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.
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
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?