“You could say that civil society is what unimpaired mutual aid creates; or that civil society is the condition and mutual aid the activity that produces it.” – Rebecca Solnit, from A Paradise Built in Hell
[my notes at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/07/notes-on-rebecca-solnits-paradise-built.html]
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Mutual Aid Networks
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/03/16/1927820/-Mutual-Aid-Networks
Mutual Aid & Social Capital: The Power of Communities, Networks from Howard Rheingold, based upon the syllabus of a course he used to teach at Stanford on social media and including recent links to mutual aid networks forming to deal with Covid19 (which he will update)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/34918526
More national links
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/03/now-time-all-good-folks-come-aid-their
Intellihelp group from Facebook – only ask and give posts
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1061901284171597/about/
Autonomous Groups Mobilizing Mutual Aid Initiatives
https://itsgoingdown.org/autonomous-groups-are-mobilizing-mutual-aid-initiatives-to-combat-the-coronavirus/
https://www.mutualaidhub.org
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j8ADhLEuKNDZ1a_opmzudywJPKMXcNKu01V1xY2MiIA/edit – how to neighborhood pod
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-QfMn1DE6ymhKZMpXN1LQvD6Sy_HSnnCK6gTO7ZLFrE/mobilebasic – pod mapping for mutual aid
While at Home – Stay up to date on tools, resources, and supports made necessary during this time. #WhileAtHome is a clearinghouse for credible information and action steps. Bobak Emamian, DeRay Mckesson, William Donahoe, Chris Meyers, Nicky Chulo, Pawel Piekarski, Frank Chi, Nicholas Fulstra & Maestra.
https://whileathome.org
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“Foldit is a revolutionary crowdsourcing computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research” through playing through the possibilities of protein folding.
Here are some of the current Coronavirus puzzles interested citizens can help scientists solve:
https://fold.it/portal/node/2009239
Name: 1817: Coronavirus ORF6 Prediction
Status: Active
Created: 03/26/2020
Expires: 04/02/2020 – 23:00
Difficulty: Intermediate
Description: Refold this coronavirus protein! This protein is encoded in the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2, in a region called ORF6, but the protein’s structure is still unknown. Evidence suggests this protein inhibits the natural immune response, helping the virus survive and replicate. If we knew how this protein folds, we might be able to figure out exactly how it inhibits the immune system. The puzzle’s starting structure shows SS predictions from PSIPRED, and hints which parts of the protein might fold into helices or sheets. Refold this protein to find high-scoring solutions, which will tell us how this protein is most likely to fold!
Sequence:
MFHLVDFQVTIAEILLIIMRTFKVSIWNLDYIINLIIKNLSKSLTENKYSQLDEEQPMEID
Categories: Overall, Prediction
https://fold.it/portal/node/2009259
Name: 1818: Coronavirus Binder Design: Round 5
Status: Active
Created: 03/27/2020
Points: 100
Expires: 04/03/2020 – 23:00
Difficulty: Intermediate
Description: Design a binder against coronavirus! We’re challenging players to design an antiviral protein that could bind to the 2019 coronavirus spike protein and disrupt viral infection. The starting structure is a solution designed by spvincent in our previous Round 2 puzzle. This solution makes an excellent interface with the target, but we’re concerned that the binder may not fold properly. Our predictions suggest that the two sheets in this solution will not fold up as designed. We’re asking Foldit players to try and improve this design so that it folds up correctly and can bind to the target! Players also have freedom to redesign an entirely new solution from scratch.
In late 2019, a new highly-infections virus emerged out of Wuhan, China. This virus belongs to the coronavirus family, and is similar to the virus that caused the SARS epidemic in 2002. Coronaviruses display a “spike” protein on their surface, which binds tightly to a receptor protein found on the surface of human cells. Once the coronavirus spike binds to the human receptor, the virus can infect the human cell and replicate. In recent weeks, researchers have determined the structure of the 2019 coronavirus spike protein and how it binds to human receptors. If we can design a protein that binds to this coronavirus spike protein, it could be used to block the interaction with human cells and halt infection!
In this puzzle, players are presented with the binding site of the coronavirus spike protein. The backbone and most of the sidechains are completely frozen, except for flexible sidechains at the binding site, where the spike normally interacts with the human receptor. Players can design a new protein that binds to these sidechains, blocking interactions with the human receptor. Successful binder designs will need to make lots of hydrophobic contacts and H-bonds with the flexible sidechains at the binding site. But designs will also need to have lots of secondary structure (helices or sheets) and a large core, so that they fold up correctly! See the puzzle comments for Objective details.
Categories: Design, Overall
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MIT COVID19 Challenge – Beat the Pandemic Hackathon
Friday, April 3 at 6:00pm – Sunday, April 5
Online
RSVP at https://covid19challenge.mit.edu
We invite you to attend the MIT COVID-19 Challenge event, Beat the Pandemic, a series of virtual hackathons. The next event is April 3-5, 2020. In this 48-hour virtual event, we will help tackle the most critical unmet needs caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Participants will form teams on Friday, April 3rd to hone down on the problems, generate solutions, including proof of concepts, prototypes, and preliminary vision for execution. On Sunday, April 5th, teams will reconvene to present their work. After the weekend, the best ideas and teams will have the opportunity to co-develop and implement their solution with the support of our partners.

For more information and to apply as a participant, please check out our website: https://covid19challenge.mit.edu
The MIT COVID-19 Challenge is proud to be supported by organizations including the MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, MIT Hacking Medicine, MIT Innovation Initiative, MIT Sloan Healthcare Club, Digital Medicine Society, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Netherlands Innovation Network, MassBio, and many more.
We hope to see you (virtually) at the event!
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COVID-19 Matchmaking: NE Institutional food, resources, labor, technical assistance
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hxTCuFVUCv4ad-_VlOGhOsDcYmwLXMkm5chzRF6wODM/edit#gid=877771653
Community gardening groups are studying how to continue gardening in the time of COVID19 and how to expand food production using the model of WWII Victory Gardens which provided up to 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed on the Home Front, not Homeland, by 1945 from a standing start in 1942.
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Corona Virus Tech Handbook
https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/home
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Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies
https://www.facebook.com/groups/670932227050506/
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UN global call to creatives
https://www.talenthouse.com/i/united-nations-global-call-out-to-creatives-help-stop-the-spread-of-covid-19
Global open call for COVID19 art from Amplifier
https://community.amplifier.org/campaign/global-open-call-for-art/
Virtual Art Project (VAP-IT!)
https://sgimproviz.wixsite.com/virtualartproject
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CovidActNow.org (https://covidactnow.org) was created by a team of data scientists, engineers, and designers in partnership with epidemiologists, public health officials, and political leaders to help understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect their region.
This tool is built to enable political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling.
We built this tool to answer critically important questions such as:
What will the impact be in my region be and when can I expect it?
How long until my hospital system is under severe pressure?
What is my menu of interventions, and how will they address the spread of Coronavirus?
I’m piecing together a tool for browsing real-time data, for use by researchers and public officials. I’m using open-source tools and data already being published in tabular form in various places.
It’s slow going because data like this is amazingly noisy and it’s important to avoid distortions and biases introduced by faulty technology. That means lots of manual curation is needed, at least at the beginning.
Just as a tiny example, the US Census Bureau and US Bureau of Standards defines a set of numeric identifiers called “FIPS Codes”. A list of the 42K or so FIPS entities and their codes is available from the USCB website (a FIPS entity is a state, several kind of counties, and tens of thousands cities, towns, villages, parishes, reservations, and so on). That list is a great resource for interpreting data sources that identify infection rates by state, county, town, and so on.
There were at one time 14 counties in Massachusetts. The state abolished eight of those between 1997 and 2000. Of course, the cities and towns in those counties still exist, as do the voluminous records for them. Nevertheless, the “exhaustive” enumeration published by the USCB includes only the six counties that still exist — there is no listing for the eight former counties. The entries for the hundreds of cities and towns still reference the FIPS Codes for the old counties, but there’s no entry for them. Middlesex County, for example, had a state FIPS code of 25 and a county FIPS code of 017. The published infection data (many from government sources) for counties still includes data for 25017 (the FIPS code for Middlesex County, MA). That data can be successfully tied to the database ONLY after the missing counties are synthesized from other sources.
Anyway, this project is how I’m hoping to make a contribution to the greater good.
Counties without governments are still used a geographic designations so I’m surprised the data cannot be sorted as such.
I found more recent documents on the USCB web site that has what I need.
So I’m skimming your post and asking you to DM me with any N95 hookups. Really appreciate it!
I’m making my own masks out of paper towels and cloth so I have no n95 mask information but I’ll add your request to the list. But we have to do it on the QT unless Jared Kushner finds out and appropriates them all to sell them at 100s of times the usual cost.
If anyone needs organic gardening tips — community or personal, lemme know….
I should have a post about food, agriculture, and COVID19 soon.
Unfortunately, after a long history as a community gardener, my green thumb turned black and nothing grows for me any longer.