Welcome to the Freethink Progress Report where we explore what the solutions of today will mean for your tomorrow.
Today we're going to talk about ventilators, vaccines and drag queens. So pretty standard Wednesday.
I'm Nick, I'm a Director of Freethink and I'm wearing a suit in my garage as a way of pretending that everything is normal. It's not working.
Bloom Energy Refurbishes Ventilators for COVID-19 Patients
Right now there's a critical shortage of ventilators needed to help COVID-19 patients fight for their lives. But help is coming from some unexpected sources.
Bloom Energy, a company that usually manufactures fuel cells recently stepped up to help refurbish hundreds of ventilators for the State of California. Bloom Energy joins the dozens of other efforts by engineers, universities, private companies to help design, build or fix existing ventilators. And soon, that list could include you.
Read the full story on Bloom Energy here.
The Montreal General Hospital Foundation is currently hosting a ventilator design challenge. So if you're looking for an outlet for your energies, this might be a way to help.
Human Challenge Trials for a COVID-19 Vaccine
There are currently numerous research projects aimed at developing a vaccine for COVID-19. But the biggest question on everyone's mind is "When is this actually gonna be available?" So Freethink's Dan Bier and I had a conversation about one group's controversial idea about how to speed up vaccine testing.
Nick Tucker: So the first question I have is just, what is human challenge trials? And how does that different from what we would typically do with you know, clinical trials or something like that?
Dan Bier: Typically, vaccine trials begin with small pilot studies to see if the vaccine has any big, immediate, adverse reactions for people. Eventually the progress onto stage three trials where you give the vaccine to large numbers of volunteers and then you wait for several months until enough people have had a chance to contract the virus out in the wild to see whether your control group that didn't get the vaccine or your test group of people who did get the vaccine, who is more likely to have contracted that disease.
This is by far, the longest and the costliest part of vaccine development. The proposal that is being discussed right now is for replacing that entire step with a two to three month human challenge trial where instead of waiting for people to be exposed out in the wild, you could use a much smaller study and give everyone the vaccine and then expose them to the actual virus. And you would learn very, very quickly how affective the vaccine is at preventing the infection.
Nick Tucker: The benefit obviously, is faster, clearer results. What are some of the potential risks?
Dan Bier: What is really unknown at this point is, what are the long-term consequences of even a mild coronavirus infection? You know, if you sign up for this trial, you are signing up to possibly be infected. There's no guarantee that the vaccine is actually going to protect you.
If we don't succeed in stopping the pandemic, everyone is very likely to be exposed to this at some point. If you take people who are likely to be exposed to it anyway, their additional risk from being exposed to it on purpose is much lower. You know, if there's something that we can do to cut off this pandemic and stop it from spreading any further, it could potentially save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives.
We're very curious about what the Freethink audience thinks about this. So drop us an email to [email protected] or comment on our Instagram or Facebook about whether or not you think the risks of human challenge trials are worth the potential rewards.
Drag Queen Story Hour
If you're not already, I'd like to suggest that you have some drag queens read stories to your kids.
As a parent, like millions of others out there, I've suddenly found myself involuntarily becoming a homeschool teacher looking for educational resources for my kid.
So let me introduce you to the Drag Queen Story Hour.
A group of amazing drag performers who are hosting online story time for kids. What I find really wonderful about this is that it demystifies and destigmatizes people who challenges our assumptions about gender. And it does so in a really family friendly way.
I think a lot of us are feeling a little isolated and cut off from the rest of the world right now but there are still great opportunities to connect and this is one of them.
That's all for today, but keep your eyes peeled for the next Freethink Progress Report.
