Coronavirus safety

If you do not wear a mask when you go outside, go to hell. If you do not social distance, go to hell. I just spent seven years fighting Lyme disease, in and out of emergency rooms and in constant amounts of pain, bedbound because exercise caused relapses, and spent a couple years when the pain was so bad I went nuts; a literal hell on Earth, only to have every doctor I saw tell me that I was perfectly healthy. You can deal with a mask on your face. But if you can't, I hear that coronavirus sometimes goes chronic and has similar symptoms to chronic Lyme so enjoy, I guess.

• STAY HOME AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
• No, it is not safe to send kids to school, are you kidding me? Have you ever even gone to public school? Sheesh. Homeschool them or go for distance learning.
• Avoid all unnecessary risk. Get groceries only once every week at maximum, with curbside pickup or no contact delivery. Decontaminate all items by thoroughly cleaning and sterilizing all of their surfaces, preferably before you bring them into the home, every single time. That also goes for all mail. Avoid seeing all friends and family members not already in your quarantine pod until the pandemic is over. The banned gathering size is more than 10 people, but it takes only one person to be patient zero for your family unit. Don't take that chance.
• Until everyone in this country is vaccinated who wants to be vaccinated, do not socialize or go out. Just because you may have been fully vaccinated doesn't mean you're not another Typhoid Mary (disease spreader with no symptoms), and masks and handwashing only go so far to prevent the spread when compared to voluntary quarantine.
• The key point to understand is that airborne coronavirus can infect you within a distance of anywhere from 6 to 20 feet away from a person, depending on the variant. It lives on surfaces for anywhere from 3 to 7 days or perhaps longer. If you touch something that may have the germ on it, then whatever you touch after that transfers the germs to that other surface, which can then transfer the germs to another surface, and on and on it goes. Coronavirus germs are tiny, but there are many of them in each small area, and they reproduce quickly to make a little army of germs that then try to kill you.
• Quarantine all paper and cardboard items (i.e. mail, picked-up library books) delivered to your house for 3 days to a week. Leave them alone and don't let anyone touch them. Library books with a plastic covering can be wiped down with disinfectant wipes before leaving the books in quarantine.
• If anyone in your family or friend group is making noises about how people are "too afraid," leave that person well alone. Unjustified fear is dumb, sure. Justified fear that leads to correct action saves lives, and if anyone is mocking that, they are mocking the sanctity of life and aren't worth your time. Ditto anyone who still supports Trump, thinks coronavirus isn't "that bad," who "hates the liberal media" or some such Pravda-brainwashed Jonestown kool-aid. They are a threat to your life and your family's life. Cut off all contact.
• I know the CDC says to avoid putting masks on kids but they're little super-spreaders. If you have a kid, put a mask on the kid, it's the right thing to do.
• Yes, it is possible to contract coronavirus even if you've already had it. Yes, it really is that bad for some people. Hospitals don't just fill up their ICU wards for funsies. Mortality rate has not been adequately reported. I have heard reports it's anywhere from 4% to 18% lethal, depending on the variant and the access or lack thereof to medical treatment. Couple friends of mine work in a hospital and if they say it's bad, it's bad. Here are some pictures of nurses working in coronavirus wards from April 2020. Link out
• MUST-READ introduction to safe procedures Instructables
• When you clean stuff, wear a mask and some rubber gloves, then sterilize those when you're done. Treat what you're cleaning as if it's a biohazard.
• Shoes off at the door. Masks off at the door and into a pot of boiling water; weight down, cover, and let cool. All clothes off at the door and into the washer on highest possible heat, or quarantine those clothes for a week. Sanitize hands. Disinfect touched surfaces (clean them first if needed with all purpose cleaner and paper towels). Self into the shower, use a lot of soap and shampoo. Ideally anyway. At the very least, take the freaking shoes and masks off and use the hand sans. The zone just inside the door is a biohazard zone; don't take stuff in the zone out of the zone, and clean it when you can (preferably daily). The front door, doorknobs, shoes, and the floor in front of it are the worst offenders for potentially being contaminated if you're using hand sans when you get home so clean and disinfect all that every single day. If you carry around stuff such as phone, keys, debit cards, or wallet, that also has to be sterilized when you enter the house. Rub it all down with hand sanitizer. My family and I also rub down the car steering wheel and car doorknobs with hand sanitizer if we think it's necessary.
• General must-know info for wearing a mask and staying safe Aaron Swartz Day
• CDC Guidelines for Better Mask Usage CDC.Gov
• CDC guidelines for storing and cleaning masks between uses are... adequate, but I prefer the following out of paranoia: Weight down cloth masks in a saucepan of boiling water after every use, cover with a lid, and allow to cool completely in the boiling water. Alternatively, dip them in pure rubbing alcohol or vodka with at least 70% alcohol, weight them down, and allow to sit for 5-10 minutes. In both cases allow to dry completely before reuse. Disposable masks are single use only. Trash them after each use.
• How to wash your hands properly Gordon Ramsay
• How to sterilize a cloth mask Aaron Swartz Day
• The difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting The Spruce
• Family Handyman disinfectant product article Link out
• General overview of how to clean and disinfect, and the difference AirBnB 5 Step Cleaning Process
• Learn to Clean Stuff Clean My Space
• CDC approved cleaning The Spruce
• EPA approved disinfectants that kill coronavirus - click launch, and then click browse all. If necessary click show results. Product names are listed but hard to see. Generally speaking the easiest categories to find are bleach-based disinfectants, diluted bleach, and bleach-based sprays. At-home stuff can be rubbing alcohol, Everclear, or high-proof vodka that's at least 70% alcohol. EPA
• How to clean glasses to decontaminate them Martha Stewart
• How to make replacement N95 masks for healthcare professionals Scribd linkout and article explaining backstory Good News Network
• Ensure your face mask fits correctly Martha Stewart
• Add filters to homemade home-sewn face masks Martha Stewart
• How to wear a face mask without fogging up glasses Martha Stewart
• Preprint article: honey and nigella sativa seed paste reduces recovery time from coronavirus in Pakistani study Medxriv
• TikTok remedy for regaining sense of taste and smell after coronavirus Buzzfeed Link
• Israeli 30-person trial showed a drug called EXO-CD24 healed up coronavirus in all cases Daily Mail UK
• Quarantine cooking guide Serious Eats
• I would like to add that my family, my friends, and I have been following these guidelines since the pandemic started. I regularly stay in contact with about 300 people total. I've been passing on this info to them since March. Only one has gotten sick. They are a kid whose parents don't take the guidelines seriously and brought home the germ.

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