News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine. Parent comment

Re:Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine by belorn on Monday March 23, 2020 @07:41PM (#22670146)
chloroquine phosphate might be one of many compounds of a cleaning product for aquariums. One other very common part of cleaning products, and extremely toxic, is chlorine. Was this specific cleaning product intended to be used when the fish are still in the tank?

Its things like this which is the reason why Sweden has almost banned every cleaning product that has the word alcohol as one of its ingredient, and those that still have it usually must have something that cause vomiting if ingested. People poison themselves (which is I think the more technical correct term than overdosing), and if people will look at something like a cleaning product and think "I will drink this" then there is not much options available.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine by dmix on Monday March 23, 2020 @07:46PM (#22670189)
> if people will look at something like a cleaning product and think "I will drink this" then there is not much options available.

Last year I watched as a homeless man squirted hand sanitizer into a cup then drink it. Before a woman yelled at him and started calling 911. He disappeared pretty quickly after that, so not sure what ever happened to him.

Fun fact: The hand sanitizer stand he used was one of the ones installed around public areas in Toronto after the last SARS outbreak.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine by belorn on Monday March 23, 2020 @07:57PM (#22670270)
Hand sanitizer with alcohol is one such product that does not exist in Swedish stores. There is gels and other similar products that evaporate but they do not actually include any alcohol.

I remember many years ago that there was a campaign to inform the public of this fact as people still continued for a while to ingest those products under the idea that they still had alcohol in them. Many products also had for a while big lables that said "No alcohol". As far as I know the regulation has been quite a success.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine by dmix on Monday March 23, 2020 @08:32PM (#22670518)
That's interesting, Sweden is more aggressive with this sort of thing. That'd be a controversial move even here in Canada.

The CDC recommends using alcohol sanitizer over non-alcohol ones:

> Many studies have found that sanitizers with an alcohol concentration between 60–95% are more effective at killing germs than those with a lower alcohol concentration or non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Hand sanitizers without 60-95% alcohol 1) may not work equally well for many types of germs; and 2) merely reduce the growth of germs rather than kill them outright.

https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-hand-sanitize...

A friend who lived in Sweden told me the stores there shut down early and it was hard to find a place to buy alcohol (the Swedish state-run liquor store closes at 3pm on Saturday and is completely closed on Sunday). So if your flight arrives late to the city you might miss out.

Culture plays a big role in getting support for this sort of thing... Ontario used to be more like Sweden but recently expanded the hours of our state-run liquor store (until 11pm) and let grocery stores sell beer/cider.

[ Parent | on HN ]