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It's so nice to see someone who has the qualifications explain so clearly why the efforts we're making are important. I live in Seattle and I have a hard time e

It's so nice to see someone who has the qualifications explain so clearly why the efforts we're making are important. I live in Seattle and I have a hard time explaining to my mother why me working from home and avoiding public events is important right now. She just keeps stating that everyone is going to get it eventually and it won't matter.

drcode 7y ago
Also nice that the appropriate domain wasn't squatted by some jerk.
- seane 7y ago
  Haha. I guess I’m that jerk. Basically, I saw that this domain was available and saw the increasing talk of “flattening the curve” on Twitter. I grabbed it and wanted to do something helpful, like post just the pic of the tall and flat graph that was making the rounds, because I loved how simple the visual was, and how powerful the point it made. I thought at least people could share the concept easily. But then someone shared Julie’s post, which was living on a gdoc at the time, and even that was struggling with the amount of readers... and was very much not an easily shareable link. So I reached out and asked if she’d like to have it live at flattenthecurve.com, and promised to give her a login to update and add more info etc. She said yes and I got the site live in half a day mostly spent reformatting the gdoc into WP. I’m thrilled that the domain is really living up to its best use!
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Nice work! Glad to see strangers come together and work on this in such a short timeline.
  - stareatgoats 7y ago
    Thanks!
  - drcode 7y ago
    You are a good human!
  - fghorow 7y ago
    Good on ya! I hope you have something like cloudflare behind it -- or at least static HTML. That sucker is "going viral", no pun intended.
senthil_rajasek 7y ago
"It's so nice to see someone who has the qualifications explain..." This is called credentialism. I would rather see a nice explanation than a nice man explaining.
- rtsil 7y ago
  You have both on that page.
- Qworg 7y ago
  ... how do you judge the nice explanation? Why wouldn't you want to hear from someone who studied/works in something over someone who is a random observer?
  - senthil_rajasek 7y ago
    I am saying trusting someone blindly because they are an expert is bad. A nice explanation is one that is backed by science in this case.
    - ksk 7y ago
      And who determines what a "nice explanation" is, and what is or isn't backed by science? Another expert that you then have to trust? When dealing with technical topics that require deep study, unless you're some kind of genius with an abundance of free time, it is impossible to judge the quality of someones argument without you yourself also being a mini-expert in the same field.
      - senthil_rajasek 7y ago
        Specifically, for things like medical advice I look to the experts because medicine has been around for a few centuries and is backed with science. New concepts such as cryptocurrency I just walk away. My comments are about how a lot of people tend to put the person ( + credentials) before the soundness of their arguments. (edit: The scientific method is well documented. This is a good place to start if one wants to learn about it, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Scientific_Outlook.html?id=eLe1Bav9NBcC&source=kp_book_description https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Scientific_Outlook....)
rotexo 7y ago
I am facing a similar issue with my aging parents. They are both 70+. They both get respiratory issues every year. My Mom in particular is convinced she is healthy and doesn't need to worry about it. I understand why she is resistant towards the notion that she is vulnerable (I have similar issues confronting my own aging, and I am roughly 40 years younger), but it still pains me to discuss this with them. I lose my patience, which isn't helpful. I am growing more and more fearful that they will put themselves at risk, become infected, and then not survive when the hospitals are overwhelmed. If anyone has any ideas about how to communicate about this with them, I am all ears.
- panabee 7y ago
  Your self-awareness, self-accountability, and emotional IQ to ascertain the likely source of her resistance are all extremely admirable. It sounds like you need to convince her of two things: (1) she is vulnerable; and (2) she must change. How about focusing on #2? Instead of asking her to change for herself, perhaps suggest this could protect friends and others around her who may be more vulnerable. An appropriate analogy may be secondhand smoke. Maybe her lungs are resilient enough to withstand the toxic effects of smoking, but what about the lungs of all her loved ones? Hopefully others can chime in with better ideas. I hope you and your family, and we all, can remain safe and healthy during this crisis.
- lampenrad 7y ago
  I went through this today. In German there‘s a really great Podcast „Coronavirus-Update“: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html 30 min/weekday a science journalist talks to Christian Drosten, a world-renowned expert on Coronaviruses, who explains things in a very concise manner. Yesterdays episode was „We have to protect the elderly“, where Drosten talked about the high risk for the sick and elderly and trying to fully get this point across to his own father over the weekend. He also mentioned that we should work on hopefully achieving a broader societal awareness of this over the next week or two. I talked to my mother and father a bit first, sent my mother a link to this episode and told her to put me on speakerphone. We then listened to it together and discussed it a bit afterwards. I found this to be really helpful. My mother was in denial until 2 weeks ago, when she went a bit hysterical for a day and has been concerned (but okay) since. My father was mostly in denial until today. He also bailed out soon after the podcast ended, because it was a bit much for him. But overall he took it quite well and is taking it more seriously now. Overall I am very happy with the way this went. Sorry, this isn‘t very helpful if you don‘t speak German. But maybe you are able to find a similar thing in your native language.
manojlds 7y ago
I am sure it has crossed many people's minds, but what if I want to get it before the medical systems are taxed? Like get it before the peak. I am sure it's very bad thinking, but what are some solid points against such thinking?
- ktross 7y ago
  There are some points in the article: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS > Don’t be that person. It might not be about you but it is everyone’s problem. Don’t be careless in the hopes you get sick when you can “avoid the rush.” There is zero benefit to individuals or the population to getting sick early in the pandemic. You would be putting the lives of others at risk. It is not just that people are dying, but how they are dying. To say nothing of the physical trauma, emotionally speaking this is the opposite of a “good death”. People are dying alone, quarantined from those they love. > Early reports are that people who recover develop antibodies that provide immunity if they are infected with the same strain again. However, this is great news for vaccine development, so flatten the curve and wait it out. > This can get very serious; one person described the pain as feeling like her lungs were being put through a pasta maker. 10% of cases require ICU care and mechanical ventilation. Even if autopsy reports from China have been misrepresented or overstated, there is a possibility of long term or permanent lung damage if you do get sick and recover. There are lot of gaps in the information about lung damage, mostly because everyone qualified to let the public know exactly what is going on is already very busy saving lives and putting their own at risk.
- unilynx 7y ago
  See section 2.8.2.11 of the article
- bluGill 7y ago
  I want to get it late - ideally I can hold off long enough for an effective vaccine and never get it. Lacking that, maybe at least someone will discover a better treatment. Maybe in a few months we will discover some existing rabies drug also helps this treatment, or some other such thing. There are also some other anti-virals in development, maybe one of them will turn out to be somewhat useful. However it will take time for doctors to figure that out. I'd rather they learn on someone else.
lottin 7y ago
What medical authorities are saying (in the EU) is that while widespread contagion is inevitable, we don't want everybody to get infected at the same time, because that would overwhelm medical resources and prevent serious cases from getting treated properly. Therefore it seems that the idea is not so much to stop the virus but to just slow it down.

drcode 7y ago

Also nice that the appropriate domain wasn't squatted by some jerk.

seane 7y ago
Haha. I guess I’m that jerk. Basically, I saw that this domain was available and saw the increasing talk of “flattening the curve” on Twitter. I grabbed it and wanted to do something helpful, like post just the pic of the tall and flat graph that was making the rounds, because I loved how simple the visual was, and how powerful the point it made. I thought at least people could share the concept easily. But then someone shared Julie’s post, which was living on a gdoc at the time, and even that was struggling with the amount of readers... and was very much not an easily shareable link. So I reached out and asked if she’d like to have it live at flattenthecurve.com, and promised to give her a login to update and add more info etc. She said yes and I got the site live in half a day mostly spent reformatting the gdoc into WP. I’m thrilled that the domain is really living up to its best use!
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Nice work! Glad to see strangers come together and work on this in such a short timeline.
- stareatgoats 7y ago
  Thanks!
- drcode 7y ago
  You are a good human!
- fghorow 7y ago
  Good on ya! I hope you have something like cloudflare behind it -- or at least static HTML. That sucker is "going viral", no pun intended.

senthil_rajasek 7y ago

"It's so nice to see someone who has the qualifications explain..." This is called credentialism. I would rather see a nice explanation than a nice man explaining.

rtsil 7y ago
You have both on that page.
Qworg 7y ago
... how do you judge the nice explanation? Why wouldn't you want to hear from someone who studied/works in something over someone who is a random observer?
- senthil_rajasek 7y ago
  I am saying trusting someone blindly because they are an expert is bad. A nice explanation is one that is backed by science in this case.
  - ksk 7y ago
    And who determines what a "nice explanation" is, and what is or isn't backed by science? Another expert that you then have to trust? When dealing with technical topics that require deep study, unless you're some kind of genius with an abundance of free time, it is impossible to judge the quality of someones argument without you yourself also being a mini-expert in the same field.
    - senthil_rajasek 7y ago
      Specifically, for things like medical advice I look to the experts because medicine has been around for a few centuries and is backed with science. New concepts such as cryptocurrency I just walk away. My comments are about how a lot of people tend to put the person ( + credentials) before the soundness of their arguments. (edit: The scientific method is well documented. This is a good place to start if one wants to learn about it, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Scientific_Outlook.html?id=eLe1Bav9NBcC&source=kp_book_description https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Scientific_Outlook....)

rotexo 7y ago

I am facing a similar issue with my aging parents. They are both 70+. They both get respiratory issues every year. My Mom in particular is convinced she is healthy and doesn't need to worry about it. I understand why she is resistant towards the notion that she is vulnerable (I have similar issues confronting my own aging, and I am roughly 40 years younger), but it still pains me to discuss this with them. I lose my patience, which isn't helpful. I am growing more and more fearful that they will put themselves at risk, become infected, and then not survive when the hospitals are overwhelmed. If anyone has any ideas about how to communicate about this with them, I am all ears.

panabee 7y ago
Your self-awareness, self-accountability, and emotional IQ to ascertain the likely source of her resistance are all extremely admirable. It sounds like you need to convince her of two things: (1) she is vulnerable; and (2) she must change. How about focusing on #2? Instead of asking her to change for herself, perhaps suggest this could protect friends and others around her who may be more vulnerable. An appropriate analogy may be secondhand smoke. Maybe her lungs are resilient enough to withstand the toxic effects of smoking, but what about the lungs of all her loved ones? Hopefully others can chime in with better ideas. I hope you and your family, and we all, can remain safe and healthy during this crisis.
lampenrad 7y ago
I went through this today. In German there‘s a really great Podcast „Coronavirus-Update“: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html 30 min/weekday a science journalist talks to Christian Drosten, a world-renowned expert on Coronaviruses, who explains things in a very concise manner. Yesterdays episode was „We have to protect the elderly“, where Drosten talked about the high risk for the sick and elderly and trying to fully get this point across to his own father over the weekend. He also mentioned that we should work on hopefully achieving a broader societal awareness of this over the next week or two. I talked to my mother and father a bit first, sent my mother a link to this episode and told her to put me on speakerphone. We then listened to it together and discussed it a bit afterwards. I found this to be really helpful. My mother was in denial until 2 weeks ago, when she went a bit hysterical for a day and has been concerned (but okay) since. My father was mostly in denial until today. He also bailed out soon after the podcast ended, because it was a bit much for him. But overall he took it quite well and is taking it more seriously now. Overall I am very happy with the way this went. Sorry, this isn‘t very helpful if you don‘t speak German. But maybe you are able to find a similar thing in your native language.

manojlds 7y ago

I am sure it has crossed many people's minds, but what if I want to get it before the medical systems are taxed? Like get it before the peak. I am sure it's very bad thinking, but what are some solid points against such thinking?

ktross 7y ago
There are some points in the article: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS https://www.flattenthecurve.com/#DO_NOT_BE_CARELESS > Don’t be that person. It might not be about you but it is everyone’s problem. Don’t be careless in the hopes you get sick when you can “avoid the rush.” There is zero benefit to individuals or the population to getting sick early in the pandemic. You would be putting the lives of others at risk. It is not just that people are dying, but how they are dying. To say nothing of the physical trauma, emotionally speaking this is the opposite of a “good death”. People are dying alone, quarantined from those they love. > Early reports are that people who recover develop antibodies that provide immunity if they are infected with the same strain again. However, this is great news for vaccine development, so flatten the curve and wait it out. > This can get very serious; one person described the pain as feeling like her lungs were being put through a pasta maker. 10% of cases require ICU care and mechanical ventilation. Even if autopsy reports from China have been misrepresented or overstated, there is a possibility of long term or permanent lung damage if you do get sick and recover. There are lot of gaps in the information about lung damage, mostly because everyone qualified to let the public know exactly what is going on is already very busy saving lives and putting their own at risk.
unilynx 7y ago
See section 2.8.2.11 of the article
bluGill 7y ago
I want to get it late - ideally I can hold off long enough for an effective vaccine and never get it. Lacking that, maybe at least someone will discover a better treatment. Maybe in a few months we will discover some existing rabies drug also helps this treatment, or some other such thing. There are also some other anti-virals in development, maybe one of them will turn out to be somewhat useful. However it will take time for doctors to figure that out. I'd rather they learn on someone else.

lottin 7y ago

What medical authorities are saying (in the EU) is that while widespread contagion is inevitable, we don't want everybody to get infected at the same time, because that would overwhelm medical resources and prevent serious cases from getting treated properly. Therefore it seems that the idea is not so much to stop the virus but to just slow it down.