The killer advice here was masks, which was genuinely controversial in the larger world at the time. When we wrote a summary of the best advice. two weeks later, masks were listed under “well duh but also there’s a shortage”.
Of the advice that we felt was valuable enough to include in the best-of summary, but hadn’t gone to fixation yet, there were 4.5 tips. Here’s my review of those
Cover your high-touch surfaces with copper tape
I think the science behind this was solid, but turned out to be mostly irrelevant for covid-19 because it was so dominantly airborne. The tape turned out to be hard to remove, which caused a bunch of annoyance for people who moved a few months later.
Treat newly delivered packages as contagious for 48 hours.
Also made irrelevant by the low fomite rate
Take vitamin D supplements daily
The evidence for this has only gotten stronger since we wrote this up, although vitamin D has such a strong fandom you can never be sure.
Buy electrolytes to drink if you get ill
I don’t know anyone this ended up being a big deal for, but it was low cost and I still believe there are low-frequency scenarios where it would have been very helpful.
Maybe: Buy a pulse oximeter
I ended up using my pulse-ox a few times over the last year and a half. The result was always “you’re fine”. At least one of those times the result was probably the only thing that kept me from going to urgent care (and since I was in fact fine, this is good). The others I probably wouldn’t have gone unless things had gotten worse, so mostly it saved me some anxiety, but had I scored too poorly it would have gotten me to medical care faster. I don’t know of anyone who bought a pulse ox and regrets it. Overall I’m glad I bought this, and I definitely wouldn’t have without the thread.
The killer advice here was masks, which was genuinely controversial in the larger world at the time. When we wrote a summary of the best advice. two weeks later, masks were listed under “well duh but also there’s a shortage”.
Of the advice that we felt was valuable enough to include in the best-of summary, but hadn’t gone to fixation yet, there were 4.5 tips. Here’s my review of those
Cover your high-touch surfaces with copper tape
I think the science behind this was solid, but turned out to be mostly irrelevant for covid-19 because it was so dominantly airborne. The tape turned out to be hard to remove, which caused a bunch of annoyance for people who moved a few months later.
Treat newly delivered packages as contagious for 48 hours.
Also made irrelevant by the low fomite rate
Take vitamin D supplements daily
The evidence for this has only gotten stronger since we wrote this up, although vitamin D has such a strong fandom you can never be sure.
Buy electrolytes to drink if you get ill
I don’t know anyone this ended up being a big deal for, but it was low cost and I still believe there are low-frequency scenarios where it would have been very helpful.
Maybe: Buy a pulse oximeter
I ended up using my pulse-ox a few times over the last year and a half. The result was always “you’re fine”. At least one of those times the result was probably the only thing that kept me from going to urgent care (and since I was in fact fine, this is good). The others I probably wouldn’t have gone unless things had gotten worse, so mostly it saved me some anxiety, but had I scored too poorly it would have gotten me to medical care faster. I don’t know of anyone who bought a pulse ox and regrets it. Overall I’m glad I bought this, and I definitely wouldn’t have without the thread.