HACKER Q&A
📣 meg_m

How are you creatively helping the Covid-19 effort?


I’m a programmer in California, and I’m looking for ideas to help the COVID-19 effort in a more creative way than contributing money. That is a great option of course, but watching people make masks at home and local businesses repurpose their existing equipment to aid healthcare workers had me wondering if there was some other way in which I could be helping as well.

So I’d love to hear about any ideas you might have, or things you’re already doing, to help the world get through this pandemic.

  👤 kindwolves Accepted Answer ✓
One thing I've been trying to do is to write blog posts about different aspects of what people are dealing with right now on a personal level, and share those thoughts with people who I am close to. The writing I've opted to do is broadly through the lens of navigating intersecting values that conflict.

I think that writing and sharing your writing with your close circle is a way of expanding upon the idea of having conversations with the people around you. Though of course, have the actual conversations as well. It's just harder to have the same conversation with 30 people than it is to share your thoughts in writing.

Tim Ferris released a youtube video that goes over why he thinks that writing can help develop your thinking, too, recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65U5byDZ55M

If you're interested you can see some of the COVID19 personal-philosophy writing I've been doing at http://www.kindwolves.com/

👤 MelioRatio
An effective and simple way to make a positive difference under these circumstances can be, to just address the topic with those around you. There is a lot of confusion, misinformation and concern going around that in my experience, is quite often simply the result of people not being able to digest the massive amount of information currently being presented.

Having a good grip on what is factually accurate, especially online, is hard enough, when ones lives aren't dominated by a novel virus. If you find the time to clear up a few misunderstandings, whilst also teaching, how one can stay informed about the current situation and how to handle it, that alone can make a great impact.