Don’t bother with the drinks. Recommended home-made rehydration drinks usually are sugar + salt for electrolytes. You want ~12x as much sugar as salt, and if you want to prep early, you can store the sugar-salt mixture and add it to water—you want about a half tablespoon of the mixture pur cup of water.
Unless this is the only thing you have to eat/drink for more than a couple days, this is fine—no need for anything complicated or expensive. And if you’re too sick to eat solids or other foods, I’d suspect you don’t have COVID-19, you have something else.
Can you respond directly to the claims that potassium and magnesium are also useful? It seems like your implicit model is that people will definitely be able to eat and therefore those will not be a concern.
I’m not sure I understand the question, exactly. Yes, lots of things are useful, like vitamin D, Zinc, and Potassium—but they aren’t important for preventing dehydration, and the WHO recommends using the above sugar + salt formula for home preparation, which is why I pointed out that it’s recommended.
If you want to buy Soylent, or Gatorade, or anything else, go ahead, but if you’re trying to prevent dehydration, there’s no need to buy any specialized drinks.
(Also, instant soup mix + hot water is a perfectly good replacement when you have a fever, as long as you’re not actually getting severely dehydrated, say, due to diarrhea.)
Where does the 12x come from? The link mentions 1⁄2 a tablespoon of salt versus 2 tablespoons of sugar, which is a factor 4 in volume. A quick google says the densities only differ by 25% (and in the direction that makes the ratio closer, not further apart), so this is not mass percentage either.
EDIT: Never mind, they mention 1⁄2 a teaspoon of salt. My mistake.
Don’t bother with the drinks. Recommended home-made rehydration drinks usually are sugar + salt for electrolytes. You want ~12x as much sugar as salt, and if you want to prep early, you can store the sugar-salt mixture and add it to water—you want about a half tablespoon of the mixture pur cup of water.
https://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Oral-Rehydration-Salts-Drink-(ORS)
Unless this is the only thing you have to eat/drink for more than a couple days, this is fine—no need for anything complicated or expensive. And if you’re too sick to eat solids or other foods, I’d suspect you don’t have COVID-19, you have something else.
Can you respond directly to the claims that potassium and magnesium are also useful? It seems like your implicit model is that people will definitely be able to eat and therefore those will not be a concern.
I’m not sure I understand the question, exactly. Yes, lots of things are useful, like vitamin D, Zinc, and Potassium—but they aren’t important for preventing dehydration, and the WHO recommends using the above sugar + salt formula for home preparation, which is why I pointed out that it’s recommended.
If you want to buy Soylent, or Gatorade, or anything else, go ahead, but if you’re trying to prevent dehydration, there’s no need to buy any specialized drinks.
Re. potassium, I buy a low-sodium salt because it’s usually high in potassium.
(Also, instant soup mix + hot water is a perfectly good replacement when you have a fever, as long as you’re not actually getting severely dehydrated, say, due to diarrhea.)
Where does the 12x come from? The link mentions 1⁄2 a tablespoon of salt versus 2 tablespoons of sugar, which is a factor 4 in volume. A quick google says the densities only differ by 25% (and in the direction that makes the ratio closer, not further apart), so this is not mass percentage either.
EDIT: Never mind, they mention 1⁄2 a teaspoon of salt. My mistake.