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Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers

helpwithcovid.com

601 pointstvvocold204 comments

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.

<rant> A lot of us have the amazing comfort of working from our own homes, isolated from the rest of the world. In roughly 2-3 weeks, the epicenter locations of this disease in the US are going to run out of hospital beds. If you are younger and healthy, please consider asking your boss if you need to be working full time right now. Watch your state governor's and mayor's press conferences. They will communicate to you where you can go to help volunteer.

We are going to transition to "war time leadership". A time that will test everyone's true character. </rant>

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.

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.

Flat statements about what strategies are or aren't options don't seem helpful. It's not a good option, ideally we'll have total containment, but it's important that we not see it as a betrayal if it's decided in a couple weeks that total containment isn't feasible.

It absolutely would be a betrayal of the people you'd be giving up on to not do everything we can to help them while we still can. You can advocate for or against taking strong action but you can't tell people you're allowing to die to not be upset about it.

You certainly can't tell people not to be upset! Every death is tragedy; people have a right to be upset even about rarer causes of death that are harder to mitigate. (From personal experience, I can tell you that anyone who's seen an alcoholic family member die learns to sympathize with the Prohibitionists.)

But it's not a betrayal to acknowledge their pain while recognizing nothing feasible can be done.

> 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

Why not? It's just giving some context to people who may think .2% is a "low" mortality rate.

Thanks for the age specific number. That shows my point even more.

Ah, I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, but I thought the all-age figure understates how much more deadly COVID-19 is compared to influenza.

> 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...

Yeah, it's almost certainly way overblown. People are freaking out over a bad flu season. I could see a case made in a future retrospective that the exponential increase we're seeing in cases is actually an exponential increase in the number of available tests disseminated.

Until we have antibody tests, the PCR-based tests we're using will only tell us if you actively have the disease not if you had it ages ago and already recovered. This disease could have easily spread unnoticed (due to the overwhelmingly mild flulike symptoms most people get) for months. Due to its highly-contageous nature, it probably did.

Until we calm down and analyze what all actually happened my guess is just as good as anyone else.

Right now tests are being allocated to critically ill or dead people suspected of Covid-19. Ideally most cause of deaths are caught so the absolute number of deaths are a decent indicator of spread, but they are lagged by probably 7-14 days or the time until critical + testing and reporting time.

Also I am 32yo male on day 5 of Covid-19 symptoms and have hopefully been through the worst part (immune response in lungs). AMA.

AMA: Was it any different than a bad flu for you?

After a week long light dry cough, it was rapid onset and more resperatory/lung focused kind of immune response, almost like a lung infection. The acronyms SARS is a pretty good description.

Basically I think it slowly invades your lungs but finally your immune system figures it out and goes all-in. What triggered it was some vigorous excersize which wiped me out. I call that day 1 but it was after over a week of the cough. Day 1-2 occasionnaly had a 99.0F fever but often lower/normal. Had two nights where I felt congestion developing in lungs and then third day got to 100.8F at 5pm... that night-BAM-woke up at 4am with cold sweats and a strong even burning in both lungs (probably immune system working on it). Lungs felt raw breathing in air. Turned on the shower to get some humidity and the burning subsided but then lungs started swelling up and breathing difficulties began. Luckily I took a bunch of benedryl and was able to breathe more after an hour of calm, but was close to calling ambulance. After that I've now had one OK night with a lot of localizing immune activity but at a lower level. On a scale from feeling lousy (1) to dead (10) the progression each night was 1,2,5,2.. (and hopefully continuing down..).

Get well soon, and thank you for sharing!

Do you have any underlying health conditions?

No I'm super healthy, 32 yr old, competitive runner.

I have a suspicion that I may have had it even longer than a week in advance and it spread more in the lungs than normal.

today is a 2.5

it kind of sucks, do your best to avoid it.

I had the worst cold around christmas and it really does make me wonder.

Fever, body aches for a couple days. Felt like I was going to cough up a lung.

but no real sneezing or congestion.

With modern genomic science, we can pinpoint almost the exact time and place Covid-19 jumped from an animal host (likely pangolins intermediate host from bat reservoir) to humans.

It almost certainly jumped hosts to humans in November of 2019[1]. It has not been circulating in humans for long.

Indeed, several scientific publications have come out in the past decade that more or less predicted that a similar strain of SARS would jump hosts and become a pandemic disease[2].

Also, technically the Spanish Flu was just a bad flu season, right? Now, few believe now that Covid-19 will be nearly as bad as the 1918 pandemic (at least in its current mutation), but it will almost certainly worse than the 1957 flu pandemic, which was bad enough and which resulted in many governmental edicts similar to today, with many school and library closings.

I agree we need to keep cool and not overreact or panic, but we also need to take this thing very seriously. Even the experts are trying to figure this thing out. Disease modeling has come a long way since 1918, but modelers are not seers.

1. https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/24/dna-sleuths-read-coronav...

2. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

3. https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/educational-magazines/inf...

This is one of the few cases where the raw data is so systematically flawed - many younger people are completely asymptomatic or not being tested because they don't need hospitalization - the anecdata might give you a better picture of the relative risk.

The youngest of the UK's >100 confirmed COVID-19 fatalities was in his forties and already terminally ill. Young people aren't totally safe and should certainly avoid contracting it if possible with a view to protecting the people they come into contact with and not taking up a hospital bed if they're at the unlucky end of the spectrum, but relatively speaking they're a tiny fraction of the overall casualties, and probably have more exposure to the virus than the elderly due to more active social/work lives.

Not to disagree with anything you said here, but there was recently a story comparing the fates of two young Chinese medical workers who both contracted the disease and who required medical care. The punchline is that a 29-year old physician with no co-morbidities died a terrible death. Be careful out there no matter your age or health status.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/co...

This guy is pretty clearly an outlier (or there is some missing information).

In Italy only 5 people under 40 have died, out of approx. 2500 deaths so far, and every one of the 5 had an existing serious illness.

"Didn't die" is not the same as "was not harmed".

This relentless focus only on the people who died misses the point: covid-19 puts people in hospital, sometimes into intensive care, and many of those people end up with damaged lungs.

Yeah, I've been reading this all over HN, and saw a few articles out of China at the peak there, but have struggled to find good sources on the prevalence of it elsewhere. In particular, there's a lot of data coming out of Italy but very little that I've found mentions long-term lung damage. Could you share your sources?

Survive yes. But half the patients in intensive care in Holland and France are in the 30 to 60 age bracket. And we don’t know yet what the longterm damage is after you survive.

Not to mention that survival rates start to go down as the medical establishment succumbs to the strain. I'm isolating myself as much as possible and engaging in rather stringent protocols (N95 mask and gloves while out/ disrobe, wash clothes, and bathe on return), with the goal of staving off contraction until Fall if at all possible. Maybe the Chloroquine research will prove effective by then.

I'm in Kirkland/Redmond, so the risk is higher here than elsewhere at the moment.

Every group is "most-likely-to-survive-if-exposed". The numbers they seem to be working with is around 15% for ages 80+. That's not odds you want to take but it's by no means an automatic death sentence.

If I'm interpreting the news correctly it seems that even a lot of not-so-old people (30 and up) seem to be ending up in intensive care with some frequencey, but that aspect of it (bad pneumonia) just isn't deadly in healthy people under 50 if you are given quality care. Elderly people seem to suffer myocarditis or failure of other organs.

What's worrying about that though, is that the high survival of healthy people under 50 seems to be conditional on the availability of ventilators and ecmo. Few countries can guarantee that in all scenarios.

Along with being young and healthy, the people going out in public to do things should wear gloves and a mask if possible. You might be relatively safe, but you still might take up a hospital bed, and you still might transmit it.

We're being told by the medical establishment, quite angrily, that masks are useless - unless you work in the medical establishment, then they're essential.

Who is right?

A mask doesn't "work" in the sense of preventing you from catching the virus, because airborne is not its transmission method.

A mask does work in the sense of reducing your transmission to others if you are infected (and may not know it), by keeping your moisture-laden exhalations confined.

A mask can reduce your risk by reminding you not to touch your face after having contacted potentially infectious surfaces.

And there are different types of masks. Simple cotton patches aren't what the medical establishment needs, they don't filter micron-size virus particles. There are surgical-grade masks that do, and that's what medical workers need.

We really need to start distinguishing between masks and respirators.

Surgical masks are useless for protecting the wearer from infected people, however they help protect others from an infected wearer.

If used properly, a respirator will help protect the wearer from infected people, as it will block them from inhaling virus-containing droplets.

I don’t see how they’re completely useless for protecting the wearer. If someone infected sneezes in my face, would I not be better off with a physical barrier over a point of entry into my system?

Not completely, but it's pretty unlikely it helps. First of all, no one will probably sneeze (or actually cough, because that's the frequent symptom) in your face directly.

If it's not 'in your face', just pretty close, then a lot of the droplets will be too small for the simple surgical mask to filter out. Especially as it leaves a lot of gaps around your nose and mouth. Not to talk about your eyes, where you can get infected just as easily. (Yes, you could wear protective glasses too.)

But... if almost everyone wears these in public places, which actually just became compulsory in Czech that should give pretty good protection to everyone (by filtering the emission of the asymptomatic infected).

And if we think about this use case, then actually it makes no point telling people that it won't protect them because if they think it will they are more likely to wear it.

Droplets on the mask and you breathe them in right through it.

Surgical masks contain a wax barrier that prevents the healthcare worker from spreading their own germs.

If a surgical mask can stop germs from going out of the mouth, then I better hear a more rigorous reason why that same mask doesn't work in the opposite direction.

> If a surgical mask can stop germs from going out of the mouth, then I better hear a more rigorous reason why that same mask doesn't work in the opposite direction.

One word: leakage.

Watch this:

Healthcare - Mask vs. Respirator Video - 3M Worker Health and Safety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2uLfEVD2w

> Surgical masks are useless for protecting the wearer from infected people

They are not useless for protecting the wearer, and this anti-vaxer level dangerous misinformation needs to stop. It's like saying condoms are useless for protecting the wearer from HIV because they sometimes break.

The lie that masks don't work was spread because there weren't enough masks. Sad that people are still falling for it/spreading it.

Paper I saw on homemade masks compared to N95 masks. Said ones made out of tee shirt material were not as good but not useless. The authors also pointed out they also work by preventing the wearer from touching their mouth and nose.

Frankly I see no downside to people wearing homemade masks.

Edit: More friendly article that references the paper I'm talking about.

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...

> airborne is not its transmission method

If the virus can stay "alive" in the air for 3 hours [1], why wouldn't airborne be a transmission method?

[1]: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200318_23/

It my understanding that the difference between this and other airborne things is that the particles that get expelled from covid patients contains liquid droplets that are pretty heavy and so they fall out of the air quickly and onto surfaces, they dont float around and linger.

Smaller lighter particles can just float around in the air for hours and linger, then you just have to breath them in. With covid you'd have to touch a surface that droplets fell onto, and then touch your face or something.

Verify this info before counting on it for anything serious, I am a lay person with possible misunderstandings.

"The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours..."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317150116.h...

That indicates airborne transmission is a vector.

https://nyti.ms/2x2naQu

Masks work. Telling the public they didn't need them in order to conserve them for doctors and nurses was a mistake.

Here's a good opinion piece in the Times about that very subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-c...

Some numbers from Italy:

- 48.5% of people who died had three or more other illnesses

- 25.6% of people who died had two other illnesses

- 25.1% of people who died had one other illness

- Overall, 99.2% of people who died had at least one other illness

- Average age of those that died was 79.5

Of the 2500 or so people that have died:

- only 17 people were under 50

- only 5 people were under 40 and all 5 had an existing serious illness

https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

Buying recently for 3 groups. My cart is always full and that causes extreme anger of other shoppers. And supermarket personnel complains about my volumes. Getting tired of explaining why I am buying this way. I am afraid, that grocery shopping will be limited anyway soon.

Edit: printing missing equipment parts with 3D printer would be easier for me.

Print out a sign and stick it on your cart.

I agree with this 100%. People in South Africa are panic buying. So these people think you are taking the groceries to your cave. Get a sign and people can read for themselves.

Double benefit in that it might encourage others to help too.

Sadly, as soon as this becomes common, the hoarders will do the same to avoid the shame/consequences. Fear makes people very very irrational. :(

One up them and include pictures on your sign of the people you are shopping for!

(Yeah, it's a cat / mouse game...)

Well it is a temporary solution at least.

> 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.

Have you tried Nextdoor?

My Nextdoor is also a great source of information about which local stores still have things in stock, which businesses are changing their hours, etc.

yeah i was on there in the past but it was too noisy with some people dominating every topic. there were lots of negative vibes and was ruining my mood.

> 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.

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.

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

I'm really struggling to interpret that charitably but I'll try -

Some reasons to live in a big city: (1) It's where your friends and (perhaps elderly) parents live. (2) It's where your job is. (3) You can't afford, (or don't want to own) a car. (4) You're single (especially true if you are LGBTQ). (5) You like the cultural opportunities it affords. (6) You have access to specialized medical treatment. (7) You run a business. (8) You're getting an education. (9) You're too poor to move. (10) You don't like narrow minded, holier-than-though attitudes that tend to be more common (IMHO) in smaller towns.

You don't like narrow minded, holier-than-though attitudes that tend to be more common (IMHO) in smaller towns.

Have you ever been to San Francisco?

well, yeah, but in a big city you can choose which group of narrow minded, holier-than-though folks you want to associate with. In smaller towns or cities you just don't have that option...

not sure about others but i live in the city because i can't drive due to some personal health reasons.

I've tried to live out in the burbs but it was really hard for me without a car.

I'm metropolis-dwelling primarily because of the cultural offering and diversity. I don't have to adjust my life to what are the popular views of just 1000 people.

For me it is the small places that are the perpetual cocktail party/high school where I "have" to get along with everyone instead of picking my preferences.

Unless we intend to depend on unsustainable transportation technologies forever, dense cities are a requirement. I live in a sparsely populated city, and I have to drive 15 minutes to get anywhere. Without a car, this city would be unlivable.

Matching elderly residents with helpers is one of the projects: https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/15

i will sign up for sure. Seems like new signups are timing out, will try again later tonight.

Try looking for local organizations that coordinate help with elderly on a normal day to day basis. There are likely to be non-profits, NGOs and maybe some local government programs that already exist. Therefore, they will probably have a good idea of who needs help and how to coordinate it.

I'm not a practiced germ-o-phobe. There is certainly a risk that I will mess up and touch my face without disinfecting my hands.

Given this, would shopping for my neighbors even be helpful? I'd hate to be the one doing them in..

You should assume everything you get at the grocery store has been touched by someone with it, including the bag they hand you. Whoever you give it to should be sanitizing it, or you could help them with that with fresh gloves and distance.

Are there good tips for doing this safely? Should I wipe down all the items? Ideally they could do so themselves.

to wipe down and disinfect (if the bleach is 2.75% strength, otherwise adjust accordingly) use 1 gallon water with 1 tablespoon unscented laundry bleach for eating utensils or 1 gallon water with 6 tablespoons bleach for surfaces like tables.

a gallon is 213 tablespoons so your ratio is about 200 to 1 for eating utensils vs 30 to one for surfaces, so that's metric-ish.

This is "child safe" (like for nursery schools), I got it from here https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/8340/970-216-Disi...

I just looked at a generic bottle of bleach I bought at a chain pharmacy to see if they listed the concentration, and even better, they listed various measures as above for different uses as above, so if you look there it might be the most convenient system.

source:

in normal times, the board of health requires restaurants in new york city (but probably everywhere) to keep a bucket of chlorinated water (essentially diluted laundry bleach) around with rags in it to wipe off tables with bare hands in between customers. I infer from this factoid that it must be a good, safe way to disinfect things, so I mention it if you were looking for a way to wipe things down simply and reliably.

obviously, you want to get the concentration right so the chlorine doesn't become a health risk itself (or bleach your jeans) so I'll try to look that up now, and I found the above link from the State of Washington.

Well I do have some isopropyl alcohol. I've been using it sparingly but it's lasting me longer than I expected.

nothing wrong with the disinfectant property of strong concentrations of alcohol, but I assume institutional food service type places are told to use diluted bleach because it is not flammable and is safe and stable (not evaporatey) to sit for periods of time in an open bucket.

I found this earlier:

- https://queercare.network/our-work/resources/covid-19/disinf...

- https://queercare.network/our-work/resources/covid-19/delive...

The parent directory has more.

Look around for programs in your area that already coordinate efforts like grocery delivery for the elderly on a daily basis. Volunteering through these programs may be an easier way to find who needs help and do it in a coordinated way.

Example in Colorado: https://cultivate.ngo/programs/carry-out-caravan

People have been setting up mutual aid and volunteer groups to do just this.

If you’d like to find one in your local area we’ve built a directory for them:

https://coronavolunteer.org

Helping in your local community (safely) will be one of the most important things you can do in the coming months.

Have you seen https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/volunteering?

Both of those links are blank pages with JS disabled. It's a minor thing, but still a thing.

> In roughly 2-3 weeks, the epicenter locations of this disease in the US are going to run out of hospital beds.

This sounds right, but do you have a source on the 2-3 weeks number? I found a source regarding hospital bed shortages, but it does not specify a number that concrete.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/17/upshot/hospit...

You just need to follow the curves in Italy and France - the US follows closely

Everybody seems to be announcing special hours at grocery stores for seniors today. It seems like people are acting rapidly.

Well said, @eezurr!

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 to create a reserve for the US of more than 740000 ventilators. Sorry, but I want to help people everywhere, not just in the US. The whole world needs ventilators.

Maybe I just misunderstood, and the US numbers were just indicative, but it does not look like a global effort. Does anybody knows of a similar initiative that is not so focused on the US?

Yeah I think you're correct, its quite indicative of America in general currently.

You might find this project more appealing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573743

Thanks! Still learning about it, but I think I'll join.

I agree, a global solution is ideal. But please keep in mind these initiatives, if they speed up treatment or help stockpile resources, will allow others to use those cures and/or the other supplies that would be freed up.

Also, it may be more effective to concentrate everyone in one project that starts with the US since it has the most resources (technology, medical, science, etc) and then send out the results rather than having sparse groups trying to do the same thing for all different areas of the globe.

Best to build a prototype for a focused set of problems and users, then expand out once you have success there. Difference between needing 750k ventilators and 200m ventilators and also simultaneously having to solve all the global regulations, shipping, distribution, customs, etc.

Do I missunderstand something or isn't it necessary for the real bad cases to intubate the person needing the ventilator? I think the bottleneck here is a lot more complicated than "moaaar" ventilators. Also if you have 1 Mio. people on ventilation, these probably are not able to move on theirselves, so you need a care person to turn them every hour. Additionally hooking them up to a ventilator and pressing "play" seems to be a recipe for trouble, be it from mechanical damage because of faulty settings or bacterial infections not being treated at all until it's too late...

So think of care in this case being a pipeline, and right now the bottleneck is ventilators. Once we solve that, we may well have other bottlenecks, but right now this is the main one.

Well designed modern ventilators once set require minimal attention, and the overall settings for most COVID cases seem to be well understood from what the literature has suggested.

In terms of bacterial infections, it depends on the type of ventilation used and there are some variables here, but regular ventilator sanitation procedures should be fine, and currently have proven to be fine.

are you a doctor or why are you so sure? In italy they don't have space, ventilators or personel. As this is not a time-independent pipeline-problem with human lifes at stake, I don't think that it's really effective to say: just let's do one part after the other without even knowing that someone is taking care of the rest)

A care person is a very low skill job, it's not a critical bottleneck. (In many cases family could make do, especially if you have some cooperation. One person can't do it but two could trade off doing two people.)

...

Crowd-sourcing a producable design should help everyone. There are some assumptions (that I believe to be correct) that longer supply chains will be somewhat unreliable, so arranging local production is probably better for the patients anyway. I think there's inspiration in the Italians who were printing ventilator valves en masse.

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.

Yes! I think it is normal than everyone cares about their own country, and of course in HN people are more worried about the US and the SF area in particular. But I'm also sure there will be other initiatives that could benefit more people and as someone from Europe (we're minority here, but still quite a few!), that's what I'd like to help with.

I think many people -- Americans or otherwise -- are global in their mindset. Its just hard to translate your language and your network and friends and learnings into something that might be relevant everywhere.

I moved to Germany and learnt German and looked around for the German developer internet: it just doesn't exist.

You can list German projects in English, most of the Germans understand it really well, including most developers in Europe.

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 news aggregators and case tracker dashboards.

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.

Good to know, I missed that. Luckily I've given them AN email :)

> Sorry, but I want to help people everywhere, not just in the US. The whole world needs ventilators.

The US is part of the world. This is like people who think that global oil prices are irrelevant if the US produces more than it consumes.

They're talking about building ventilators. That causes more of them to exist in the world. Then when the US needs them, they use those instead of outbidding other countries for existing stock, causing more to be available for the rest of the world too.

I think you still didn't get the point? He's just saying he wants to help with a global project not the ones focused only on US

Then make a global website? Or post a project on this site that is global in nature?

While I agree with the logic you present, you don't really disprove the US-first mentality OP is mentioning. Which is pretty fucked up approach for anybody outside of US (like it or not, its 95% of the mankind). Where would this finish? Should we treat only US persons (a number which is rising exponentially just like anywhere else), and only after this is fully covered should we care about the rest?

You might have not intended to make it look that way, but after what Trump pulled (yet again) with trying to bribe German company to produce vaccine ONLY for Americans (German government confirms that, so I have 0 doubt its true), he pissed most of the world pretty badly with this selfish approach.

I get it, he has absolutely 0 morals and would sell his mother for profit, but this is lower than low.

This is a global problem, and we need to treat it as such. US specific ones will simply get little support from elsewhere. Just like nobody would expect too much US participation in solving mainly Lithuania issues.

> you don't really disprove the US-first mentality OP is mentioning.

Not the grandparent, but I don't think that was the point. We're out of time to finesse ideal planning. We need hardware. Now. Ventilators are hardware. A device in the US means the US doesn't need to source it from somewhere else, and at the end of the day it's likely to save a few lives somewhere, and that matters.

I mean, sure, maybe your compatriot volunteers are jingoist nutjobs who refuse to make ventilators for anyone but americans. It's time to put that aside and just get stuff done.

Also, note the collision of framing: if someone encouraged you to check on your neighbors and shop for them if needed, you wouldn't refuse to do that because other neighborhoods might need the help more, right?

But there is a choice, and as a Canadian why on earth would you expect me to work for your reserve supply instead of mine? The US needs a reality check.

I don't know how to answer that. I can tell you that as an American, I might not necessarily want to help with a "Ventilators for Canadians" project (vs. other stuff I could be doing), but I certainly wouldn't argue it shouldn't exist.

Get stuff done folks. The time for parochialism has passed, and the time for recriminations and justice must be in the future.

> but I certainly wouldn't argue it shouldn't exist.

Nobody has argued that.

> if someone encouraged you to check on your neighbors and shop for them if needed, you wouldn't refuse to do that because other neighborhoods might need the help more, right?

It's more like someone asking me to help their neighbours rather than help my own neighbours. Why should I prefer to help your neighbours than mine?

Anyone can create a project on this website. If you want to help your own neighbors and don't feel these help, post a project.

I'm European (I'm sorry I did not say that in my previous comment, because it can be misunderstood without that data). Europe is being hit harder now and we're part of the world too, why then not focusing on building ventilators for Europe so the US and other parts of the world will have more? Logically, you will prefer to work helping your own country, or even your own local community. That's normal and, in my opinion, the right thing to do.

However, since this is a global problem, I think there may be initiatives with which an engineer can help that are not focused in a particular region. I'm interested in those and, in particular, those that could directly help here.

I already got some good suggestions, so thank you for all the responses!

"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 to create a reserve for the US of more than 740000 ventilators. Sorry, but I want to help people everywhere, not just in the US. The whole world needs ventilators."

Just because the description appears that way doesn't mean you could not join the team/project and bring a broader more global perspective that may not have been considered. On top of engineering, a bigger vision (backed with appropriate strategy) can be value-add to an initiative, why not simply pitch/propose it?

This is a silly comment. The site existing is better than nothing, it's a step in the right direction.

And, projects can be added for any location. Stop complaining and take action.

I did not complain. I actually said it is a great initiative, and I even said that maybe I misunderstood.

Of course this site is better than nothing. I think it is great! Nobody is discussing that.

Taking action is exactly what I'm trying to do, but my own country (Spain) is being hit very hard with this, so I think it is understandable that I prefer to focus in some project that can also benefit us.

I think your original comment would have been a lot clearer and less controversial if you had mentioned you live in Spain. :)

It absolutely makes sense that you would want to work on a project directed closer to your home.

Yes, I am sorry about that.

It is too late to edit it now, but I already admitted in another comment that leaving out that information was a mistake.

Nevertheless, I think that my comment brought up some unexpected interesting discussions.

No need to apologize! Perhaps the rest of us should not have read it assuming you were in the U.S.

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 anyone is in the same situation and/or have some ideas, let's get in touch and try to do something.

You may want to check https://github.com/opencovid19-fr/comment-contribuer :-)

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

Maybe people from other places (particularly Europe) should join the projects and start sister sub-projects to do the same things but for Europe.

For the 1M ventilator one, for instance, there's no reason everyone can't work together on the design phase, because that's universal and open-source.

Once that's done, there can be separate teams by nation or region to do the parts that are more specific to those places, such as financing, manufacturing, and distribution. These teams could still all be part of the larger project so they could learn from each other, while still focusing on their own immediate areas of responsibility.

These projects were posted by the community. Volunteer yourself or create a new one.

I will suggest that anyone here who knows of something based elsewhere or with an international perspective can and should post it.

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.

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 as many people as I can gain access to reliable information and data and stop the fake news that trigger a lot of panic.

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

Hi Riciu. This looks like a very promising resource. One constructive comment: your dashboards could benefit from some text above clarifying things like [i]some countries test more symptomatic people than others [ii]recoveries are much lower because recovery takes time and in most places most of the cases are new etc [iii] many cases are undocumented. And possibly linking to your articles on the same subject.

This may be clear to you, but perhaps not to some people using the data to assess the relative safety of their country or age group.

This site, list, and general orientation of 'tech for good' applied towards CV19 is very likeable. Especially so at a time where there is going to be excess brain capacity on the sidelines due to layoffs or those now working from home who have spare time & motive to do something and feeling helpless.

The economic + remote labor shifts definitely open up more resources for side/volunteer stuff for those, like me, wanting to help this cause but not sure how or where to begin.

After reading through and clicking on a few projects of personal interest, my feedback for those listing who seek to increase their chances of success and maximize impact would be:

(a) make the 'how to get in touch' more consistent/accessible. An email contact should be standard. Just give me an email address and i'll give you mine, we'll go from there.

(b) consider thinking bigger and broader in terms of 'looking for'. It takes much more than devs/languages to get something real off the ground, scale it, and actually solve a real world problem. Designers, PMs, marketing, strategy, people with capital and connections... Not that it's fast or easy to find these things, but understanding the scope of what you will actually need to succeed upfront will only expand your funnel and give you options to evolve and grow by tapping into diverse expertise as the product is built.

Also consider including progress to date, your rough plan (if any), an indication of how much leadership is in place or required.

Like "b" above: as a potential volunteer it's helpful to know whether you have a plan and just need workers or if it's still early idea phase and you need executive help.

I applaud the intent, but this looks like a laundry list of random ideas. There's no leadership or vetting or job descriptions. I'd love to help us build 1,000,000 ventilators, but I think the answer to that one is for governments to allocate money to manufacturers (which is starting to happen), not to crank out some javascript.

Agreed. Good intentions but this needs some filtering of ideas to focus in on things people can actually do.

"1 Million Ventilators" Why not 10 million, or 100? This is effectively clickbait. :(

That's not what clickbait is. Also, despite my skepticism I just volunteered for something. I can be skeptical but still hopeful :)

These are all moonshot projects. If someone can come up with a creative and simple ventilator that relies entirely on 3d printed and massively available electronic parts they can save a lot of lives and it appears to be entirely possible. If they don't produce anything of value, at least they tried.

The issue is it's premature to even call these listings "projects." I can write "create vaccine for covid for free distribution" on this list, what does that achieve?

There are concrete things we can all do, and probably ways for we programmers to contribute using our professional skills, but just wishing for a million ventilators is a distraction, not a contribution or even a project to be brutally honest.

> at least they tried.

I recognize the optimism and idealism in this way of thinking and feel bad about countering it, but as someone who has taken on a number of “if we fail at least we tried!” ideas over the years, this is a recipe for burnout.

Enthusiasm and passion are valuable and scarce resources: we don’t have an unlimited amount. Each time we take on a project and really throw ourselves into it, we’re investing a bit of our limited passion supply. If the project works out and makes an impact, we get a return on that investment, and feel the motivation to take on even bigger projects! But if you throw yourself body and soul into too many projects that totally fail, you’ll eventually run out of steam to keep going, and you may not even see it coming until it’s too late.

To continue the investment analogy: I recommend folks invest themselves in projects with an eye to risk. “A weekend project that will almost certainly go nowhere, but could go somewhere” is a small investment, sure go ahead. A months long grind with a startup better come with a plausible strategy for success that doesn’t hinge on something unlikely.

Invest well, friends.

I have an idea to increase viral RNA test throughput (PCR) by 46.5 times using a binary encoding scheme that I hope someone here might be able to validate/invalidate. Sorry for the thread jack, but I tried posting this yesterday but didn't get picked up.

https://wet-robots.ghost.io/how-to-increase-covid-19-testing...

Read Dorfman’s 1940s paper on detecting “defectives” [1].

The fundamental chemistry, as I understand it, is compatible with the method described by Dorfman.

I’ve actually reached out to MD Dr., biochemists, epidemiologists asking your very question: “Why can’t we mix samples?”

None seem unable to give me an straight answer. Most I’ve asked can’t get past the fact that you can still identify the infected individual after mixing the samples.

(Sorry dang. I know I’m banned. But I think coronavirus trumps a ban!)

[1] “the detection of defective member of a large population”

At a quick reading, here are some things that pop out:

1) In your 94 well example, you'd need to dilute each individual sample 1/94. This could cause problems. The lower leveraged scenarios may be more useful due to lower dilution.

2) Similarly, very small scale liquid handling is relatively difficult to do. As you multiplex the number of sources into a well, the volume of each of those sources will decrease, increasing the difficulty and uncertain. Once again, a lower leveraged solution is likely viable.

It's also worth identifying that the bottle neck in testing is moving towards the availability of sample swabs, and reverse-transcription reagent (these happen up stream of PCR). Given those constraints, the emphasis should be on making all other steps in the detection chain as reliable (so simple) as possible to make the best of the bottle necked resources.

That said, it's a very clever idea.

The idea is great in principle. But this is going to be a problem:

"We need a mechanical device which can automatically sort the samples into well group"

PCR machines are actually not that complicated by comparison. Basically just a programmable heater.

Last time I looked into it (admittedly a while ago, so feel free to correct me), pipetting robots kind of sucked and weren't very precise.

Correctly handling tiny (microliter scale) fluid amounts without the slightest risk of cross contamination isn't going to be that simple.

But all that said, if you can solve this problem I think the idea is a real winner. Can be used for HIV and other PCR based testing as well.

Yeah, liquid handling is not fun. However, I hoped this could be somehow bypassed by physically sorting the swabs into beakers before centrifuge and then deriving a well sample from each beaker.

I'm admittedly not the right person to implement this, and ideas are cheap. I just want to make sure the idea is out there.

Do you have the full procedure? can you list here?

I know there is a liquid handling machine made by CTC [1], which could handle very small volume of liquid, and do a lot of custom procedures.

Still, cross contamination is still a issue.

[1] https://www.ctc.ch/

also there is a machine made by Roche Cobas 8800 and 6800, which can process 4k samples a day.

I don't think some liquid handling machine can outperform this.

I do custom applications for a liquid handling robotics company.

Nucleotide extraction and amplification are some of the most common contemporary applications of modern liquid handling robots. Cherry-picking or sorting of samples is also a technique that is common and well within the functionaltiy of these robots.

To avoid cross-contamination, diagnostic samples are typically not mixed and handled in discrete wells with sample specific disposable pipette tips. In a scenario where throughput/cost/reagent scarcity are important and false-positives (without severe symptoms) are low-risk I think your suggestion absolutely has merit. I am going to run this by our diagnostics specialist for further review.

Hi willturman,

I'd love to hear if this goes anywhere. My email is carlchatfield gmail com.

Thank you

sounds like Agilent / Thermo Scientific / CTC

If you're on GitHub and want to help, you can edit these country-specific pages to add your area nonprofits, organizations, volunteer opportunities, and the like:

https://github.com/nonprofitnetworks/covid

We're launching today with blank pages ready to edit for all countries, and we welcome help. My email is joel@nonprofitnetworks.org if you want to contact me about this.

I'd hate to state the obvious but why Github? It's quite a big barrier to entry for the average person (especially in places with low literacy) to write in MD, make a pull request etc. Why not just use a public Google doc or something?

Don't get me wrong. I get where you are coming from but I have gone down the Github route on a few similar projects and regretted it.

Do these projects have PMs etc.? I am curious about them (and work at a company whose services overlap with some of these initiatives) but it's hard to tell if there's anything more just a title + a paragraph to these projects. Nothing wrong with that, just looking for some clarity here.

Limiting this list to projects that are underway and have some clear leadership might help avoid the "random list of ideas" problem that another user here pointed out. I mean to say, if you don't have a plan, a leadership group/person, and something underway, don't post (if you're not able to get that much together, you don't have a project, you have an idea, and ideas are not very valuable).

There's also https://en.coronahelpers.nl but I think it's only for Netherlands.

Although I misunderstood. Above site is for finding volunteers to help with daily tasks.

I realize this is probably a work in progress, but as a suggestion, it would really benefit from better navigation:

- Sorting (particularly by # of volunteers, to find ones that aren't filled up)

- Searching by string

- Maybe tags that can be searched by? (skillsets wanted, etc.)

- Projects could list an estimated number of needed volunteers; "Does 86 mean they don't need any more?"

Overall, excellent idea and it looks great so far. I just think the above would make it much easier for people to find the right place to contribute.

Yeah, it seems weird that the default presentation is to put the projects with the most volunteers at the top.

We're working on this!

The Helpful Engineering project has several thousand volunteers and a global scope: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cM87eJdXhP_8e9gJJZ_SnZXd...

There is also: https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/

In this thread, there is an ongoing hackathon https://www.hackcrisis.com/ (until this weekend).

To all German speakers: There will be a government-sponsored hackathon from Friday to Sunday, please think about participating!

https://wirvsvirushackathon.org/

We think about building tools for anonymous health data collection or a tool to fight misinformation / fake news using passive DNS data and some (simple) machine learning. Help is greatly appreciated :)

Thanks for sharing! I spread the info with my colleagues

The US spends so much money on defense and making sure soldiers are prepared for war.

Right now, our soldiers in this war are our frontline medical staff. Nurses and doctors putting their lives on the line to help the ones in need.

But instead we have this :

Hospital Workers Make Masks From Office Supplies Amid U.S. Shortage (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/hospital-...)

Doctors in New York treating coronavirus patients reusing masks (https://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-new-york-treating-co...)

Mask shortages are showing up all over Europe too. France and The Netherlands already started shutting down general practitioner offices due to a lack of protective gear. A month ago the WHO already warned for this shortage (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/who-warns-glob...)

It's kind of heart-breaking to see people wearing the N95 masks on the streets, while hospitals are having a hard time to find sufficient protective gear to keep the hospital afloat.

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.

The point is for the project to contact you. Not for you to contact them.

I understand that signing up is annoying, but really this isn't the time to be concern trolling about an email/account sign ups. Plus how are you going to help if you can't be contacted?

Also a very worthwhile Github Project here for the John Hopkins Map. 400+ issues at the moment

https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues

If anyone is interested, I made a subreddit to discuss over-the-counter drugs, supplements, and other treatments for Covid—19:

https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack

You can also donate blood, "American Red Cross faces 'severe blood shortage' as cancellations increase due to coronavirus": https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/american-red-cross-faces-sev...

You can still donate while on most medications, which is something I didn't know.

Given some people need to continue working, giving care, maintaining infrastructure, maybe social distancing in time as well as physical distance would be a good idea? You might be surprised how few people are around at 4am. Even if people didn't want to work at night, they could still spread out work hours during the day. Businesses have probably already thought of this, but workers in other areas may not have.

Hopefully some of these aren't re-inventing the wheel. For instance, currently the first one is helping build APIs for getting healthcare data. This is potentially a solved problem; indeed, interoperability is rather a large market in the healthcare world (I speak as someone who does this for a living).

If it's a solved problem, is it easy to link to the solution here?

The solution depends on the problem. The standardizing body is HL7.org, but there are multiple standards depending on what you're trying to do. Currently, the market is focused on FHIR API, which is a RESTful API.

I'm on mobile, but that should give you enough to search for.

curious where you would start tackling it? what are the right building blocks that can be accessed for devs building solutions? from an outside perspective there is little access to data across the silos. im helping coordinate the project, not a healthcare expert myself (rather coming from the api / data side from other verticals), so happy about your thoughts.

FHIR APIs are allowing a standards-based approach to accessing healthcare data from external sources, such as an app. In addition, there are national networks for sharing data between clinics and hospitals, like CareQuality and Commonwell. I'm most familiar with CareQuality, as that's the system my company's EHR software integrates with. It uses SOAP calls to exchange CDA documents.

There's also a problem of trust. I work for a hospital and I'm never going to pull data from an API built by random people yesterday, especially in a crisis situation.

The thing that worries me the most about the Elderly Grocery projects is that elderly individuals are EXTREMELY vulnerable to criminals and scam artists. They are explicitly target. I'm very afraid of people volunteering for these things as a confidence builder they can use to prey upon them.

I posted this to my agency's Slack channel. It didn't unfurl because there's no OG data.

I added this as byline: "Community projects looking for volunteers. Sign up and add your project to the list."

OG data would help promote the page with less effort by those who share in social media and text messages.

> Help With COVID is a marketplace for people (especially software engineers) to find projects to contribute to, and for projects to find help.

Do you know how "software engineers" can "help with COVID?" By getting into their cars and bringing supplies to elderly people in their neighborhood.

well, your user name speaks for itself. Oldfashioned but reliable and well thought out.

There is at least one project listed specifically to enable this.

No there isn't. There's a project to write software to build a platform to do this. Just knock on doors.

Quit being hostile to people trying to help. It's the lowest of the low you can be during a world-wide crisis.

Anyone is free to spend their free time as they wish and trying to help is very noble. However, there are some very mundane things people can do that would seem to have a lot more impact than many of these projects. Volunteering to delivery groceries is one.

It is like volunteering to help out a soup kitchen. Sure, they could probably use some help with their website or other technical issues, but mostly they just need people to serve food.

Tbh looks like you guys have chosen the third path: neither build the website nor ladle the soup but complain about which of the two things people are doing.

So do those, instead of arguing about it in a time-wasting forum.

When I shop for my groceries, I make sure to ask my elderly neighbours if they need anything. However, that's something a very large amount of the population can do. So I choose to spend the spare time I have applying my overall-rare skills where they can have the most impact, such as helping improve efficiency of testing in labs and remove technical speedbumps from hospital staff.

Anyone who wants to be a fucking moralist over this can quite frankly shut up, bunker up in their home and go back to wasting their quarantine watching Netflix and reading HN.

Well my throat's been feeling a little scratchy recently, so I think I'd better not. ;)

> Do you know how "software engineers" can "help with COVID?" By getting into their cars and bringing supplies to elderly people in their neighborhood.

Even if you think the best thing to do is deliver supplies to the elderly, it makes no sense for a software engineer to stop what he or she is doing and do that. The entire restaurant and hospitality industry just got laid off; you should keep working and pay someone out-of-work to deliver supplies instead.

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

That was the initial approach, we're bringing in some people to highlight projects.

We've started FeedADoc.com and posted it on helpwithcovid (https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/53). 10 volunteers from HN folks so far, thank you!

I created overnight https://covid-info.us

I’m just trying to help out any way I can.

Some of the info here I will post on the site.

I also have access to other information which may not yet be public and that’s going up as soon as possible.

It really does kind of feel gross that these sound like business pitches.

Have you seen https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/volunteering ?

I built this project to help track covid trends in countries and states. https://covidtrend.com

My colleague launched a podcast on coronavirus news https://coronavirus.fm/

maybe also this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fkeewi/how_to_us...

Are there any software projects on GitHub which need volunteers, that helps the researchers?

Hopefully there is a general cure found against this virus, this is necessary as soon as possible.

This should have started months ago when it hit China to help them.

So try to be forward thinking. Don't just think in the now.

In Italy some places don't treat people without families for instance (The excuse is they have no one to care for them after ICU, but we know the real reason)

Tinder for fake family's for instance?

I mean that’s just unhelpful. Caring for patients after ITU is a real challenge and if they are triaging a very limited resource it makes sense to give it those who are likely to survive long term when there isn’t the medical facilities to look after them without family input.

> In Italy some places don't treat people without families for instance

This is false and not aligned to the current guidelines[^1] put out for triage of cases.

> So try to be forward thinking. Don't just think in the now.

People need groceries today. Projects are attempting to fill those gaps we need, not the theoretical ones we might have tomorrow. Sure, you should keep an eye on the future, but you need to address the present.

[^1] - PDF WARNING http://www.siaarti.it/SiteAssets/News/COVID19%20-%20document...

> This is false and not aligned to the current guidelines[^1] put out for triage of cases.

"Every time a bed comes free, two anaesthesiologists consult with a specialist in resuscitation and an internal medicine physician to decide who will occupy it.

Age and pre-existing medical conditions are important factors. So is having a family.

“We have to take into account whether older patients have families who can take care of them once they leave the ICU, because they will need help,” says Marco Resta, deputy head of Policlinico San Donato’s Intensive Care Unit."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-...

What is the false bit?

I'm talking about what is happening, not the guidelines.

> In Italy some places don't treat people without families for instance

This is like those books of morality questions but in real life.

No one feels good about the outcome but when there are scarce resources decisions need to be made.

That's why we want to "flatten the curve" so we don't have to make as many of these no-win decisions.

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