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Comment by jquery | Hacker News Reader

It's akin to a master caution alarm on a plane and the engines just cut out. Until there's more data on exactly what the issue is, pilots should generally follow the checklists. Avoidable accidents happen when pilots make assumptions about what is wrong (e.g., "oh my instruments must be incorrect") instead of following their checklists/training. Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made total sense to guard against it.

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But, also, until we knew that it wasn't transmitted through the air, we should have been recommending masking with high quality masks. That right there could have changed the vector of this whole thing.

Instead, 6 months in when we knew it was transmitted through air, we continued to make businesses sanitize their checkouts while people walked around in ineffective cloth masks.

Really fucked the dog there.

Quality masks require actual capital investments, so longer term commitments. Toxic hand sanitizer can turn a profit with practically zero capital investment. This is precisely how capitalism works. Socialism or barbarism.

And proper planning and motivation. My jurisdiction (Ontario and Canada) stockpiled 10s of millions of N95 masks after SARS1. Instead of cycling inventory, they let them expire, disposed them and never replaced them.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6715814/coronavirus-n95-masks-ont...

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5530081

Then, get this, a few years later, they needed them!

Best part was I already worked at an organization that required mask fitting for all employees, but when the pandemic hit that this was in preparation for, everybody wanted them and there weren’t any available.

> That right there could have changed the vector of this whole thing.

Keep in mind the disease was already all over the world when it was discovered.

It was but it became more mask resistant over time. Putting on masks in Jan 2020 could have made a huge difference instead of waiting until mid year to say mask, and then say mask with an n95.

Obviously, there's a preparedness issue which is probably the base root of that issue, but early enthusiastic masking instead of trying to send all the construction workers home probably would have gone a lot farther.

> It was but it became more mask resistant over time.

Wut

> Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made total sense to guard against it.

But at what cost? We knew that benzene is toxic. Wiping down every surface with a toxic chemical without knowing if it even helps against covid is much more of an emotional/fearful reaction than a rational one, IMO.

Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol

> Wiping down every surface with a toxic chemical without knowing if it even helps against covid is much more of an emotional/fearful reaction

No, it is a reaction grounded in the last hundreds of year of proper hygiene practice

> Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol

You can't know that. The regulations and testing requirements were suspended, so companies were free to use benzene and nobody would know.

We already know for sure that some companies did use benzene, and its not hard to imagine companies switching to a cheaper, lower grade source for their alcohol.

In any case, the government simultaneously saying "Its okay to put benzene in hand sanitizer" and "Everyone should constantly disinfect with hand sanitizer" was not a good move.

Had this pandemic turned out to kill 10% of the global population then it would definitely have been the right move. Turns out, that didn't happen. Because we were lucky regarding lethality, regarding contageousness, regardin speed of vaccine development. In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time.

I worry about the real thing hitting someday. When the discussions start again and people refuse to do the most basic things (yes, some of them obviously nonsense and some of them perhaps in hindsight) and the conspiracy theories spreading and everybody being a hobby virologist, and when we realize that a significant fraction of us will die and society will collapse and we could have prevented it but now it's too late. Then it won't help me anymore to say "told you so". But at least society will deserve its collapse.

> In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time.

I think you're really underplaying this. If the FDA hadn't suspended the rules about benzene, then fine. No biggy.

But the government literally encouraged people to slather themselves with carcinogens on a hunch that it might help with COVID.

I would even be fine with it if we had proof that hand sanitizer was the most effective way to stop COVID, and then the FDA relaxed the regulations secure in the knowledge that it would save lives.

But COVID is airborne, hand sanitizer does basically nothing to protect against it, and people are going to die from leukemia as a result of all this for no reason.

When the real thing hits, a few carcinogens here and there will be ok if it saves civilization. The air in the average U.S. city is full of carcinogens, on top of volunteer smoking and drinking. Have you been as upset about that recently? Been out campaigning for more trains and less smoking?

And we won't have time for waiting for proof that it does or doesn't work. Of course in hindsight everybody is smart. But when the big one hits, there is no time for hindsight. By then we're all dead (or deep into a civil war).

Start with cautious. Adjust/relax rules when knowledge becomes available. Sanitizing your hands and wearing masks are the obvious immediate solution.

You make it sound like all companies suddenly poured toxic waste over the population, ordered by the government. Maybe it's not the government that was exaggerating here.

Hand sanitizer is almost useless. It’s washing your hands that’s effective.

COVID-19 was nature giving us an astoundingly generous "dry run," and humanity utterly failed at nearly every step. I doubt we collectively learned anything, either. When the real thing hits, with, say, a 10+% death rate and cutting uniformly across age demographics, we're going to blow it again. We're going to politicize, downplay and ignore it again. We're going to have idiots out protesting it again. We'll eventually acknowledge it and to try an ineffective and haphazard country-by-country, state-by-state approach again. We'll do the same half-assed "Stay At Home Suggestions" and "Voluntary Travel Restrictions" with no enforcement again. But this time it will be a catastrophe.

>it is a reaction grounded in the last hundreds of year of proper hygiene practice

You may find it interesting to learn the first national hand hygiene guidelines were not published until the 1980s

There was plenty of other hygiene guidelines before then. National things are easy to track, but tend to be late.

Would be interested to see a source showing a guideline of wiping down surfaces from hundreds of years ago

I doubt you would find one. 100 years ago doctors were just accepting that hand washing before surgery was a good idea. I'm not sure what the oldest source of general washing you will find is, probably 1950s.

You will find biblical references to hand washing dating back several thousands years, but i'm not sure you count that

Interesting. Someone had told me there were plenty of examples. I’ll keep looking

I have seen a lot of people using benzene and toluene, or ammonium cleaners at the beginning. There was a consensus that domestic ethanol-based sanitizers didn't work, and at least around here, an entire new line of them had to be created.

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