Enlist Your PC to Help Fight Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Your gaming (or performance) PC, that beautiful money pit gleaming and humming on your desk… It could actually help fight coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19. So that’s definitely some surprising good news in a sea of bad.

It’s made possible through Folding@Home. Folding@Home is a distributed computational project founded by the Pande Lab at Stanford University.

So instead of exploring ancient ruins or mowing down baddies in a haze of Mountain Dew and Doritos this weekend, you and your machine can actually fight something real.

A Quick Recap of the Pandemic

COVID-19, a cousin of the SARS virus, began as an outbreak in Wuhan, China. COVID-19 and SARS are both members of the of the coronavirus group of viruses. These viruses are common among animals, and are very rarely transmitted to humans. In the rare cases they are, the viruses are considered zoonotic.

Since the December outbreak in Wuhan, COVID-19 has quickly spread to officially become a global pandemic. With cruise ships stranded, theme parks shut down. Virtually all large events and major sporting events postponed or cancelled entirely. We’re all stuck at home.

All in an effort to help control the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

If you’ve been to the grocery store in the past few days, you’ve likely seen the completely barren shelves. Canned goods, pasteurized food, anything with a long shelf–life (and yes, toilet paper too) have been totally cleaned out.

According to Johns Hopkins University, by mid-Saturday (March 14) the number of confirmed cases worldwide surpassed 150,000 and more than 5,700 people have died.

Are you still bummed that you’re stuck inside all weekend? Then put that time to good use.

You Can Help Fight Coronavirus Right Now

Folding@Home recently deployed new COVID-19 coronavirus projects and they’re ready to be matched.

And, as luck would have it, gaming-grade PC’s are very good at plowing though difficult computational tasks like the ones Folding@Home needs executed.

First, on your computer, install the app from the Folding@Home download page and follow the on-screen prompts. Installers exist for Mac, Windows, and popular Linux distros.

The Folding@Home team now has a number of projects specific to COVID-19 coronavirus. Check out the PC Master Race thread for the latest CPU and GPU coronovirus projects.

Getting a passkey isn’t required, but is recommended. You can enter it on the initial setup, or leave it blank and do it later. Once the program is opened, go to Configure, and enter your passkey there.

Folding@Home has been around for a while. It uses distributed processing power to tackle all sorts of diseases, so there is currently no way to choose which specific projects your computer works on. It’s simply contributing to the whole.

That being said, it would be hard to complain if your computer, say, ended up curing cancer instead of COVID-19.

The computing resources you’re lending can be turned off at any time if you need them back to game a little bit.

Combat the Virus in an IRL Battle

Yours may be a small contribution to help the fight against coronavirus and other deadly diseases, but it’s a very real one. Distributed computing projects like Folding@Home can harness under–utilized computing resources from all over. If we can help scientists learn more about the diseases they study, then we can help them develop preventative immunizations and cures.