HACKER Q&A
📣 silexia

What Will You Do to Save Civilization?


If the incompetent, selfish, and very disordered response from politicians to the virus continues, we will see modern civilization dissolve around us. This is the greatest threat I have seen in my lifetime to all of us.

Read this article recommended by Bill Gates, who over the last twenty years turned himself from one of the world’s best programmers and best businessman, into one of the world’s lead foremost authority on disease. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/?linkId=85439737.

If we can use our prowess to get out the message that the globe must unite or tens of millions of people could die, we have the potential to save many lives. Governments need to get billions of tests made and distributed, million of ventilators built worldwide, tens of billions of masks built, comprehensive tracing and tracking of those who have been infected, and most importantly a massive logistics effort to bring help to whichever areas are seeing the worst outbreaks. People worldwide need to work to understand the virus and what they personally can do to fight it.

This is the most important time of our lives, and we need to bring our very best efforts.

If you have good ideas to get the message out, please share here… And don’t stop there, tell everyone you know.


  👤 matt_s Accepted Answer ✓
If you don't have the ability/skills to work on epidemics and are not a health care worker of some kind, stay home.

A church in Florida held a service and 10's of people are infected now, which knowing the exponential spread will be 100's in a few days and 1000's a few days after that. The message is out there, people are not hearing it and/or choosing to endanger the lives of others by going out.

A simple (but may appear drastic) solution in the US would be closer to complete lockdown for 6-8 weeks where the National Guard assists local law enforcement to make sure people stay home.

Politicians have failed us in preparing for and battling this pandemic. The biggest thing people can do in the US is vote this November to get them out.


👤 vl
I was born in Soviet Union, I grew as it was collapsing, when I left Russia, it already was through two devastating crises.

US had no serious calamity since Civil War. All wars since then were not on the main territory, 9/11 is actually relatively minor. As such nation is not prepared to deal with any serious problem. On top of that economy and business are hyper-optimized, and thus extremely fragile.

For many other countries this pandemic is not a huge deal, not because it’s not terrible, but because they recently have seen worse. They will take their losses and move on. US eventually will do the same, but will learn the lesson the hard way.


👤 kleer001
> If you have good ideas to get the message out, please share here… And don’t stop there, tell everyone you know.

I disagree.

I say keep the noise to a minimum and let the professionals have the metaphorical floor.

That said it's important to be well informed AND help to quash misinformation. And misinformation at these volumes we as a species have never had to deal with before. So flag misinformation, report the posts and users to mods, send people friendly messages, unfriend/unfollow dangerous a-holes, call the cops on people being idiots in public, be a good citizen, etc...


👤 throw_away_45
Listen to the professionals. Stay Home. And tell your loved ones to stay home too!

If your financial situation allows you to, be generous. Donate to organizations that are supporting the ones who need it the most. Shameless plug :

1. https://www.citymeals.org - Delivers meals to elderly in NYC

2. https://getusppe.org - PPE for ones on the frontline

3. http://khanacademy.org - Democratizing education for all


👤 dev_north_east
> What Will You Do to Save Civilization?

Keep providing for my family and raising my kids to be decent people.


👤 markus_zhang
I'll do what I can: stay home most of the time and wear masks when shopping. And try to convince others to do the same.

I doubt this is the worst we see in our life.


👤 bjourne
I'm not that worried about Covid-19. Pandemics come and go but human civilization has not collapsed. I'm much more worried about climate change which has the potential to cause orders of magnitudes more damage to human civilization and mass extinction.

Can human civilization survive a pandemic? Yes.

Can human civilization survive a 3C increase in global temperatures? Maybe.


👤 shahbaby
I'd rather just grab some popcorn and watch it burn.

👤 krapp
The rest of the world seems to be handling this crisis more or less competently. It seems to be only the US with its aggressively dysfunctional government that can't even manage the basics.

Modern civilization will be fine, but Americans are going to have to learn the hard way that their actions have consequences.