Tag: Coronavirus

Pandemic Diary, August 3rd, 2021: Delta Blues

Well, it is now been a month and a half since my second vaccination, and I am heartened by reading recent research reports which show that the AstraZeneca/Pfizer combination is highly effective against the coronavirus!

I am happy to report that I have been able to visit my mother and stepfather in their seniors life-lease condo across town, give them big hugs, and even stay for supper! And last week, I finally went and got my hair cut, something I have not done since January of 2020! Yes, I am no longer rocking a ponytail!

Things are slowly, very slowly returning to something closer to normal. I’m still working from my apartment four out of five days of the week, however, and my library remains closed. My university is planning to offer a hybrid of remote and in-class learning come September (classes with fewer than 20 students will be held in person, with face masks and social distancing, while larger classes will continue to be held online and remotely).

Unlike Alberta and Saskatchewan to the west, which have already lifted their mask mandates and essentially all restrictions, Manitoba is still operating under a series of partial restrictions after a disastrous third wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths which, for a time, was the worst hotspot in all of North America.

However, the Manitoba government will begin to lift some restrictions starting next Saturday, given that our vaccination program is proceeding swiftly, indeed ahead of schedule! CBC News reported today:

As of Tuesday, 80 per cent of eligible Manitobans ages 12 and up had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the news release said. The province expects to reach 75 per cent with two doses within the next week.

Those numbers were set out in the province’s reopening plan as targets for the Labour Day long weekend in September.

Contrast Manitoba with the truly lamentable and avoidable situation in the U.S., where only half the population has been fully vaccinated, and the highly-contagious Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has led to a surge of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the unvaccinated in places such as Florida.

It’s clear that COVID-19 still has the capacity to throw a few curve balls at us. Stay healthy, get fully vaccinated, stay home if you can, and stay safe!

Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash

UPDATED! Nanome: A Brief Introduction to a Social VR Platform for Exploring Chemistry

Nanome: “The Future of Molecular Design” (VRFocus)

Virtual reality is finding application to many fields, and among them is chemistry. For example, in the spring of 2020, Harvard University used Oculus Quest VR headsets in an undergraduate-level biochemistry class to help students to observe, manipulate, and build molecules and explore the shapes of proteins and drug compounds. (Here’s a link to the recently-published paper in the Journal of Chemical Education. Unfortunately, you’ll have to buy the full-text article, or get a copy via your local public or university library. Remember, librarians are your friends!)

VR use in chemistry is not just for students learning about the basics of chemistry, however; it also has application to research scientists working in the laboratory. A good example of how social VR can be used in cutting-edge, collaborative chemistry research is Nanome, a startup co-founded in 2015 by some engineering students at University of California San Diego, who saw a need for 3D visualization tools to help medicinal and computational chemists and structural biologists reduce their time to market and increase the efficacy of new drugs (a process that can cost billions of dollars per drug).

Nanome recently announced the closure of a successful funding round raising $3 million from several venture capital firms:

“Since our founding, we’ve had a compelling vision about what scientific collaboration should look like and a goal to equip our real-life superheroes — scientists who are discovering ways to combat disease, address climate change and improve people’s lives — with an intuitive virtual interface where they can experiment, design and learn at the nanoscale,” said Steve McCloskey, Nanome CEO and Founder in a statement. “We made huge strides toward realizing that vision in 2020, and this funding gives us firepower to increase our impact, support more research initiatives and continue to revolutionize biotech and scientific research.”

Initially starting as a visualization tool to facilitate research and development by medicinal and computational chemists and structural biologists, Nanome has grown as an open platform for virtual collaboration. During the pandemic organizations have used Nanome’s platform “to assess candidate molecules’ ability to bind viral proteins in 3D,” the company notes.

In fact, Nanome became the first American company to join a coordinated supercomputing project funded by the European Union (EU) Commission to screen chemical libraries for potential activity against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19! (Here’s the press release.)

Nanome is being used in the search for drugs to fight COVID-19

And the best part is, you can try Nanome out for free! Nanome is free to download for personal use via Steam, Viveport, SideQuest, and the Oculus store, supporting the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index headsets. For academic or commercial use there are various licensing structures; for more details, visit the pricing page on their website.

For more information on Nanome, visit their website or follow the company on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. I will be adding Nanome to my ever-expanding comprehensive list of social VR and virtual worlds.

UPDATE July 9th, 2021: Here’s an interesting article about Nanome, from a website called LabCompare: VR for Science: Drug Discovery and More in the Virtual World, with some great illustrations!

UPDATE Oct. 14th, 2021: A Spt. 7th, 2021 Wall Street Journal article by Sara Castellanos titled Virtual Reality Puts Drug Researchers Inside the Molecules They Study (original; archived version) is a highly recommended read if you want to learn more about Nanome and how it is being used in research.

Pandemic Diary, June 20th, 2021: Vaccinated, But Exhausted

Late yesterday afternoon, I drove downtown to the Winnipeg Convention Centre to receive my second COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer). This morning, I am feeling tired and have some muscle aches (a sign that my body is responding to the shot), so I am taking it easy. I have to wait two weeks for the shot to take full effect, and then I can relax my hyper-vigilance somewhat. I just want my pre-pandemic life back!

You will note that I have not been blogging much lately. I have been struggling with severe anxiety and depression these past few weeks. Also, I have barely left my apartment, thinking that it would be tragic if I were to become infected so close to the finish line, with the goal in sight. My self-imposed isolation only fed into my low mood. Overall, I am utterly exhausted.

So, please bear with me. I hope to be back up to full speed soon!

Pandemic Diary, May 27th, 2021: “The Worst COVID Hot Spot in North American Now is Manitoba, Canada”

*sigh*

You know things are really bad when you make the headlines of the venerable New York Times newspaper—and it’s for all the wrong reasons.

The New York Times reporting on Manitoba’s COVID-19 surge (original; archived copy)

The article reports:

The coronavirus is now spreading faster in Manitoba than in any other province or state in Canada, the United States or Mexico, with Indigenous people and people of color hit disproportionately hard.

Figures released on Wednesday show that over the last two weeks, the prairie province in the middle of Canada reported an average of 35 new cases a day per 100,000 population. Canada as a whole is averaging about 10 a day per 100,000; the United States, 7 per 100,000; and Mexico, 2 per 100,000. The next highest states or provinces are Alberta at 16 and Colorado at 15.

Yes, things are that bad.

And yes, I know that most of my blogposts over the past two weeks have been Pandemic Diary entries, as opposed to “news and views on social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse”, as the tagline of my blog states. I do apologize for that, but this blog has also been a much-needed place to vent my frustrations at how Manitoba’s response to this pandemic has been largely bungled by Premier Brian Pallister and his Progressive Conservative provincial government.

I am sitting here, having had my first Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot, upset and angry because I still do not know when I will receive my second vaccine shot, or even what vaccine I will be getting! Will I get a second AstraZeneca shot? Pfizer? Moderna? Who knows??!? It’s enough to make me tear my hair out in frustration.

So please stay tuned…I will be returning to my regular coverage of the ever-evolving metaverse marketplace soon. It’s just that things are rather chaotic and a little uncertain at the moment, and this blog reflects that.

Hold tight! We will soon resume our regularly scheduled programming 😉 and in the meantime, thank you for your continued support of this blog.