– in which Dorn stops cowering from the covid, and starts to fight back.
To misquote Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about the coronavirus, but nobody does anything about it.” This isn’t true, of course: doctors, nurses, first responders and medical researchers are all working overtime to stop the worst ravages of the disease, and find ways to stop the disease altogether. And this is to say nothing of all those who are working as hard as they can to keep the pandemic from hurting people economically, socially, or educationally. Heroes all, as I’ve said before, but today I wanted to talk about people who are taking a very particular stand against the progress of the disease: those who are offering themselves up to further the research into treatments and vaccines.
I’ve mentioned my friend E— R— (here) who is an actual survivor of the coronavirus. Elizabeth, I mean E—, and other Immunati (as they secretly call themselves), are giving their time and their antibodies to find better ways to fight the disease. I find this amazingly courageous, especially as it involves getting blood drawn in a medical setting. I myself haven’t been brave enough even to set foot in any building since February, but especially in a medical building which covid sufferers might plausibly frequent.
Immunati can bring unique resources into the fight against the disease, having successfully beaten back the virus in their own bodies and now sporting covid antibodies, but non-Immunati also have a trait that is uniquely theirs to offer, and that is vital to developing a covid vaccine: they are uninfected, and vulnerable to the disease.
Hundreds of research groups are working on vaccine possibilities around the world, and every one of these that proves promising enough in early trials must undergo human testing. For that a large population of volunteers is needed. The volunteers are innoculated with a test vaccine, which is probably safe, and might offer some protection from covid, or with a placebo, which almost certainly will not.
These volunteers are risking possible unanticipated side effects from the vaccine for only a slight statistical increase in their own safety against covid. They are mostly altruistic and I’m proud to be of the same species as these volunteers. They increase the average honorability of the whole human race (including my average honorability—I’m actually feeling more noble just writing about it).
Vaccine researchers need a group of volunteer testers who, absent the vaccine, had a fair chance of coming down with covid. Otherwise, they can’t tell if the test vaccine is making any difference. Covid infection rates swing up and down, and researchers’ plans to conduct human trials have frequently been forced to change to new locations, as the rate of infections at their original planned location dropped too low for an effective test.
Brazil is now a popular test area, I’m told. The United States will probably continue to be fertile ground for vaccine tests as long as weak-kneed political leadership and selfish “I know my right to be contagious!” individualism allow the disease to spread nearly unchecked here.
But there’s another way to test new vaccines that doesn’t depend on natural spread of the disease, and which is even more rapid and effective. This type of testing calls for an even more heroic type of individual—one willing to be intentionally exposed to the coronavirus, to see if the vaccine can prevent being infected by it.
The bravery of volunteers willing to do this is simply mind-boggling to me, especially given the fact that we still don’t have fully effective treatments for the disease, which can be fatal, and can leave survivors with permanent lung, heart or circulatory system damage.
I haven’t yet reported on what I hinted at the start of this post: my own way of contributing to the fight against covid. You may have guessed that I haven’t gone down any of the above avenues that have been taken by more intrepid individuals. (It’s not entirely a matter of me being too chicken—I am in regular contact with an immunocompromised, high-risk individual who I don’t have the moral right to put in danger.) I have not volunteered to put myself at risk of virus infection, but I have volunteered to put another there.
That “other” is my personal computer. I have hooked it up to the World Community Grid, an IBM-organized project that coordinates people (over 650,000 of them and counting) who are willing to contribute CPU time on their computers to tackle massive parallel computing tasks that might otherwise be prohibitive.
I am working on a project (or rather, my computer is) to conduct simulated biochemical experiments on a large number of compounds, to see which might have the right shape to interact with the proteins that the coronavirus uses to infect humans. Any such compounds found are prime candidates for laboratory experiments, to determine if they can actually prevent the coronavirus protein from carrying out its insidious work.
Joining the World Community Grid and participating in this project, called “OpenPandemics”, was surprisingly easy. I just had to download some coordinating software and set it to running. It’s been going for a couple of days now and I’ve seen no difference in my computer’s performance, but I can see from the statistics on their website that I am successfully delivering valid results to their project.
The biggest worry I had about doing this was from having to download someone else’s software, and the inherent risks of picking up a virus, Trojan worm, or whatever hackers are trying to infect computers with nowadays. But I did what homework I could to satisfy myself that this was a legitimate, safe download. I reasoned that I face a similar risk with every single program that I put on my computer, and the main difference is that I am not using this program to do anything for my own immediate benefit, convenience, or amusement. The benefit, if there is one, is “only” to humanity at large.
I felt surprised, and a bit guilty, that the decision to run this altruistic program on my computer was harder than the decision to run Facebook or Candy Crush. But I gritted my teeth and did it, so now I am among those risking (a little) to fight back against the tyranny of covid! Yay me!
If you or your computer want to try this, here is a link to volunteer for the World Community Grid on the Covid project or the other medical or public good projects they are coordinating, from cancer and AIDS research to predicting African rainfall patterns. This particular link somehow allows the Grid to know that I am the one who sent you, which I think gives me extra karmic points or something when the final accounting takes place.
Thanks (and I really mean it, thank you!)
Dorn
8/15/2020