What I'm doing to fight Coronavirus

post by lsusr · 2020-03-09T21:11:39.626Z · LW · GW · 9 comments

Less Wrong is usually about cultivating rationality. Rationality is only worth what you use it for. Today I'm going to write about how I have been applying rationality in a scalable way to a global threat.

Other contributors on Less Wrong have already written about the danger COVID-19 presents to people in the USA (where I live) and in the world more generally (where I also live). Anything we can do to reduce the spread of this pandemic could potentially save lives.

I live in Seattle, the epicenter of the US's outbreak. I cancelled my first social event a month ago. I've been in near-total self-imposed quarantine for a week. I wash my hands for 20 seconds several times per day and, well, you get the idea.

I'm not worried about getting hurt from this disease. I'm 27 and healthy. I want to avoid getting incapacitated right now because I might be in a position to do something scalable about this pandemic.

The WHO guidelines are as follows:

1. Wash your hands
2. Stay away from other people
3. Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth
4. Cover your mouth and nose when you cough
5. Stay informed

Wait a minute. What was the third bullet point again?

Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth

I run a company that helps people keep from touching their mouth and eyebrows.

For the last week our 3-person team has been working like crazy to reconfigure our product to detect face touching. We've modified our firmware to better support face touching. We're re-written our Android and iOS mobile apps' user interfaces to make it easier to set up our product. We've cut our margins in order to increase the number of people who can afford this. We are rapidly rebuilding our supply chain in case we have to handle a large number of orders.

We launched our new product this morning.

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