[conspire] OT: What I wanted to do but was prohibited to do, is now cancelled

[Nick Moffitt]

On 13Mar2020 12:34am (-0700), Rick Moen wrote:
> There's nothing about a large recreational bicycle ride that requires
> people grouping in limited spaces, and to a large degree the whole 
> idea is to _not_ do that.  

We're advising cycling in London in place of public transport right now:

	https://lcc.org.uk/articles/cycling-to-avoid-coronavirus

Fortunately the weather has just finally turned after a February that was one long chain of named storms.

I just went N+1 for my birthday, so I'm making a point of riding it as much as possible in the hopes that cranking my body temperature up a bit could kill off, if not the pandemic pathogens themselves, anything lingering that might complicate matters once I properly contract this.

You may have heard that the UK is adopting a "let's all get infected!" model, in the hopes thahahahahahahahaha... Hopes!  I almost got through that one.

OK so our prime minister is effectively Captain Rum from the "Potato" episode of Blackadder, sailing a ship out and not seeing the need for a crew, and with an artificially-tousled mop of hair you could hide a badger in.  So we're basically doomed here on Rainy Fascist Island, and are now in the preparation stages for widespread onset of the disease.

My friends who work for the NHS say the best home care for the so-called "mild" form, which entails possibly being bedridden with pneumonia for two weeks but hey at least you didn't need oxygen, is:

1) Treat fevers over 38.5°C with alternating normal doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol.  Ibuprofen is rough on stomach linings and kidneys, and paracetamol can be hell on livers, so slow and steady every few hours, changing it up.

Paracetamol is known as acetaminophen in the US, but is more commonly found under the trade name Tylenol.  

Also, just for completeness:

	$ units
	Currency exchange rates from finance.yahoo.com on 2017-10-31
	3047 units, 109 prefixes, 109 nonlinear units

	You have: tempC(38.5)
	You want: tempF
	101.3

We'll call it 101°F?

2) Keep cough medicines with expectorants on hand, and do what you can to get fluid out of the lungs.  Nearly everything marketed as cough syrup will do this, but watch out for medicines that come with their own paracetamol!

It is trivially easy to overdose on paracetamol, and the University of Edinburgh found that the risk was highest when slowly taking a longer-term regimen of medicines that allowed the dosage to sneak up on you (a so-called "staggered overdose"):

	https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2011.04067.x

3) If you don't already have a humidifier, consider getting one.  If you can't get access to one, be prepared to spend time in the bathroom with a steaming shower or bath.  Or just steam a pot of water on the stove and breathe it in.  I guess you folks haven't got 3kW electric kettles so you usually boil water in the microwave or something?

Also be sure to *drink* a lot of water!  Both of these measures will help to thin any mucous that is building up in your respiratory pathways, and make it easier to expectorate.

Note that the association between orange juice and vitamin C and colds is a bit of a persistent urban legend.  Multi-Nobel-Prizewinner Linus Pauling went a little out of his depth in later life, and got into some kook medicine claims regarding vitamins.  He published assertions that megadoses of vitamin C would cure all sorts of diseases, including cancer and the common cold.  The NIH tested his claims in the 1970s and found that his advised treatments often made cancer patients WORSE.

Sadly the orange juice industry had already started marketing its sugar-water as a form of home remedy that sounded like it had the backing of modern medicine.  Drink it if you want something sweet, but you already get plenty of vitamin C in just about everything you eat

...unless you are on a diet of months-old hard tack and sausage?  ARRRR!
	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10GWjAB-2tg