How to protect from the coronavirus
In the current state of the pandemic and for many more months until a vaccine is found, there is exactly one way to fight the coronavirus, protecting yourself and protecting others.
It is not a mask.
It is two masks. You wear a mask, I wear a mask.
Many people still believe that they can only get the virus if an infected person coughs or sneezes on them. This is a tragic myth. Droplets are carried by breath in conversation, by food particles from someone eating near you, or simply by air flowing your way.
Anyone today who goes out without wearing a mask is irresponsible (or suicidal, but that is not an excuse, since he harms others too). Your mask is not enough, though. I must wear one too.
Then we are safe from each other. Remember: we do not have definitive figures, but at least one carrier in five is asymptomatic.
Everything else (and I am not even considering quack solutions and unproven treatments) is pointless. Disinfectant (or better soap) helps, but as a complement. Gloves help medical professionals, who know how to use them properly, but for the general public they can do more harm than good: look at people in shops, once they have gloves they touch everything, moving the virus everywhere. Testing will be critical, of course, but here is another sobering statistics: while there are no false positives (if you test positive, you are infected), around 20% of negative tests are wrong (people have the virus, and it is not detected).
I know: in many places, including some the most technologically advanced nations on earth, there are no masks to be found. This may be the greatest scandal of the modern era. But in the meantime makeshift masks are an acceptable palliative. There are guides all over the web as to how to make them, and if nothing else is available a tightly bound scarf or equivalent, cleaned thoroughly and regularly, will do.
Wear a mask and tell others to do the same.
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