I am actually terrified about home remedies regular people provide without deep understanding of human physiology and medicine.
Please refrain from providing advice to people if you're not in the position to do so unless you're a medical doctor. It sounds good hearted but this is exactly the kind of things we shouldn't be perpetuating. You can cause inadvertent loss of life in worst case.
My parents are forwarding all kinds of shit from social media from fake vaccine news to completely insane home remedies such as going to a sauna when you have fever to "kill the virus". I am not suggesting you're doing this, but just to illustrate extreme case of misinformation.
Yes, I know. I've actually been around this block before.
I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my 32 year old son who still lives with me. I left all the CF lists years ago because people with CF live in terror and mostly don't want to take chances on trying anything not prescribed by a doctor, even though they are facing certain death.
Doctors don't know how to fix them. When I was diagnosed in 2001, life expectancy in the US was age 36.
Like anyone who has CF or who has a loved one with CF, I know quite a lot about germ control and daily home management of potentially deadly lung problems. Unlike most people with CF, I'm currently drug free. My condition is managed with diet and lifestyle.
I think it's outright irresponsible to say nothing at all in cases where I know a thing and no one else is speaking up, even though I surely an not the only person who knows X. I've mostly spoken up to say, essentially, "If there aren't enough ventilators to go around, airway clearance techniques have been around forever and some of them are non invasive and don't require mechanical intervention. You may still have options, even if the worst comes to pass, the medical system is overloaded and you are trying to survive a deadline epidemic while locked down at home."
If you want to see my past remarks, I've added the link to that discussion to my profile. I'm disinclined to do too much cage rattling on HN in discussion.
I'm currently working on developing a blog in hopes of putting together useful information about best practices for simply avoiding germs in day-to-day life.
I think I know a lot of useful information. I don't think I'm behaving irresponsibly.
I'm still trying to sort out for myself what I think works going forward. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who can tell me what that is.
I absolutely cannot volunteer in a hospital. Cystic fibrosis puts me in a high risk category. That's like asking me to intentionally become the Typhoid Mary of covid19.
- Spread information about hygiene, CDC recommendations on how to prevent spread of Coronavirus and reiterate/ephasize the importance of washing hands/cleaning public spaces.
- Donate money to medical research, who knows, some of these home remedies may be useful. But not without getting the research done first.
You don't see the danger of providing medical advise to others? I've been wrong many times of something that I thought was intuitive to me but ultimately there was a "oh..." moment when I saw experimental results or some concrete evidence.
There is also a network effect - you say X to person Y. Person Y tells X to 10 other friends who then tell 1000 other people. The misinformation that started from you could potentially affect a lot of people and then you start having deep thoughts such as - I tested X on myself and it worked. But now 100,000 people are doing it - is it safe?
This is why you should stop from providing medical advice to others. I am saying this with respect to you and your earnest intentions from heart.
Cystic fibrosis is supposed to cost up to a quarter of a million dollars per year for medical care per patient. Two members of my household have it. I've supported us all on well under $20k annually for at least eight years and we were homeless for nearly six years.
I often have insufficient money for food. Yet, we are still alive.
I respect your genuine and valid concerns about giving advice in situations where you don't know what you are talking about. Trying to give me advice to do things like volunteer in a hospital or donate money I don't have falls in that category.
Maybe take a few minutes to at least look up cystic fibrosis before commenting further about what you think I should be doing.
I'm sure it's true that it's not intended that way, but it's coming across that way, especially when you do it 5 times. Please don't hound anyone like that on HN.
The whole point of a fever is that the higher temperature harms the disease organism more than the host organism. It is in fact to "kill the virus".
The sauna supports that. The same goes for anything else that would enable the fever of course. You could instead eat hot soup, wear a jacket, or adjust your thermostat.
Going the other way, cooling yourself to suppress a fever, blocks a natural response to infectious disease. Don't do that unless your body has overshot the proper fever temperature by a long ways, to the point that you are at risk of brain damage.
Please refrain from providing advice to people if you're not in the position to do so unless you're a medical doctor. It sounds good hearted but this is exactly the kind of things we shouldn't be perpetuating. You can cause inadvertent loss of life in worst case.
My parents are forwarding all kinds of shit from social media from fake vaccine news to completely insane home remedies such as going to a sauna when you have fever to "kill the virus". I am not suggesting you're doing this, but just to illustrate extreme case of misinformation.