FOLDING@HOME

A while back, before I left MaximumPC, I spoke about depression and anxiety. When I was growing up, I suffered from hypochondria, a fear of disease, among other things, and it effectively made me a shut-in for a year when I was 17 years old. In fact, it’s been so prominent in my life that I can trace back panic attacks stemming from it to when I was six— perhaps ironically, the first was while I watched a documentary on the Spanish flu. Yet the older I’ve got, the more I’ve begun to realize that this wasn’t actually a fear for my own wellbeing, but rather a fear of losing the people I love in my life.

Last summer, two of my grandparents, one from each side of my family, were diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other. My grandmother on my father’s side was given 18 months to live, because she has late-stage leukemia. She has chemo to keep it under control, but it cripples her immune system in the process, making her high-risk to COVID-19. Because of that she’s been advised to self-isolate for up to four months, potentially longer, with no contact from my family.

For me, finding a vaccine is more important than anything right now, because it means I might actually be able to see her again. Folding@home is a disease research project that’s been set up by Stanford University. It takes spare computing power to simulate the process of protein folding and misfolding. This helps us understand disease biology, and gives us a better chance of identifying vaccines and antiviral medication quicker than traditional methods. I can tell you now, every machine I have is working flat out supporting this effort.

Free, https://foldingathome.org