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I did talk about getting a solar panel to charge devices (containing multiple solar cells), but maybe you know more. Any suggestions on the cost and use of solar cells?
EDIT: Changed blood oxygen numbers thanks to Jay Molstad Comment
What I would do if I had COVID-19? ( I am NOT a medical professional)
Ok. So you're sick. Maybe you have a fever and a bit of a cough. This may be COVID-19 and this may be something else like a seasonal flu. Even if you have COVID-19 the most likely outcome is that the symptoms are mild enough that you can deal with them at home. The South Korean Health Minister says 10%, so 90% you recover at home.
- Dealing with mild symptoms at home:
- Rest
- You shouldn't be doing anything strenuous. Just let your body fight off the virus. Maybe enjoy some shows or video games while you're at it.
- Keep drinking fluids
- Staying hydrated is important generally, but especially important when you're sick and may not be drinking and eating regularly. I would do this by drinking water, tea, and drinks made from electrolyte powders. Do make sure you're getting electrolytes somehow (LW discussion of electorlytes).
- Ask someone to check in with you regularly in case you do get worse.
- A housemate or a friend could message you to check in every day or two. Being sick sucks and possibly your judgement is impaired by a fever. If you and your friend are comfortable with it you can offload the decision making on when you should be worried enough to go to the hospital.
- There is some discussion of using chloroquine and/or zinc. I have not looked deeply into this. My immediate thoughts here are zinc seems low cost to take and chloroquine seems high cost to take.
- When should I go to the hospital?
- I'm going to write what I'd be looking for, but ultimately you must make your own decision. I am not a medical professional.
- Blood Oxygen Levels
- Maybe you got a pulse oximeter.
- Normal blood oxygen levels are 90-95%, but can be lower if you have other factors like sleep apnea.
- The WHO has been recommending to doctors to start giving oxygen therapy if the blood oxygen levels fall below 90%
- Based on Jay Molstad's comment below I would probably head to a hospital if my blood oxygen was below 90% and I was having trouble breathing or below 85% with or without trouble breathing.
- Note, you may have blood oxygen at a lower than normal range
- Shortness of Breath/Difficulty Breathing
- If you are having short painful breaths or having trouble breathing.
- Fever above a certain point.
- Sites vary here. Mayo Clinic says if the fever is above 103oF consistently or above 102oF for more than 3 days. This other site says 104oF and above is dangerous and you should seek immediate medical attention at 106.7oF
- It may take a few days before you know if you're going to have severe symptoms. For hospitalized patients these were some of the timelines observed.
- from first symptom to → Dyspnea (Shortness of breath) = 5.0 days
- from first symptom to → Hospital admission = **7.0 days*
- Maybe hospitals are overloaded.
- Measures like the shelter in place order in the bay area will help a lot with decreasing the load on hospitals, but it's still possible we end up with a peak at some point.
- You may want to try to get in anyway. If you're experiencing severe symptoms and have been turned away from a hospital you may want to try some things on your own.
- Some people have been buying oxygen concentrators. If your blood oxygen falls below ___ or you are having a difficult time breathing. Using one or seeing if a friend has one may be helpful. I want to note again I am not a medical professional. Oxygen toxicity is a thing so it's not like using an oxygen concentrator is risk free.
- If I had an oxygen concentrator and a pulse oximeter I would consider starting at a low flow rate and slowly increasing until my blood oxygen levels were above 90%, but being careful not to continue oxygen therapy if my levels returned to normal (90-95%, could be lower if you have other factors like sleep apnea).
- WHO recommendations to clinicians were.
- Start at 5 L/min and titrate flow rates to reach target SpO2≥90% in non-pregnant adults and SpO2≥92-95 % in pregnant patients.
- It’s unclear to me what concentration of oxygen they were using.
Noting I am living in a group house and we are now being fairly strict in limiting outside social contact, using stored food or sterilization procedures for when we order things, and are putting more thought into our procedures going forward.
I'm not sure if electrolyte powder is more hydrating than salt. . . But I think there's a lot to be said for making water taste good enough to you that you want to keep drinking it. Often things taste worse than usual when sick and having something you can mix with water that tastes good will make you more likely to keep drinking it. For the same reason I try to have a variety of hydrating things I'm willing to drink around so when one gets old I can switch to a different one.
Figure out now who will take care of you if you get extremely sick and who you will take care of if they get extremely sick.
Making these expectations explicit could pay off. Different people have different norms around what level of care vs avoidance should happen when someone is sick. If you became extremely sick, you might lose the coherence necessary to arrange help for yourself.
You should have some kind of electrolyte powder or electrolyte drinks on hand. When sick with any disease that can cause a fever (Fever is one of the symptoms of COVID-19 that pretty much everyone gets), staying hydrated is possibly the most important thing for you to be doing. You may be losing fluids from sweating and you may not be paying much attention to how much you are drinking. You will do a better job staying hydrated if everything you need to be hydrated can be right next to your bed. Once you have a fever it will really suck to go acquire stuff and you should be staying at home anyway.
Yeah, It's true we don't know the long term effects yet and being ill is unpleasant. I'm taking the minor precautions of not going to large public spaces (BART, Grocery Stores, Gyms) for a while.
Sources Death Rates https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/?fbclid=IwAR3pUihF3LkUPfXJgJF_DR98NpOfPoma0rVCqkKuR7olmlZFkQm8aprVzec
Solano County Case https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/newly-diagnosed-coronavirus-patient-being-treated-at-uc-davis-medical-center/
For me personally, self quarantine seems pretty unnecessary at this point, but I would act differently if I were in a different age group. Given the below death rates I would self quarantine if I were over 40. I would like to note I expect these death rates to be somewhat high because they are largely based on confirmed cases, which I expect to be disproportionately the worse cases that ended up in hospitals.
There was one case of Covid-19 in Solano county (CA) that couldn't be traced directly to travelers, which indicates community spread may be happening and Covid-19 may be spreading in the bay area.
| Age | Death Rate |
| 80+ years old | 14.8% |
| 70-79 years old | 8.0% |
| 60-69 years old | 3.6% |
| 50-59 years old | 1.3% |
| 40-49 years old | 0.4% |
| 30-39 years old | 0.2% |
| 20-29 years old | 0.2% |
| 10-19 years old | 0.2% |
| 0-9 years old | no fatalities |
Probably not so hot take.
The Doomsday Clock is an out of date metaphor and should be replaced.
I think it was valuable during the cold war for the doomsday clock to be a representation of risk that everyone could easily recognize and talk about, but I think it is now likely doing more harm than good.
Bad Things: -Trying to include many types of risks: The doomsday clock was originally a representation of the risk of large scale nuclear war, now it includes climate, biorisk, and AI. Tracking progress and risk in these fields is complex. Tracking them all at once it's not really clear what increase or decrease in the clock means or if you should have trust in the risk evaluations from these disparate fields. (Oh, also looks like Anders Sandberg already said something like this)
-Adding too much granularity (now with seconds!): This seems like a move because they want it to move forward to give people a sense of urgency, but it was already real close to midnight. Probably it should have been moved much further away from midnight when the cold war ended and increase or decrease depending on stability of current nuclear deals.
Qualities I'd like in new symbols of potential global catastrophes: -Representing specific global risks -Easily explainable what heuristics/data are being used to alter the state of the new symbol -Simple Representation
Raemon is correct in surmising the thing I was pointing to.
mr-hire, I think both kinds of statements exist and I agree it can sometimes be useful to imagine what things a community as a group can do.
I wasn't complaining about pointing-out-problems-without-solutions. Not everyone who makes "The community should . . ." statements are making a top down argument, but I think some are and I expect people thinking of entities in charge to become increasingly frustrated by the lack of top down coordination.
Recognizing the lack of top down coordination won't solve the problems they care about immediately, but might allow them to feel less angry and/or pursue the thing they're looking for in a different fashion.
I often see people making statements that sound to me like . . . "The entity in charge of bay area rationality should enforce these norms." or "The entity in charge of bay area rationality is bad for allowing x to happen."
There is no entity in charge of bay area rationality. There's a bunch of small groups of people that interact with each other sometimes. They even have quite a bit of shared culture. But no one is in charge of this thing, there is no entity making the set of norms for rationalists, there is no one you can outsource the building of your desired group to.
You mentioned self help. I think care less arguments exist, but because "caring less" sounds kind of like "be a shittier person" things get phrased as take care of yourself or "what do we prioritize here". In favor of caring less about some things so we can do more of the things we want to care more about.