My cousin Laura is a very smart human; she’s a PhD candidate in microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and her work over the past 15 years has been in areas like drugs to slow the spread of viruses and the biology underlying disease. Here is a message from her about what her lab and her community are doing to limit the spread of coronavirus, which I’m sharing with her permission:
Dear all,
Many of you know I've spent the past 15 years in and around scientific research. As a consultant, I worked with large biopharma companies that bring drugs and vaccines to market, and with smaller clinical laboratories that develop diagnostic tests. My first job out of college was on a project working to develop drugs that could be used to slow the spread of virus during a measles outbreak. A few years ago, I took a huge paycut to leave industry and get my PhD in molecular biology, because I believe that basic science research — the study of fundamental questions about the underlying biology of health and disease — is a public good.
I'm now a fifth year PhD candidate and RNA biologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Yesterday, we shut down our lab to limit the spread of coronavirus. Our institution is taking this situation very seriously, and I hope you are as well. Since the U.S. response to COVID-19 has been more reactive instead of proactive, it's now falling to decision-makers at every level of American society to make the right calls to limit the impact of this disease in their communities. I thought it might be helpful to share what my colleagues and I, as scientists, are doing right now in the absence of a more coordinated national response:
Starting Monday March 16, all non-essential staff across our entire campus are being asked to work remotely. Travel is cancelled indefinitely.
Research labs are winding down all experiments, and designating 2-3 employees as emergency personnel to manage animals, cell lines, and freezers. Labs at similar institutions have been told to prepare for 6-8 weeks of closures.
In a very Colorado move, yesterday my boss instituted a policy that only one person should be in lab at a time, and if that's not possible, we should maintain a "ski's length distance" from each other.
We reached out to the Colorado Department of Public Health to see what supplies they needed, and began coordinating donations of laboratory supplies - including materials necessary for running the tests, and personal protective equipment for the workers performing them. Similar efforts are being coordinated more broadly by my professional organization, the RNA Society.
In Seattle, graduate students are being asked to volunteer to help prepare samples and run tests. If the same request comes through in Denver, I will be volunteering as well.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is increasing exponentially, and roughly 18% of positive cases need to be hospitalized. If everyone gets sick at once, hospitals will be overwhelmed, and many people will die needlessly. U.S. cases are about 10 days behind Italy, where this week, the entire country is on lockdown and hospitals in Lombardy are running out of space, supplies, and protective gear. If you are reading this email, I urge you to help protect medical staff, immunocompromised people, people over 60, and others at risk by 1) limiting your contact with other people as much as possible through social distancing, and 2) washing your hands. For me this week, that meant postponing a research collaboration on the biology of coronavirus until whenever our lab reopens. That's how important it is to slow the spread of this disease right now.
Working together, we can help flatten the curve of new cases so that we don't overwhelm our healthcare system, and provide more time for researchers and doctors to understand which treatments work best for the people who are most sick. As extreme as closing offices, schools, businesses, and places of worship may seem, not physically interacting with other people is the best way to buy time as the number of cases continues to increase.
On a personal level, Jake and I have:
Stocked up on roughly 3 weeks of food to minimize the number of trips we need to make to the store
Gotten 3 month supplies of all prescriptions for us and the dogs
We already own a watch that can measure blood oxygen, or else we would have bought an inexpensive pulse oximeter
In the event that we get sick, we will be calling our doctors' offices to get permission to be tested at Colorado's drive-through testing site, and avoiding ERs unless we have a pulse oximeter reading below 90% oxygen saturation. The most common early symptoms of coronavirus infection are fever, followed by a dry cough.
This situation is going to get substantially worse before it gets better. As the crisis continues, peddlers of conspiracy theories and snake oil will try to enrich themselves off of all our fears, just as people are already trying to make a quick buck by buying up pallets of hand sanitizer to resell. I urge you all to be skeptical and consult trusted sources (like the websites of your public health department, or the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center), and to vote for politicians with the courage to put public safety and scientific expertise before politics. Most importantly, if you have any ability to cancel events with >25 people in the next few weeks, please do not wait for someone else to tell you to cancel. If you manage employees or volunteers, insist that they stay home if sick — and do what you can to make sure they can afford to do so.
I hope this email finds you well. Take care of yourselves and the people you care about.
