Four Thieves Vinegar Collective presents
how to survive Coronavirus, read by a friend
of Four Thieves
An Anarchist guide for surviving Coronavirus [Covid-19] aka
2019 and
nCOV
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective
February 19th
2020
Okay, the epidemic is bloody scary, and perhaps for any number of reasons you can’t, 
or don’t wish to,
interface with the medical infrastructure.
Likely however, you don’t wish 
to succumb to the virus despite this.
We have assembled this guide in an attempt to help 
people take charge of their well-being,
and survive this outbreak with as little suffering as possible.
Here’s the spoiler:
Healthcare is simpler than you think.
Basically
you need to treat this the way you would the flu,
except be more vigilant
because this spreads more easily, is harder to "kill", and it's harder on the system when you catch it.
Ready to take this shit seriously?
Okay,
Here we go.
How to Keep From Catching It
Roughly speaking, while practicing vigilant hygiene,
you also want to keep your health up, and stress your system as little as possible.
Hygiene
You can catch viruses from touching things that other people have touched,
or breathing in microscopic water droplets from someone who sneezed or coughed.
Sterilize your disgusting cellphone.
Alcohol will do fine.
Do it every time you get to a new destination, especially a place where you eat.
Consider leaving the thing at home, or at least not pulling it out during mealtimes.
Ask a microbiologist about cellphones. You'll wish you hadn't.
Wash your paws.
This is a key one:
The place that is most likely to pick up fresh germs is your hands. You turn doorknobs,
press elevator buttons, handle money, credit cards
receipts and so on.
Each time you arrive at a new location
clean your hands.
Make sure you use soap and scrub for at least 20 seconds, and get under your nails.
Get yourself a nail brush, it's a really good investment.
If you really want to wipe things out consider getting chlorohexidine and/or ethanol.
Doing the good thorough cleansing upon returning home is good practice.
Rubbing alcohol is good and cheap.
If there's a run on the drugstores and there's none left,
You can get it at hardware store and a big jerry cans, usually labeled "Denatured Alcohol".
Don't forget to wash the faucet handle as you go as well.
Wipe down things with alcohol that are common touch points:
doorknobs,
cabinet and refrigerator handles, light switches,
faucet handles, and so on.
Consider wearing latex or
nitrile gloves while you are out, and throw them away before you wash your hands upon reaching a destination.
Don't touch your face while you are out.
This applies whether you are wearing gloves or not.
This is a really hard habit to develop,
but if you are wearing gloves it acts as a good reminder.
7 of the 9 entrances to your body live on your face, and your hands are going to touch things while you are out.
Don't carry them to the doorstep of your innards.
Face masks don't really do much.
If someone is sick, it can help keep other people from catching it it's a sick person wears one.
But if you are healthy then it's not doing much.
Especially if you don't throw them away each day, in which case you are just creating a warm moist
environment for microbes, and stopping it to your face.
Consider showering more often, if this isn't one of your favorite things to do.
Your hands aren't the only place on your skin where microbes hang out.
General Health and Immunity
This is all fairly common knowledge, but it's important to list them in case we
forget or were never told in the first place.
Keep yourself hydrated as well as possible.
If you hate drinking water, try sparkling water or add an electrolyte powder or vitamin additive
and/or a twist of citrus.
Try to smoke and drink less.
If your body is using energy to deal with your hangover and metabolizing tar, that's energy
It can't use for immunity.
Get fresh air into the house;
stagnant air is going to make for breeding ground. Dust and smoke stress the respiratory system and lower
immunity.
Eat quality food.
Same deal as above: if your heart and liver and kidneys are busy processing your double Big Mac,
It's harder to deal with the rest of things.
Get quality sleep and plenty of it. I know this is starting to sound like a voicemail from your mother,
but let's face it, she's probably right on a few things.
Lack of sleep is another one of those basic things that can very quickly turn your immune system from a fortress
into a straw shack.
Decrease your stress levels.
And this doesn't mean keep hanging out with toxic people and just doing more drugs to cope.
Rather it means do things for self-care. Do the things that make you happy and chill you out.
Consider quitting your job and leaving your abusive husband. Tell him it's for science.
Consider taking a basic multivitamin: maybe also vitamin C, and Zinc.
If you really feel like you need an immune boost
there are suggestions that astragalus root and 
thymus extract can help that.
Others contests this claim.
There have been few studies undertaken to determine the efficacy or lack thereof.
There are similar issues with every other folk remedy.  Do your own thinking. Decide for yourself.
Avoid crowded spaces.
Okay, this one is hard; public transit and working in jobs where you interface with the public just become somewhat unavoidable.
Try to keep your distance if you can.
If you are the sort of person who is avoiding Asian people there's a
Special DIY technique that will make it impossible for you to catch the virus:
For a pint glass of household bleach and drink it in one gulp.
Thanks, you racist shitbag.
How to Determine if You’ve Caught It
Okay, so you were really good about staying clear of crowds,
you've kept your health up, and wiped every damn thing down with rubbing alcohol, and you got sick anyway.
It happens. It's a numbers game;
don't be too hard on yourself.
So now you're worried whether you just have the flu
[Which, please note is also going around at an alarming rate, so it's likely]
Or if you actually have this scary plague.
The bad news: it's really hard to figure this out. Unless you take cultures and sequence the genome of the virus.
If you have a bio hacking group in your area with some practitioners whose sense of curiosity
overshadows their sense of self-preservation
you might be able to get one of them to do it for you.
The less bad news: It doesn't really matter.
What you need to do in either case is take it seriously, take care of yourself, and
not pass it to other people.
When you need to break down and go to the fucking hospital
So the whole bloody point of this thing was to avoid going to hospital.
Nobody likes going, and they treat minorities like shit, and a million other things,
but we do need to cop to the fact that it would be better to deal with all that  than be dead.
So we need to know when it's past the point that chicken noodle soup and watching the original
Muppet Show is enough.
If you have respiratory failure, heart failure, or sepsis,
these are things which are very difficult to treat at home and survive, and
you should probably get to a hospital on the double.
Note, that the term "failure"
in a medical context the not mean things have broken irreparably.
Rather, it means it's not working as it should.
These are reversible and not a death sentence.
Here are the signs and symptoms to watch for to know if those things are happening:
Respiratory Failure, Heart Failure, Sepsis
There are a lot of different reasons why the person for whom you're caring might stop being able to get
oxygen into their lungs, or their heart is having trouble, or they have a massive
inflammatory response.
But you don't need to know any of them. Rather
you need to keep an eye out for indicators those processes might be starting so you can get into medevac mode.
Usually there's a really complicated process with a lot of fancy equipment,
but you can do it much more simply and cheaply with a few basic tools.
It's really useful to have a thermometer, a blood pressure monitor, and a pulse oximeter.
You don't need them, but they do make things easier.
You can get a pulse oximeter online for about 12 bucks.
You can get a blood pressure monitor online - these are a little more expensive like 30 bucks,
but are worth it.
Thermometers are also cheap online
if someone is ill, take all the measurements to establish a baseline, and then take them in the morning and
in the evening.
Plus anytime you're concerned.
Watch for changes.
If things change fast
that's a cause for concern. If there is a rapid shift,
look for other indications to determine if one of these critical conditions is occurring.
You can measure pulse with a watch with a second hand.
Find the person's pulse on their wrist and count the beats for a full minute.
You should have something between 60 and 100 beats.
If not, it's a sign that things are likely not so great.
If you don't have a thermometer
you can compare their forehead to your own by placing one hand on their forehead and one on your own.
Try to hold on to the memory of how this feels,
because you want to be watching for changes.
If you manage to take their temperature,
you want to make sure it's between
97°F
[36°C] and 100°F
[38°C]
If you are taking their blood pressure, and it changes by 20 points, it's not a good sign.
Decide in advance
how you plan to get to a hospital [and which one]
in case any of these things starts happening.  You
don't want to be figuring this sort of thing out during a moment of crisis.
The pulse oximeter will measure someone's pulse and the percent of oxygen that is in their blood.
If blood oxygenation falls below 90 percent you need to get them some care.
If you have the sports oxygen cans,
try giving them hits from that as you monitor them on the way to the hospital.
That said, if the numbers are good, but someone is having a really hard time breathing
[More than just someone coughing and feeling shitty the way you do when you're sick]. You need to get them to a hospital.
If someone's lips and/or finger tips start to get grey and blue, and they are laboring to breathe,
this is sign of impending respiratory failure
no matter what the oxygenation levels are.
Get them down the road double-quick.
Other indications of this are hunching over to breathe,
not being able to get through a sentence without running out of air, or taking small shallow breaths quickly.
If their breathing sounds really wet, or like static crackling,
or if they cough up pink frothy gunk, it's time to sound the alarm.
If you are managing to keep your person hydrated,
but they still wake up with a massive headache, or go the whole day without needing to pee, these are also bad signs.
Two other things to watch for: if anyone is so sleepy that when you wake them up
they nod right back off again, and you can't keep them awake, it's a bad sign.
The other sign is if someone seems grumpy.
Check to see if they are mentally confused, by asking some questions about what day it is or where they are.
If you get strange answers, it's time to get them out the door.
How to Care for Someone Who Has It
Okay, let's say the person doesn't need to go to the hospital yet,
but they are still sick and you need to treat them.
What to do?
Comforting
This cannot be overstated:
You are caring for a human being,
and the more you keep them relaxed and happy and feeling loved, the greater their likelihood of recovery.
The limbic system
supports the immune system.
A happy person's immune system works far better than the immune system of someone who is not.
Where is their teddy bear?
Where is their childhood blanket?
Their cat?
Bring them!
Do remember that despite the fact that the virulence of COVID-19 is high,
the mortality rate is low.
Thus far it is about 2% fatal.
[Footnote 1 This number is really rough and is wrong to some degree. Since there's a time lag between
confirmation and death which makes error on the under estimate side.
However, there are scores of people who contract it and do not report to hospitals and recover fine.
Which makes this a massive over estimate.
Additionally, there is evidence that the Chinese government is covering up nCOV deaths by calling them "pneumonia", and not reporting them,
which makes for error on the under estimate side again.
China is also using very old slow technology to do diagnosis, and can only do a few thousand per day,
so that limits the data as well. So there are numerous errors here. This is just to say this isn't accurate
But the fatality rate is only in the single-digit percent range].
In all likelihood
It won't be much different than getting a shitty flu, or going on a bender and the person in question will recover.
Try to explain to them that the likelihood of it being more than a bad week is very low,
so they don't get stuff and make it worse.
Keep them warm but not hot.
Get them their favorite healthy food and snacks then play them their favorite guilty pleasure movies and don't tease them about them.
Seriously.
Read them their favorite childhood book. Don't make fun of this one either.
Bring out their favorite board game and play it with them. Even if you hate it. Yes, don't gripe.
Remind them that their survival
brings the revolution closer, and that them taking it easy and allowing themselves to be cared for is an act of political
warfare, just like Audrey Lorde said.
If they really want a drink, make them a hot toddy instead of tequila shots or beer.
Try not to give them too many.
If they are desperately craving a cigarette,
get some chew/dip/snus/snuff,
and put a pinch of it between their pinky toe and the one next to it,
this will give them their nicotine fix without stressing their lungs.
You can do it on both feet if they are heavy users and need a harder hit.
If they really want weed, try to give them edibles instead of smoke so they don't stress their lungs.
If they are going to get junk sick if they don't push off, do everything you can to help them do so safely.
Hydration
If you were in the hospital you'd get a saline IV,
which is the fastest and most efficient way to get fluids into the body.
However, if you lived in certain countries, like the so-called United States, these are not available to the public,
despite being the fastest way to hydrate someone.
Setting up an IV is not hard, if you manage to get your hands on a bag and a kit. [cough ebay cough]
If you can't there are easy ways to make oral rehydration
fluids which are better than Gatorade or coconut water: the
idea is to take clean water and add some balancing salts
to make it easier for the person to retain the water.
Try to get them to take small sips,
very often as this is the most efficient way to get fluids into someone short of an IV.
Get distilled water, sugar or honey,
salt and baking soda
and if you want to make it a little more palatable, a
little coconut water, orange juice, or mashed up ripe banana.
IV in a glass, one liter of bottled water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon
baking soda
2
tablespoons of sugar or honey
Optional: 1 cup coconut water/fruit juice/ripe fruit puree
Start by adding the salt, but make sure you didn't overdo it.
It shouldn't be more salty than tears. Then add the rest of the ingredients.
3 teaspoons equals 1 tablespoon if you have one or the other.
If you are working in gallons, [which are roughly quadruple liters]
Just quadruple everything.
These are rough measurements, so don't worry too much.
Just make sure it's not too salty before you add the rest.
Staying clean
Try to get them up and into a shower each day.
Change the sheets while they're in there, and give them clean comfortable clothes when they get out.
This isn't just a sanitation issue, this will also make them feel better in terms of morale.
Happier is
healthier.
Oxygen
Similar deal to an IV, you can’t just waltz into a medical supply place
[if you are in the 
former british colonies] and get an oxygen tank,
but there are ways to jerry-rig one.
Theoretically you could use oxygen from welding tanks,
but it might be daunting to put the regulator's and stopped in place if you haven't worked with compressed gas.
If the person for whom you are caring is in such dire straits
tat they need oxygen all the time, they should be in the hospital anyway.
You can get however little cans from sports stores
Which will allow you to give the person for whom you are carrying kits of oxygen from time to time.
The idea here is to take the stress off their lungs and heart they get oxygen into their blood.
Good times give them hit are before bed and after hydrating first thing in the morning.
Do NOT give
antibiotics!
Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria.
They do nothing to viruses, and you will stress the system of the person you are giving them to and it will make them worse.
What about that alleged "cure" from Thailand or that other thing I heard about?
There's really not much data on any of this.
It seems like the Thailand thing worked in one case that that may have been a fluke.
Additionally other people they tried it on that really nasty reactions to the antiviral drugs, [which is not atypical]
So it's a real dice roll if you decide to try it.
However, we're never ones to shy away from self experimentation,
here's all the data that we've been able to find out of this moment. As time passes
hopefully we'll get some tactics established. If you learn of anything, please get in touch.
There is a clinical trial going on in China for the "Thai"
treatments as well.
Also, keep in mind that in all likelihood you won't know if you have Corona virus or the flu,
and taking heavy doses of antivirals can have plenty of heavy side effects. So decide carefully
where you think the breakpoint is for doing more harm than good.
The Thai patient was given Oseltamivir, Lopinavir and Ritonivir.
Oseltamivir is sold under the trade name Tamiflu and is prescription only.
It's a controversial drug, and some physicians will refuse to prescribe it
so if you go out doctor shopping in order to get your hands on it be aware. You might have to shop a lot.
But it is an antiviral and theoretically it makes the flu pass more quickly.
Then there is the matter of the two HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir,
They are approved are on the market and are sometimes packaged together under the trade name Kaletra.
Currently the dosage for HIV is lopinavir 400 milligrams
ritonavir
100 milligrams. And there is still no data on the dosages used in the experimental case,
they merely said "High dose"
So good luck guessing. Maybe start by tripling the regular dosage.
Any other possible treatments/cures?
A paper was just released
Showing that Chloroquine and Remdesivir
(development code 
GS-5734)
Does kill the virus in a test tube,
but things are way more complicated in the human body.  That
said, there is one person who has given the drug combination and they recovered.
That doesn't mean that's why they recovered, but it is suggestive.
Additionally, they are starting ad hoc trials on this as well in China, so it seems like it's promising.
Remdesivir is really hard to get a hold of.
It's not in production
since it has not been approved and it's not on the market.
There is one company making it for the clinical trials in China, but it's not being sold.
It’s a strangely shaped new molecule, so not even regular 
chemical suppliers stock it.
There are ways you can potentially get it from overseas,
but it's rolling the dice again as it can be hard to know if what you are getting is the real thing or just
vials of water.
There is the “Feline” version GS-441524
which is an active, non-pro drug form that is available though. It is expensive
If you are planning to get this, get it while you can:
Prices are going up and stocks are being depleted.
The published paper on the patient who may have been cured with it does not give dosage information.
It does mention that he was given a single IV infusion,
which suggests that if it was modeled after the Ebola trial, the dosage would be either the low dose of
50 milligrams per kilogram or the high dose of
150 the milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
We are guessing it was probably the high dose.
Dosage for chloroquine is 300mg base
(500mg salt),
Given once per week, so it probably just one dose.
For children, it's 5 milligrams per kilogram.
Chloroquine is used in the prevention and treatment of malaria, but it's use has created resistant strains.
So if you want to get it from a doctor by cleaning you're traveling to a malaria rich area,
you need to find an area rich in malaria, which hasn't mutated to be chloroquine resistance.
Check the CDC website if you're hoping to go this route.
Keep each other safe
Do what you can with what you've got, and odds are things will blow over okay.
Remember to get help if it gets dangerous
Act Up. Fight Back.
Much love,
Four Thieves Vinnegar Collective
Dr. Li wen, yang in memory
Tune in again soon as we gives you more audio guides on staying healthy and safe
till then keep
each other safe
and stay healthy
