The Unpredictable Nature of Life

I am halfway through my 5th week of working from home because of COVID-19. When I first looked at the spreading of the virus, I didn't think it would get this bad in the United States. You could say that my predictions were a bit off. Anyone who remembers the movie Jurassic Park learned that "life finds a way." Unfortunately that is true with pandemics but it is also true with us humans.

I read an interesting article today about how the number of respirators that New York City needs is less than they projected. I'm glad to see that I am not the only one making prediction mistakes. Yesterday I read that the Governor of California sent several hundred respirators to New York on loan. One silver lining behind this world-wide pandemic is that we are learning that we can help each other and that is surprising a lot of people.

I think the idea of us helping each other is something nobody predicted. Last week I got an e-mail from MatterHackers asking if I would donate items printed on my 3D printer. I have a rather basic printer that is not very fast but I jumped at the idea of helping those around me. I added my name to the list and 2 days later got an e-mail with a specific item to help print: personal protective face shields. They gave me specific instructions including the STL file of what they wanted printed. Once I accepted the assignment I became responsible for slicing the design (putting it in a format my printer understood so I could print it), providing all of the raw materials, and committing to making 30 shields. It only takes my printer an hour to do each one and my printer has been running non-stop for the past 2 days. Ok, I did have to stop at midnight last night so I could go to sleep but then I woke up at 6:30 this morning and got it going again. I should be done with my batch around 3am tonight and I will ship the shields out tomorrow morning. They will head to California where they will be distributed to a hospital that will accept this particular design.

I am not the only one helping with this project as the goal is to provide 10,000 shields. MatterHackers is not the only organization helping out either. I have a buddy in California that is doing something similar for another group. He has three 3-D printers and all of them are being kept busy printing personal protection equipment for hospitals.

Yes COVID-19 is a nasty virus that has a long incubation period and is very contagious. Yes people are dying around the world. However we also have some really smart people working to limit the spread. We also have a lot of people banding together and helping each other. In all of the bad news, there is some really good news and I attribute it all to the unpredictable nature of life.