something along those lines a while back). And/or the insight that the way we have constructed modern society is simply conducive to pandemic outbreaks.

The tendency for people to work from home, be schooled from home and getting goods delivered home should not be viewed as a desperate measure, instead it is the way we probably will organize our lives moving forwards, and get a lot of life standard improvements while at it. Not to mention the time and energy we would save by bringing commutes down to a bare minimum.

Some people suggested using copper handles in hospitals, since it has antimicrobial properties. I think the practical problem was that you need to clear the oxidized parts or it doesn't work. There were some other suggested materials too.

On a lighter note, people seem to adapt their behavior just fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYL4rZC0v8

I feel like brass may be better, as it contains zinc and copper and does not oxidize as easily. How about an alloy of zinc, silver and copper?

I'm living in a 1930s house and every interior door handle is brass.

Edit: Photo: http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/20200307_141218_HDR.jpg And yes, thanks anonymous previous householder for inexplicably moving the doorknob about a quarter of an inch to the left.

Probably a lot better and sounds good. Advantage to disinfectants is that we probably would have fewer problems with resistant germs. In my country everything is meticulously disinfected in hospitals, but many have problems with the norovirus which is quite resistant. Not a too dangerous disease on its own, but in hospitals it is a serious problem that can cost lives.

Apparently brass does work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_copper-alloy_tou...

I'm confused. If you don't want people to touch a railing, why have a railing?

They’re generally required by law, even at your house, but especially in public places.

If I am running down stairs in the subway I hover my hand above them without touching it in case I need something to hold onto in the event I trip.

I will not want to be the guy that dies of a broken neck tumbling down the stairs because I didn't want to touch the hand rail.

For safety reasons. For disabled people.

Last year I twisted my ankle and for a few days the only way I could use flight of stairs was to held onto the rails.

Well, yes, but the context is that a railing covered with a layer of sticky crap isn't much better than no railing.

And of course, railings are there for a reason. Which is easy to find out, if you ever experience some vertigo, some muscle or back problems or just get a bit older :p

This substance already exists: biter nail polish.

Apply it on your fingers, and you'll want to avoid touching your mouth at any cost.

On a side note, so many buildings still put doors at the entrance of toilets forcing you to touch the door right after cleaning your hands (or to use a napkin to touch the handle).

I learned from my dad to always use the paper towel to open the door, if the garbage is close enough, otherwise the bottom of your shirt.

I got sick 12 times my first year living in a city again. I got pretty paranoid after that and now I mentally have a "my hands are infected" notion as soon as I touch something outside the house. The very first thing I do upon entering my apartment or a restaurant is to wash them. Unfortunately I still touch my face sometimes while my hands are potentially dirty, I need to be more careful about that.

I've got sick a lot less often since implementing that, maybe once a year now on average.

It could also be because your immune system got used to the change in environment.

I honestly don’t understand the particular level of fear around COVID-19 when compared to other flu outbreaks. Can anyone point me to a concise explanation? I mean, I get that it’s a new virus we’ve never seen before, but what distinctly sets it apart? Everything I’ve read says that it affects older people and those with a compromised immune system the worst, which is just like any flu. Is it mostly that we’re worried about what we don’t know that we don’t know? Not trying to be dismissive, I just feel like I’m missing something. I don’t remember the panic around swine flu or bird flu being like this.

Also does anyone know why people are panic-buying toilet paper in my country?

The death rate, and the infectivity rate.

Normal flu is about 0.005%, estimates on this are about 1%, assuming that your country can rapidly expand its Intensive Care Units to handle the influx. R is estimated between 2-6, evidence in the last 2 weeks from Europe suggests the higher end of that scale. It is spreading very rapidly.

Although we can´t really trust the figures from China, we know that whatever was happening in Wuhan in early December/January was sufficiently bad for them to put half the country under strict quarantine. Even a bad flu season, would not have triggered that kind of reaction.

For one, fear is irrational. It is based on a perception of threat and we as humans do it in many ways. One way is to see that others are afraid and therefore we should too. To add to this, the fear is not entirely unfounded. Estimates of the fatality are between 1% to 4%. No proper case fatality statistics can be computed as the epidemic is not over/have not gone long enough yet. At 1%, this is already 10 times the fatality rate of the seasonal flu so no, this is not just a bad flu season. This is an exceptionally bad flu season.

The reason I think countries are still trying to contain it is because if we allow the this flu strain to become seasonal because of lack of containment, it becomes an ongoing price that we have to pay each year. Within each new strain of flu that we encounter in the future, if we successively fail to contain each one, there will be many more strains of flu seasonally. Of course， a technological breakthrough may alter such a course.

COVID-19 mortality is about one order of magnitude higher than that of a regular flu, for every age group. That's a lot. And R0 is higher. And there is no vaccine. And the US botched the response with its stupid "don't test, don't tell" policy.

I estimate my probability of dying from COVID-19 this year to be higher than from all other reasons combined, and I'm not that old yet.

Case fatality rate for swine flu was around 0.02%[1]. There's still a lot of uncertainty around 2019-nCoV, but most estimates appear to be closer to 1-2%.

You're not wrong in that old and sick people are the affected the most, but it's significantly worse compared to e.g. Influenza[2].

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...

[2]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jbloom/CoV_vs_flu_CFR/mast...

Mortality-wise it looks to be around 20x worse than flu, and easy to spread before outward symptoms manifest. There's no vaccine, so the usual partial herd immunity isn't present, and no confirmed treatments yet beyond trying to help your own immune system. As you say, it will probably be mild for most people who catch it (but who wants to risk "probably"), but certainly worse if you're not in good shape.

Panic buying is just like a rush on the bank; if everyone buys more than usual there will be a temporary shortage of stock, and no-one wants to be caught short on the loo. People are anticipating needing to self-quarantine for 2+ weeks (probably more if you need to isolate your whole family), but without knowing which two weeks the timer starts. And people are probably vaguely aware that there will be a supply crunch in a few months because China's manufacturing lines have been slowed and the knock on effects haven't fed through yet.

We're just trying to slow the spread so not all the vulnerable population - there's a large number, end up in the hospital simultaneously.

If that happens, then everyone is more likely to die when they need the hospital for unrelated reasons and can't get treated because its doors are shut.

You may be young and healthy and not be concerned, but if you're spreading it around carelessly you're facilitating the nightmare scenario of a collapsing healthcare system.

> I honestly don’t understand the particular level of fear around COVID-19 when compared to other flu outbreaks.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the mortality of this particular one. The problem here is that about 10% of the patients require ICU and potentially mechanical ventilation. This, togerther with the short in supply of desinfection and sanitizsrs, poses the risk that other ilnesses can’t be treated. People don’t die because of covid-19 infection. People die because of complications because the immune system is destabilised and usually curable deaseses become mortal because: there are no drugs, no protection, no staff, too many people require treatment at once.

Thanks to everyone that responded. I hadn't seen the reasons for the added concern explained as clearly/directly.

So now we're supposed to have a fear of touching things as well as all the other neuroses programmed into us in modern life? I need to invest in some mental health startups.

What boggles me is why modern buildings still have so many manual doors with handles. At least in the building I work in, you could easily eliminate a ton of doors and not reduce access control flexibility. The rest could be made automatic with some keycard authentication.

Not sure of your specific building, but they may be designed as fire doors, in the event of a fire, to isolate areas of the building.

The info from China shows that it spreads primarily through inhaling droplets, not through touching surfaces.

Which is why I expect the epidemic to be way way worse outside of Asia, since in the West people don't wear masks and are actively discouraged by the health authorities.

I've heard the exact opposite. It spreads through droplets, but mostly through touch, not inhaling. Do you have a source?

The WHO agrees with the OP:

'Both COVID-19 and influenza cause respiratory disease and spread the same way, via small droplets of fluid from the nose and mouth of someone who is sick.'

https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

[Edit: however, I could see both of you being right with this quote]

https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1236306611527798784

I don't know how much you can chalk up to people wearing masks or rather the swift and rigorous isolation of affected areas.

I guess, we'll see soon enough how Italy is doing.

FWIW in Switzerland, the authorities recommend "social distancing". https://foph-coronavirus.ch/

From what I have observed, it seems both South Korea’s and China’s outbreaks are largest among cities near rivers.

I have also read of the virus being detected in feces.

Is it possible the virus is being spread via the water supply?

The waste treatment plants dump into the river, as well as septic runoff, and humans just deciding to defecate in or near the rivers.

Additionally, if it is possible for dogs to carry the virus, I assume it could be excreted via canine feces, as well.

If the water treatment plants are also using the river as the source of water, what prevents the virus from spreading this way?

Chlorine. They put it in water for a reason.

I upvoted you...

Right, but Chlorine is only effective against certain types of virii.

Some municipalities instead use some sort of chloramine, or both.

In, addition, neither of these is effective on some virii, so UV is used also.

I am no expert, but from what I have read so far, depending on the virus, the above solutions differ in effectiveness.

I'm an environmental engineer with some experience in drinking water treatment.

I doubt it's in the drinking water. One of the oldest drinking water treatment methods would remove the virus: slow-sand filtration. Most places in China would at least use this, and South Korea is likely using more advanced technology.

I understand that is an older method, but I would be surprised if it is the method of choice for these cities.

What do you consider ‘advanced technology’?

I studied drinking water treatment in school and worked on a treatment plant design in Ecuador, so I do not have professional experience inside the current modern industry. But as far as I know slow-sand filtration and it's variants are still commonly used. Most of the improvements come from additional processes.

Improvements on slow-sand filtration are from additional pre-treatment methods, disinfection, more advanced filtration media like activated charcoal, and additional stages of filtration using a variety of media. Some high tech treatment plants are using biological membranes for wastewater-to-drinking-water treatment, but that's quite rare as far as I know.

Here's a decent primer of the commonly used processes: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/water_treat...

Is the reason sand filtration effective, because the virus is too big to fit between the sand particles as the water flows around it?

I have no clue on how it works, so any insight is appreciated.

The virus particles would be filtered out at the top layer of the sand filter, where a layer of microbes grow. This layer is referred to as the schmutzdecke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmutzdecke

Most of the filtering action happens in that layer. Viruses have no problem getting past sand particles.

Thank you for that info.

I also found this report, which may be of interest, from the University of Arizona in 2008 for Coronavirus survival in water and wastewater:

https://west.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Gundy2008_...

10 days or more in water, and 2 to 4 days in wastewater.

My local municipality only uses chlorine, so I am a bit concerned.

We had our own sand filtration system, but ‘decided’ to instead use the town next-door’s system, instead.

Rather than covering everything with dirt, you just have to make everyone believe it. In HK, this has been quite successful. Pretty much everyone refuses to touch the buttons on an elevator, handrails on escalators or the MTR etc.

How do people get from floor to floor in the elevator?

Use a tissue or, increasingly, gloves.

The crud would rub off and have to be constantly replaced.

The effort to do that could instead be put toward continually disinfecting the surface which would provide actual benefit.

Snot tape. Stays put, feels icky, peels off clean.

Yeah put disgusting grease on railings let’s see what happens to your lawyers phone in a day

Here's another solution to something else...

How To Encourage Safer Driving

Instead of an airbag on the steering wheel, put a large 10 inch spike on it. Pointed right at your head.

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