How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, Covid-19 [pdf]
drive.google.com
drive.google.com
Including people who get at asymptomatically, maybe. Of people who get any symptoms, it's 15 - 20%.
And even if you're not in that 15 - 20%, you may still have permanent or long lasting lung and heart damage. Stay inside; your grandparents were asked to go to war for several years, you're just being asked to spend a couple months playing video games.
I agree we should look out for the older generation though. For me, it's my parents (boomers, who fought no wars) I worry about, my grandparents (who fought) have passed already.
There are tons of videos on youtube that you can just put on your television and follow along with.
Except that most of the world doesn't live in an American suburb where houses are 100 meters apart. For most of the world, going outside means bumping into somebody.
If you want an understandable, relatively short but info-dense writeup from a sober expert (there hasn’t been much of this on HN) this is nice.
A popular article is "What Will You Do If You Start Coughing?" by James Hamblin [2], though this is heavier on public policy concerns than specific targeted advice.
If anyone can find a really well-communicated set of advice on this, I'll gladly add it to my resource list. The need for such things is urgent, and I'm extremely frustrated about the poor quality and distribution of resources, which is why I'm putting time and energy into curating my own resource list.
[1] https://www.who.int/publications-detail/home-care-for-patien...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/where-do-...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/anti-inflammat...
At the same time on Twitter, and at much higher volume, is a torrent of bullshit, with apparently some seeding from active disinformation sources. I try to be very careful to filter this out, though it's not always easy (I find my curation much more effective on desktop web than mobile).
Public health sources are sometimes wrong. For example, Ohio's chief public health doctor put out an estimate of 100k cases on 3/12, propagated through official channels including a tweet from the Governor [1], and which #epi Twitter very quickly criticized. Work out for yourself which to trust; among other things, with the CFR we're seeing, if the public health official is right we'd be seeing approximately 1k excess deaths in OH, with a timeframe that would certainly have started emerging by now.
This particular thing (ibuprofen) is in the category of "emerging research which could be very important if and when it checks out."
So basically I'm trying to be very careful to vet the information I transmit. The pipeline from that to actionable advice can sometimes be infuriatingly slow, which no doubt explains why certain things (especially with an easy-to-understand narrative) jump the queue. I will definitely put this in my resource list as soon as I see trustworthy confirmation. And I am confident that if it actually was valid and important, at least one of the experts I follow would have mentioned it by now.
[1]: https://twitter.com/GovMikeDeWine/status/1238177953126604801
2. Watermelon is good kidney support. This is helpful if you are experiencing bloating.
3. Hot peppers are antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal and open a cell channel that helps you dump fluids.
4. Tea is an astringent. Drinking it can help reduce fluid in the lungs.
5. Spicy foods are medicinal. Some stuff that helps combat infection include: onions, garlic, hot peppers, black pepper, cinnamon, olives. Oregano and oil of oregano are especially helpful for lung infections.
6. Alkalinity helps combat viral infections. Look up alkaline food lists.
7. Stay hydrated and get enough salt. Water and salt are critical components of mucus, an important lung thing.
8. Lysine helps combat viral infections.
9. Lung clearance is a standard means to treat serious lung conditions and keep airways open. A simple means to do this is stand in the shower with your feet about shoulder width apart, bend over as far as you can and cough hard.
10. Caffeine is a stimulant that works very similarly to an inhaler drug. So you can drink coffee or eat very dark chocolate to open up the airways as a drug substitute.
Most likely, this comment will be downvoted to hell and one or more people will promptly jump up to accuse me of nefarious behavior, delusions of grandeur, having no fucking clue what I'm talking about or similar. I get that a lot.
I have a very deadly medical condition that involves the lungs. I'm off all drugs. The above are some of the things I rely upon.
I'm not a doctor. I'm a former homemaker and formerly homeless person.
Do whatever the hell you want with that info.
Edit: if you have lung distress, avoid bacon.
Out of curiosity, what in onions is good for the lungs? I know a lot of people have been talking about red onions due to their quercetin content, which in vitro works similarly to chloroquine in terms of helping cells absorb zinc.
This means: If you come to hospital, we give you oxygen. Initially through nasal prongs, then progressively through mask and then straight to intubation - ventilator.
If the lungs are completely unable to oxygenate, we will put you on ECMO which can work quite well whilst the lungs recover.... unfortunately not many of them.
We will also take bloods and give IV fluids. If your blood pressure crashes, you may be given inotropes/vasopressors but the case reports about people who make it this far are not good to date (frankly, anyone who needs an ICU bed even today has a 30% mortality rate so there’s always the baseline comparison)
Once ventilated, you will usually be in antibiotics to prevent opportunistic infections.
We have no other ways of helping those who are otherwise able to breathe on their own, besides symptom control (ie fever/aches and pains) however if I were to get this I would ride the fever out (heightened temperature activated immune system, trial in ICU of permissive hyperthermia shows survival benefit, although this is in sepsis patients)
If you have a productive cough (cough usually dry) then chest clearance, breathing exercises may be helpful, but should consider seeking antibiotics for secondary bacterial pneumonia
Respiratory illnesses are my achilles heel. One thing I always have on hand is Primatene. The guaifenesin loosens up mucus and the ephedrine opens up your respiratory tract so it's easier to breath--both improving nasal congestion, and also, AFAIU, helping with oxygen uptake in inflamed lungs. I have to be proactive because a simple cold can lead to bronchitis, and bronchitis can lead to pneumonia.
Any doctors, please opine, but I believe that if you have pneumonia (obvious infection, shortness of breath, etc) and are unable to get medical treatment, having some ephedrine on hand might be worthwhile. A quick search through the medical literature shows that ephedrine is apparently used precisely to improve oxygenation for acute respiratory distress (not just for asthmatics, obviously, but sometimes in surgery and in other cases).
The critical question would be counter-indications. The doctors I've run my cold treatment by always remind me that Guaifenesin and ephedrine both increase blood pressure, so that's something to keep in mind. (Fortunately, I don't have high-blood pressure.) But how that would figure into an acute distress situation, I dunno. I'm sure that in any particular context doctors probably know of many other counter-indications.
Primatene, Bronkaid, and similar generics are the only way to get ephedrine OTC, and they always include guaifenesin, so be mindful of dosages for both drugs. I just picked up a box of Primatene just in case as I forgot how much I had left at home. They're usually on the front shelves behind the pharmacist; don't bother hunting for one of the placards in the store aisle.
Looking at Asian countries:
Japan: 8-9 days - many people wearing masks
Thailand: 10+days - most people wearing masks
China: negative values - all people wearing masks (not just in Wuhan) and handsanitizer everywhere
Cost for masks: 0.2$/person per day.
Let's hope that China can ramp up the mask and hand sanitizer production to supply the rest of the world asap, because the west doesn't have the capability.
Please don’t waste masks when you could get significantly better benefit by regularly washing your hands and not putting your fingers in your mouth
Also it doesn't make sense to me that "we should leave masks for doctors", as experts and media are saying. The masks sold in the grocery stores and pharmacies are surgical masks.
Surgical masks prevent the wearer from spreading the virus...
Doctors and nurses should have N95 masks, which prevent the wearer from obtaining the virus...
I agree something is better than nothing, but if doctors and nurses are treating infected patients, surgical masks do nothing for them!
In an ideal world, IMHO - we common folks wear surgical masks to contain the spread. Hospital staff wear N95 to prevent them from getting sick.
The sooner we realize this fact - the sooner we can massively produce masks and get people to wear them when going out.
Given the distance the virus can travel, the length of time it can live outside the body, how long it can stay in the air after being aerosolized (transmitted via cough). It makes sense to get masks on as many people as possible.. because it's the healthy people who think they are fine, coughing in public places that are the most likely to spread it.
Again, this is assuming supply ramps up and is sufficient to make this a reality, obviously all healthcare worker needs should be met first, but going further to protect the general public should be something to strive for.
(The curve will slow for other reasons as a sufficient number of people get infected such that there just aren't enough people who haven't been infected to be newly infected.)
I didn't see a source for that --- it seemed like an assumption --- and everything I've read suggests that this is a major unknown at the moment.
It's possible the author has a source that was not included. Either way, the author should either include the source or more explicitly take describe the epistemic status of that hypothesis and work through the consequences of it not being true.
I am not a medical professional, but I would have assumed that the body develops a immunity because otherwise why would they search for a vaccine?
I was thinking more of the kind of immunity one gets for something like chicken pox, where one childhood infection basically protects you for life, vs something like the seasonal flu which you can get again and again.
Now I don't know if the reason you keep getting the flu is because it mutates more rapidly than the chicken pox virus and you still remain immune to the particular strain you got infected with or if that initial immunity weakens over time.
Maybe someone better informed can chime in.
Also, where is non denatured ethanol readily available?
https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...
:(
Here are the facts:
- The 30k U.S. traffic death count is for the ENTIRE YEAR. The 3k death in Wuhun happened in a matter of weeks(6-8 weeks).
- Given that U.S.'s inaction and squandered 2 months of lead time, we could see death count to be in the order of hundreds of thousands in U.S. alone.[1] This is NOT an estimate based on mathematical model, this is the estimate based on clinical data so far and virus's exponential growth rate. There isn't a national lock-down yet although some states are acting quickly, still 2 month late.
- Mass majority of the vehicular deaths are preventable because most of them are due to human error. COVID-19 is NOT preventable RIGHT NOW. Vaccines are at least 1-1.5 years away, no matter how fast track you spin it.
- Asymptomatic and family based clustering transmissions are making the lock-down less effective.
- We will get through this nightmare pandemic outbreak. But the economic depression is real and ongoing. Nobody knows what the long term effect could be.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-pr...
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but an exponential growth rate is a mathematical model. We’re extrapolating the current curve into the future, that’s a model.
Based on this, 3 days does indeed look like the doubling time. However, be careful when interpreting this data, as it conflates increases in testing coverage with actual viral spread. If you look at countries with excellent testing, such as South Korea, it was still in the 3 day range, though today they thankfully have transmission comparatively under control.
At 3 days that changes both how much we have to slow it down, and how quickly we need to start slowing it down.
Not to mention that if it's 15 days from infection to diagnosis then that's 5 doubling times. So by the time we realize we didn't do enough it's way too late to avoid a complete catastrophe.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Log-linear_plot_of_c...
But yeah, I recognize the larger point is we want to know doubling rate of "actual cases", and since that's currently unknowable, identifying the most reliable proxy. It just seemed to me that our testing rate occludes "confirmed cases" more than death rate occludes "actual cases" - at least with death rates we can identify the time points when mitigation rates are introduced, when hospitals get overwhelmed, etc.
(3 days was also the number I used one week ago to state "at least two of France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland will be in lockdown and with hundreds of deaths one week from now"[1], and boy was I right).
“Go outside - sunlight is the best disinfectant”
"A combination of fresh air, sunlight, scrupulous standards of hygiene, and reusable face masks appears to have substantially reduced deaths among some patients and infections among medical staff. "