Protect Yourselves

personal and family protection

It is impossible to completely prepare for this crisis, but the CDC publication linked below is a good guide.

The obvious technologies of masks, eye goggles, disposable gloves are starts, although in some cases they may become increasingly difficult to obtain.

Good hygiene is a key part of the response. Wash your hands. WASH YOUR HANDS. Really. That isn't enough, but it is a key component.

This disease seems to impact people with diminished immune systems most. The elderly. Stressed. Otherwise compromised. There are also suggestions that overreactions by the immune system can be part of the danger of this disease. This is also a threat to overworked health care professionals (especially in Wuhan, China) who are overwhelmed by their responsibilities and presumably not getting enough rest.

Good nutrition is always a good idea: fresh fruits and vegetables, a whole food diet, avoiding processed junk food and toxic additives, live foods (fermented foods, raw foods, etc). Vitamin supplements. Medicinal mushrooms (fungi.com is a good place to start). No guarantees that these or related approaches guarantee anything.

None of this is medical advice, merely reiterating obvious suggestions. An enormous amount of expertise is focused on mitigation and understanding is likely to evolve in the coming days.

Perhaps psychological health is at least as important as physical health, a balance between being blase and panic. Perhaps the disease's spread can be checked by quarantines, border restrictions, medical advances, drug treatments, potential development of vaccines. Perhaps it will spread to most countries and most of us will experience this, with mortality hopefully kept as low as possible.

COVID-19 corona virus is a wake up call for our hyper-connected world in terms of travel, economic interdependencies and the need to focus on cooperation instead of militarized competition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5HZlApjg4

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Preparation and Prevention
139,046 views•Feb 29, 2020

https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceutical-interventions/pdf/gr-pan-flu-ind-house.pdf

contents:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/25/wuhan-coronavirus-safety-china/

The Wuhan Virus: How to Stay Safe

As China's epidemic continues to spread, things may seem scary. Here are 10 simple precautions that can protect you from contracting the coronavirus.

... The epidemic could have been controlled fairly easily three weeks ago had there been more openness, swift action, and no attempted cover-up. But now it's too late, and this virus is spreading globally. Because there is no vaccine or treatment for nCoV2019—the Wuhan pneumonia—and infection has spread throughout China, the government is forced to turn to its 2003 SARS playbook. And that means entire cities must be cut off, and the population of the nation must be restricted in its movements and potential disease-spreading behavior. It is not surprising then that travel out of Beijing may be forbidden; the entire mainland could go on lockdown soon.

I know people are very frightened. And I expect panic will rise in the coming days. But very simple measures can protect you.

During the SARS epidemic, I traveled all over China and Hong Kong, interviewed people infected with the virus, doctors and nurses treating the disease, government officials, police—everybody. I was never concerned that I would become infected, despite being in the room with sick individuals. And that's because I knew what precautions to take. Here are the most important ones to know:

1. When you leave your home, wear gloves—winter mittens or outdoor gloves—and keep them on in subways, buses, and public spaces.

2. If you are in a social situation where you should remove your gloves, perhaps to shake hands or dine, do not touch your face or eyes, no matter how much something itches. Keep your hands away from contact with your face. And before you put your gloves back on, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water, scrubbing the fingers. Put your gloves on.

3. Change gloves daily, washing them thoroughly, and avoid wearing damp gloves.

4. Masks are useless when worn outdoors and may not be very helpful even indoors. Most masks deteriorate after one or two wearings. Using the same mask day after day is worse than useless—it's disgusting, as the contents of your mouth and nose eventually coat the inside of the mask with a smelly veneer that is attractive to bacteria. I rarely wear a face mask in an epidemic, and I have been in more than 30 outbreaks. Instead, I stay away from crowds, and I keep my distance from individual people—a half meter, about 1.5 feet, is a good standard. If someone is coughing or sneezing, I ask them to put on a mask—to protect me from their potentially contaminated fluids. If they decline, I step a meter (about 3 feet) away from them, or I leave. Don't shake hands or hug people—politely beg off, saying it's better for both of you not to come in close contact during an epidemic.

5. Inside your household, remove all of the towels from your bathrooms and kitchen immediately, and replace them with clean towels that have the names of each family member on them. Instruct everybody in your home to only use their own towels and never touch another family member's. Wash all towels twice a week. Damp towels provide terrific homes for viruses, like common colds, flus, and, yes, coronaviruses.

6. Be careful with doorknobs. If it's possible to open and close doors using your elbows or shoulders, do so. Wear gloves to turn a doorknob—or wash your hands after touching it. If anybody in your home takes sick, wash your doorknobs regularly. Similarly, be cautious with stairway banisters, desktops, cell phones, toys, laptops—any objects that are hand-held. As long as you handle only your own personal objects, you will be ok—but if you need to pick up someone else's cell phone or cooking tools or use someone else's computer keyboard, be mindful of not touching your face and wash your hands immediately after touching the object.

7. If you share meals, do not use your personal chopsticks and utensils to remove food from a serving bowl or plate and, of course, tell your children to never drink out of anybody else's cups or from a container of shared fluid. It is customary in China to prepare several dishes for a meal and then allow everybody at the table to use their personal chopsticks to pull food from the common dishes: Don't do this until the epidemic is over. Place serving spoons in each dish and instruct everybody at the table to scoop what they want from the serving dishes onto their personal plates or bowls, return the serving spoon to the main dish, and then use their personal chopsticks only to pick food from their personal plate or bowl into their mouth. Wash all food and kitchenware thoroughly between meals and avoid restaurants that have poor hygiene practices.