The open source code portal of Github is what the founders of the internet had in mind with their idealistic visions of a collaborative digital matrix allowing individuals to maintain their autonomy, and working groups to remain innovative, with no risk of devolving into a counterproductive hive mind. While the world is transfixed with politics and divisiveness rallying social media traffic, and social media traffic prompting toxic interactions worthy of a Falcon Crest tryst enticing and raising the blood pressure of 1980’s housewives (Yes, historical perspective should be taken into account when judging human behavior defined by social morays of the time period, instead of visceral platitudes), researchers, coders, and thinkers are working tirelessly under the radar to make the world a better place.
While the numerous Bitcoin forks are typically associated with Github’s ecosystem, the platform allows the free market to proliferate in ideas that span the entire gamut of disciplines from the software, through the hard sciences, and even touching the philosophical genre. Within this environment, a group of Stanford student researchers drafted a team of academic and real world application all-stars in a valiant attempt to reverse engineer the Moderna vaccine, and crack the code of the mRNA sequences weaved and helixed in an apparent inoculation in assisting the immune system to prevent severe Covid-19 symptoms.
In world that is starving for happy endings in the realm of hard news, the researchers accomplished the monumental feat, reports The Scientist.com, and shared their findings for the world to see through a Github thread. The championship dynasty of future genetic all-stars of immunology, extracted the information from tiny droplets of the Moderna compound from discarded vials, and compiled a three page whitepaper with the entire sequence public for the entire globe to see. The team first received permission from the FDA to examine the remnants, but in attempting to contact the pharmaceutical giant and alert the corporation of the news, not surprisingly, received no response.
While the news went viral on niche and tech sites, the mainstream media curiously buried the content, and while the UK’s Guardian ran with two headlines, there were crickets from the Fox News, New York Times, and CNN’s of the world. It is no secret that advertising revenue generated from lucrative campaigns featuring pills that have a wide array of applications dominates television commercial breaks, as the baby boomers proportionally dominate the traditional television format programming numbers. As the big networks chose to air on the side of caution, an uplifting narrative was deliberately ignored in an industry that long ago traded objectivity for sensationalism and dizzying revenue.
Interestingly, the non-socialized medicine supply chain of FDA approved drugs is miraculously efficient as the urban legend tells of the skier being delivered a blue pill on the top of the mountain after receiving word that his lover had arrived at the lodge. Both Australia and Canada endured massive headaches in distributing all three vaccine types to the populace, as bureaucrats make lousy commercialized logistical professionals, and even lousier business people.
At this juncture in the pandemic, the unknowns far outweigh the unknowns, as the long term physiological and psychological effects on society and individuals are unpredictable, and though some self-proclaimed experts insist that the mRNA “breakthrough” is a veritable miracle, and those battling possible complications from the vaccines continue to be discredited. An anomaly is only an anomaly, until it hits home.
The underappreciated efforts of the Stanford squad and others allow data from all angles to be correlated and processed, and allow for the continuation of free will, as citizens are provided ample data in making an objective decision, separated from propaganda and emotion.