Question: Have you done anything for the Corona Virus cause??

Jo Brodie answered on 17 Mar 2021:

Hi Smitzz_A – I’ve mostly helped by staying out of the way and following the guidelines 🙂 I’ve also worked from home since March last year and also had my first vaccination a couple of weeks ago.
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In terms of contributing directly to the vaccine or any future treatments directly – no, I’ve not been in a position to help with that. The next best thing for me, as a science communicator, is to educate myself about Coronavirus (the virus), Covid (the disease it causes) and the vaccine. So I’m doing that, while staying at home.
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There’s also a very high chance that I will write an article for our computing magazine, CS4FN (https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/), about the ways in which computers have been used to combat Coronavirus, in fact I may write several articles as there are lots of ways of looking at it. I’ll probably write about Avi Schiffman who, at 17, created one of the first Covid tracking websites https://www.businessinsider.com/high-school-student-avi-schiffman-made-a-coronavirus-tracker-2020-5 and I definitely want to find out more about how scientists used computer modelling to fast-track vaccine development.
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Another computer-themed topic that I might write about is online misinformation and how social media platforms and their users have responded. People have also been using computers at home, for work and school, in different ways too – lots of Zoom meetings. In future, how will this changing use of technology change how we study and work? At the start of the pandemic people also used Facebook and WhatsApp to connect with people living near them. They organised volunteer rotas to make sure that local vulnerable people were put in touch with someone who could support them by collecting food shopping or medicine etc. I helped set a group up where I live… so I suppose I did that for the cause 🙂
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Jo