I spent the past couple of days scaring myself shitless about the Coronachan situation by listening to/reading as much as I can on the subject, and I'm going to write a little bit about what I've learnt. (Big shoutout to Scott Adams, Scott Alexander and Naval Ravikant for some very valuable information which I will be sharing in this post)
First off, in my previous blogpost, I talked about how Coronachan is leading us towards a VR society. I was listening to Naval Ravikant on Scott Adams' podcast a couple of days ago, and he believes the same thing as well; but of course he puts it more eloquently than I do:
“I think it’ll move us more towards the future faster. Robotics, automation, telepresence, VR, and remote work—all of those things that are coming anyway. Let’s face it; most white-collar jobs are just larping—people running around, attending meetings, and pretending like they’re doing work. I think this will expose a lot of that.”
Ravikant referring to modern white-collar work as mostly LARPing is pure gold. 70% of time spent in office is really downtime from my personal experience, and so much more could be done via remote working. He also goes on to mention that schools being closed across the world will be the new normal (at least for the time being) and this is going to be a huge boon to the homeschooling movement as a result. He makes a really good point that kids these days go to school really for socializing and daycare purposes and not so much for education, and this is something that's probably going to be exposed as well.
Scott Adams also had some interesting things to say about the virus on Episode 842 of his Periscope podcast. According to Adams, there's not going to be any vaccine for this virus (not any time soon at least) and we have to come to terms with that.
I don't think Adams is wrong about this. There was no vaccine for the other deadly forms of novel coronaviruses that afflicted us such as SARS and MERS either, so clinging on to the hope that there's going to be a vaccine for this particular virus soon is pointless.
Scott Adams believes that we (humanity) are just going to have to deal with this virus head-on and be prepared to get infected with it sooner or later so that we can naturally build up an immunity to it. Some guy listening in made a comment that everybody should all go out and deliberately get infected in that case so we can get this over and done with, but Adams disagrees with this idea, saying that it's better to spread out the rate of infection by fighting hard not to get infected so that we don't overwhelm medical services. Medical facilities being overwhelmed is the real threat to society at this point, and I concur wholeheartedly.
Adams is also of the view that this virus is going to fade out for a bit in June, but that it's likely to come back stronger in Winter. This theory is further buttressed by an existing research paper on influenza pandemics typically occurring in multiple waves. If true, then we're going to have to be well prepared for a second stronger wave of Coronachan.
Adams & Ravikant are both increasing their Vitamin D intake as part of their prep plan. Everyone's so hung up on Vitamin C that they are forgetting all about Vitamin D which is equally important in building up one's immunity. The problem with Vitamin D is that it's rarely found in food sources - so one would either have to go out and get lots of sunshine, or procure Vitamin D supplements.
Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex is of the view that Zinc MAY also help. He cites some links in his post on Coronachan on studies suggesting that Zinc may prevent pneumonia, shortens the duration of colds, and also boosts immunity.
Everyone also needs to read this entire Twitter thread to truly understand the importance of washing one's hands during this period of time, and also because it provides a nice visualization of what we are really dealing with here.
1/25 Part 1 - Why does soap work so well on the SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus and indeed most viruses? Because it is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. A two part thread about soap, viruses and supramolecular chemistry #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/OCwqPjO5Ht
— Palli Thordarson (@PalliThordarson) March 8, 2020
TLDR: Palli Thordarson, a Professor of Chemistry, is essentially saying:
(1) Most viruses consist of 3 self-assembling key building blocks: RNA (the genetic material of the virus similar to DNA), Proteins (which assists in replication of the virus and is the key building block of the virus akin to a brick in a house) and Lipids (something like a fatty layer that forms a coat around the virus for protective purposes among other things)
(2) This virus is based on weak "non-covalent" interactions between the 3 blocks discussed in point (1), and despite being generally hard to break up, can be effectively done so by washing one's hands thoroughly with soap.
(3) Soap "contains fat-like substances known as amphiphiles" which "compete" with the lipids found in the virus and when combined with water - pretty much "dissolves the glue that holds the virus together."
(4) Wash thoroughly because the virus is "sticky" and can hide in the nooks and crannies on the skin surface (i.e. wrinkles, folds, under fingernails)
Stay safe, folks!
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