Steem, Hive, forks, hostile takeovers, censorship. A lot has been going on in the past month, things just kept escalating. Today, I've posted on my Steem accounts that I'm moving to Hive permanently, so that's a thing.
But honestly, my mind was somewhere else. (This is going to be slightly rambly)
I've been working on my M.Sc. in Immunology and Global Health, and Covid19 has been on my radar since the information about it started to slowly reach Academic Twitter. I follow a bunch of epidemiologists who were rather worried.
Rightfully worried, I'd say.
Last week Thursday, Ireland closed its schools, colleges, and universities, leaving me at home dealing with other people's anxiety on top of my own.
Oh, and assignments. So many assignments. And every time I open an online journal, it tells me where to find Covid19 papers. Thanks for that.
And while the number of deaths rises, countries go into lockdown, and families of healthcare workers distance themselves from their loved ones, many people still don't take this seriously, still go outside, still ... spread the virus.
I know this won't end fast.
Vaccine development takes time even if we cut all corners and inject human test subjects with potentially harmful vaccines. But testing on animals would add several months and several thousand deaths.
Development of new medication might be faster, but there is no guarantee that we find something. This is not a computer game with a guaranteed solution.
I applied to help out in a nearby lab for Covid19 testing, so far I haven't heard back from them. I don't even know if I'd get paid, but honestly, I don't care. We need testing, we need to isolate infected people, we need to "flatten the curve" (kudos to the person who came up with this phrase, excellent science communication right here).
I'm not an expert on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid19, but I can understand research papers that might be confusing for people without an academic/biological background. With all the misinformation going around, it can be difficult to know what are facts and what is fiction. If you have a paper that you don't understand, I invite you to post it in the comments together with your question and I can have a look to see if I can explain it to you. No guarantees tho.
I don't know where I'm going with this post, there is just a lot of pent up anxiety in me and I needed to give it an outlet, somehow.
We're all in this together, if we want to or not.
Let's try to come out together on the other end, too.
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