About the "at home" statistic. What proportion of the population is staying at home? If it's say 90%, then even if the case rate among these people is five times lower than among the people who are not staying home, there will still be more 'at home' cases. Also, there's a big risk of bias - people who are in risk groups are more likely to stay at home, because they know that it would be dangerous for them to go outside.
I'm not saying that there's nothing to the statistic, just that we have to be very careful about how we interpret things, and make sure that we think about the contextual factors.
Generally speaking though, I also think elevators should be taken into consideration more. I haven't heard much about recommendations regarding elevators, but surely it would help if people take the stairs as much as possible? I always take the stairs since the pandemic started, even the few times I've been to the office, which is eight floors up. Granted, a lot of people can't take the stairs because of health issues or because it's just too many floors, but those of us who can, should.
It's kind of a complicated issue. I do think that we should refer to the 1918 flu as just that. However, since that's so far back in the past, you won't find a lot of people pointing their fingers at Spain and accusing Spaniards of being inhuman scum. On the other hand, you have a LOT of people saying "Chinese flu" who then jump to the conclusion that the Chinese people themselves are to blame and inherently 'bad', aggravating racism against the Chinese. The Chinese government deserve a lot of criticism for so many things, including their persecution (and most likely execution in some cases) of Chinese citizens who reported on the pandemic. But hate crimes happening right now against Chinese, and people who happen to look remotely Chinese, are very real. I see little benefit in referring to the 2019 Coronavirus/COVID-19 as a "Chinese flu", while I see huge downsides.
In sum, while I think "Spanish" flu is more factually incorrect, I see talk about a "Chinese" flu as more acutely harmful. So - 1918 flu, COVID-19, IMO.
I mostly agree with your comment. My main counterpoint to this angle, which is strictly correct, is that many people lack the same kind of context that you described, and do interpret “Spanish flu” and “Wuhan/Chinese flu” as “caused by them”, and in some cases even missing the historical perspective. There might be something to be said about blame in one case and the other, but I don’t think is that relevant (although perhaps at some point there should be some debate on the responsibility of China -if any- in this pandemic)
"Citizens reporting on the epidemic have been made to disappear" would be a more factual description. And as can be seen from the first article linked above, "disappearance" doesn't necessarily lead to a fatal end.
But again, I think you were right to call me out on speculating. We just don't know, and if there's one thing we don't need more of right now, it's speculation from non-experts like me. Thank you.
Since there's no better to place for it I'll mention one thing about gathering resources (like at your FB page), hope that's okay: I think there are a lot of people like you and our team who try to gather inspiration and resources right now. For instance, a homenaut submitted a link to this tumblr account https://pandemicjoy.tumblr.com/ The tumblr account has actually linked to us I see, but I'm a bit uncertain about that. People might get confused if we link to one another, since they probably expect to come to a resource when following a link but instead come to another list of resources. I'm thinking it's best if we all draw inspiration from each other but try to keep our own styles/niches, since different people have different tastes and what gets their motivation going :) I'd imagine the "homenaut" theme might make some people cringe for instance :p
I saw on your Instagram that you have a WIP at https://socialapproaching.com/. When it's done, if you think it fits in the "resource-itself" category, please submit it for the "Social Contact and Communication" category at Homenauts if you want :D
Will do! Thanks! Currently for the Instagram account, I'm planning on keeping this to small bite-sized tips that people can have pop up in their feed on a regular basis. I'm posting the same content on Facebook as well as some links to longer-form resources. Eventually, I was planning on having the content on the website actually be somewhat similar to what's currently on Homenauts, so I may have to rethink that :)
Also, since you're here, if I find any good tips on Homenauts.com that would be suitable for the bite-sized social media I'm aiming for, would you mind if I ripped them off? I can certainly find ways to give credit if needed. (Although this is a bit of a pain on Instagram since individual posts can't directly have links.)
You mean links or any of the text/original content on the site? When it comes to the links, you of course don't need to explain that you found them through our site (unless you'd e. g. grab all of the links from one of the categories in one go I guess). For the original content, if you want to use material from us word-for-word then please do your best to link to the site or otherwise explain where you got it from. If it's just a general idea (like "try to keep up with your routines") that you got from us but describe in your own words, you don't need to credit us. If it's any help you can also look at the content policy https://homenauts.com/our-content-policy/
Good point! Even as we did the presentation of the project at the end of the hackathon, one of the judges immediately mentioned how he needed loads of tips, as he was at home with two teenage kids.
We unfortunately haven't found a lot on this topic (if you do, please submit!) but a team member did find this article that you might find useful:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/the-family-loc...
I actually thought we'd already self-submitted it to Homenauts but seems like we missed it, so I just added it. I put it in the "Mental Health" section for now. But creating a separate category/tag for living with co-homenauts, as you suggest, sounds like a good idea.
Stay safe (all three of you!) and hope you find any of the links useful
Thanks for the link, it seems useful. Luckily our own situation is quite good at the moment in this sense, so no need to worry. We're about two weeks in to moderate self-isolation without any major meltdowns, and that's with a fairly intense study schedule for the kids that the school prescribed. But I definitely see the current situation continuing for many more weeks at least, so it's good to be proactive and smart about it. Especially with an interesting mix of introverts in the house (my son and myself) and extroverts (wife and daughter). Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the feedback! When you say incorrect, I guess you mean that it's basically wrong to have the big block of graphic as it goes against sound web design/layout principles, making it harder to navigate et c? I can see what you mean and I agree that we probably should emphasize the browse by topic links more than we currently do. I'll send this on to the rest of the team. Please note that it might take some time before we use all the feedback we're getting because we all have day jobs (I'm gonna have to compensate later for today hehe), but we greatly appreciate it :)
Thank you, and there are a lot of challenges! The greatest one I think is making sure that users find content that's a) relevant, b) more than just some quick-fix temporary entertainment and c) something they'll want to do and feel ready to do. We don't want the site to be something that people only use to passively ease the pain for a while (though that is of course helpful sometimes), we want them to also find things that engage them. We've talked in the team about this quite a lot and how difficult it can be.
Ideally, in time, there would be some kind of system that lets users input some basic info about who they are and what they like, and then the site would make suggestions with say a) what content sections/tags that might be relevant, b) a specific link/site that might be interesting, and c) a specific activity that the user can try, that wouldn't take much time or effort and still be interesting. We want to help people get the ball rolling with getting more active in their homes.
Speaking from clinical psychology experience and from I guess just general experience of being a human, I know how hard it is for people to start new habits. You want the person to get started with something that's meaningful while also being fun/interesting enough to compete with watching another YouTube video - which again, is totally fine in moderation, it's just when the passivity becomes too much of a pattern that it's a problem.
Do you see a particular challenge we should keep in mind? :)
Thank you! If you want to submit the link to be shared at Homenauts, you can use the link at the top right on the site: https://homenauts.com/ (as you can see in the comment by panoramas4good above, you need to be on a desktop computer at the moment unfortunately) If you want me to add the link directly - because I definitely think it fits - just tell me :)
Done! Thank you so much for creating the service and for sharing :) You can see the link here https://homenauts.com/social-contact-and-communication/ (and at the main page of course) If you want you can upvote your link there, I already did ;)
Did you already submit? I definitely think your site deserves to be linked! I can't see your link in our list of links pending approval. I can add the link directly if you want, but then it'll look like I'm trying to take credit for finding it ;p
I'm not saying that there's nothing to the statistic, just that we have to be very careful about how we interpret things, and make sure that we think about the contextual factors.
Generally speaking though, I also think elevators should be taken into consideration more. I haven't heard much about recommendations regarding elevators, but surely it would help if people take the stairs as much as possible? I always take the stairs since the pandemic started, even the few times I've been to the office, which is eight floors up. Granted, a lot of people can't take the stairs because of health issues or because it's just too many floors, but those of us who can, should.