Science Education
Bioethics Panel
During March, our team hosted a roundtable bioethics panel to discuss the ethics of COVID-19. On one hand, with the wave of debates on coronavirus, we wanted to provide a space where people can share their opinions. On the other hand, we wanted to use the feedback to further shape our approach to integrated human practice. We pinpointed down three discussion points: quarantine, different cultural perspectives, and media coverage.
On the topic of quarantine, our discussion on an individual’s civil responsibility versus individual freedom helped us see the complexity of the topic of testing. During March, the world has not fully registered the severity of Covid-19. Therefore, our attendees have varied stances on whether an individual should sacrifice his/her individual freedom. As the virus outbreak unfortunately unfolds, we realized that the public needs to know that prevention methods such as social distancing and wearing masks is absolutely necessary in combating the outbreak. We saw a need to educate our community on the importance of following virus prevention methods. Thus, we tried to spread awareness by teaching TAS students and local school students.
In our panel, we also discussed the cultural impact of the virus outbreak. Specifically, we touched upon Western versus Eastern attitudes toward masks and the cultural implications behind them. Our attendees mentioned and discussed about the multiple xenophobic responses toward Asians tha occurred around March. From this, we realized just how complicated topics regarding the virus outbreak are. Ethical issues regarding race and culture play a huge role in influencing an individual’s decisions during the outbreak. Later when we did our marketing plan, we were mindful of the factor of race when selecting a target market. We hope that our discussion also helped our attendees see how diversity is heavily involved in the outbreak.
Besides moral dilemmas, we also talked about practical dilemmas such as material distribution and hogging behaviors of masks. Our attendees provided multiple perspectives on the incentives behind an individual’s hogging behavior. With this conversation, we realized that our test kit would need to address the problem with distribution, a topic which we also address with our marketing plan.
Regarding media coverage, a lot of the attendees express that they wanted the government to be transparent with the public without having the media spread too much fear. Our attendees’ responses led us to start looking into the government's role in this pandemic. Government’s organization for testing has been proven to be crucial in controlling the caseloads. With our knowledge of test kits, we wanted to help improve the government's policy regarding testing. Thus, we reached out several experts in Taiwan and Mrs. Athena Hollins in the United States and wrote a policy brief.
This bioethics panel has, in many ways, helped inform our HP research.
9th Grade Health Education + PSA
To educate our community on the importance of prevention measures, we created a health lesson plan for 9th grade health classes.
We started off our presentation with a simple game of "3 Truths and 1 Lie" to test the kids if they could figure out the common misconceptions surrounding COVID-19.
We then continued by introducing a few facts regarding the period of time it takes to develop a vaccine. We began to go more in depth with the trojan horse analogy that explains how viruses are transmitted. With this topic, we then revealed the different ways one can prevent themselves from both contracting and transmitting the virus.
We also mentioned why wearing a mask is essential and showed a video of how far a person’s cough can travel, which is roughly 27 feet. In addition to that, we talked about the importance of washing hands. To visualize this, we displayed a set of images that portrays the bacteria load on one’s hands when a person washes their hands for 6 seconds versus 30 seconds. Needless to say, washing your hands for 30 seconds drastically decreased the amount of bacteria on the person’s hand. Spreading awareness about prevention methods was what our presentation was targeting, and we are glad that we got the message across with the 9th grade health lesson.
To further spread our message, we made the presentation into a public service announcement video which we distributed around the school. We also posted the video on our instagram account, so more people can learn the significance of COVID-19 prevention.
Local School Health Education
In addition to teaching our school community about the importance of Covid-19 prevention methods, we also reached out to two local elementary schools. We believed that it is crucial for our local community, especially kids, to understand the reasons behind wearing masks and washing hands.
For our lesson with the first graders, we came up with the analogy of the “undercover cop” and “surveillance camera” versus the “unbeatable thief” to explain the role of vaccines and test kits in combating viruses. The first graders surprised us with how much knowledge they have on COVID-19. They all understood the dangers of the virus, and thus they were able to understand our “unbeatable thief” analogy for the virus. Throughout the lesson, the first graders actively engaged in the lesson plan and asked a lot of questions regarding the virus.
For our lesson with 6th graders, besides teaching the principles of viruses, we also wanted to introduce the concept of synthetic biology to them. We came up with a “candy factory” analogy in an attempt to explain the central dogma, which includes replication, transcription, and translation of DNA. Using an interactive candy-packing activity, we hope to help the students better visualize the processes of transcription and translation.
When we had another opportunity to teach 4th graders, besides just teaching them the roles of viruses and vaccines, we also explained to them the process of developing vaccines to help them gain a better understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. Through this, we introduced them to the basic concepts of central dogma. Seeing the relevance of synthetic biology in the context of COVID-19, the students were able to understand the central dogma much better.
By the end of the lessons, the students were able to reiterate the importance of vaccines, wearing masks, and social distancing in relation to coronavirus. Using these educational interactive opportunities, we also learned more about what our community knows and doesn’t know, which helps inform our human practice approach.
Survey Trip
In order to gain a better understanding of what the public thinks regarding test kits in general, as well as make people think about the role of test kits the team decided to travel the streets of Taipei on 6/25 to acquire survey results. We did our survey trip on the day of a national holiday when students and business people would be available on the streets, which increases the diversity of our surveyed population. To get a good mix of people in terms of their socioeconomic class, age, and gender, we chose popular shopping and transit areas in Taipei as our locations for doing the survey.
In addition to asking pedestrians to help fill out our survey, we released the survey online and yielded about 2100 results. As more than 80% of our survey was done in Taiwan, we sent our survey to Team Vilnius in an attempt to diversify our survey location and population. Vilnius helped us acquire 22 responses from Vilnius, and, although the number of survey is not enough for us to do significant data comparison between countries, it was interesting for us to see how the responses done in Vilnius differed from the responses done in Taiwan.
After analyzing the survey, we summarized that the majority of our respondents would like a home test kit, which validates our approach in developing a home test kit. We further explore how to implement our project in the real world through developing a marketing plan.
China Post
We reached out to The China Post and published an article explaining the current landscape of test kits by providing an overview of the successes and shortcomings of current detection methods. We first established that test kits are important in that they provide vital information to governments to enact policies to combat the spread of the virus. Then, we introduced and analyzed popular current methods like antigen, antibody, and molecular tests based on how the FDA classifies test kits. In the end, we elaborated on how our project can address these shortcomings and bring positive change, such as how our test kit is portable and more affordable and accurate, which are all crucial in this age of COVID-19.
ICRT
We also got interviewed by bilingual radio station ICRT, where we shared essential information about current detection methods as well as where to look for the reliable information to stay updated. The anchor further asked us to talk about our project, where we emphasized how our product is portable, affordable, and yields a colorimetric readout. Initially, Derek described how and why Viral Spiral is a significant and practical improvement upon other test kits, allowing the anchor to ask about potential applications. Wilson responded by positing a grand vision of having everyone test themselves at home with reliable instruments. Lastly, Justin also briefly explained various test kits on the market, including antibody, antigen, and molecular tests as well clarified where to look for reliable information regarding the epidemic, where he demonstrated trust in government-associated websites, like the FDA website. The recording of our interview is here.
News Lens International
We submitted an article to New Lens discussing the importance of at-home test kits and how they can resolve issues posed by hospital and clinic visits for receiving tests. We also elaborated that the status of at-home test kits has been further elevated during such circumstances since people are quarantined at home and public medical resources are getting depleted, both making trips to hospitals more difficult. We introduced and analyzed the pros and cons of common at-home test kits, such as the lateral flow immunoassay as well as swabbing oneself at home with a nasal swab and then sending the sample to laboratories for a PCR test. Then, we segwayed into how Viral Spiral addresses these shortcomings by combining the strengths of the two test kits mentioned above for the sake of yielding more accurate results via a less taxing process of testing.
