Scientist Loses 8 Years of Research Work Due to Failed Generator in Covid-19, Shares Heartbreaking Tale

The pandemic hasn’t been easy for anyone, stuck in homes, being laid off, pay-cuts, not being able to see your loved ones, and more importantly, staying safe from an invisible virus.

The death toll for the pandemic has reached 2.49 million, the personal loss and collateral damage of the pandemic has been unaccountable.

A scientist on Twitter shared one such heart-wrenching story, where her life’s work was ruined beyond the point of saving.

Dr. Pascale Guiton, who is an Assistant Professor at CSUEB wrote in a Twitter thread how the lack of a generator led her 8 years of research going getting ruined in times of Covid-19.

“Devastated, but resilient is my word of the day. Starting over as if I never had a lab; the hardest day of my life. Throwing away 8 years of work b/c the institution could not turn on the damn generator and of course we were not made aware. No parasite, no cells; backups gone!”

She further explains why the freezer for her work needed to stay on: “What do I do, now? Lost all my cells because of COVID, we couldn’t refill our LN tank and we had two days to scramble. So moved my cells to -80C and froze growing parasites (they can stay at -80C for a couple of months.) keep trying to grow them, no growth.” She adds how it isn’t completely a natural disaster responsible, “Electricity keeps going off, no backup generator (as in they don’t turn it on), cycle of freeze-thaw, my incubators were off, and my last hope ditched! I am so done … this can’t be true… I can’t stop crying … There wasn’t a hurricane, a fire, or any natural disaster… just failure to communicate… I can’t process it…” she wrote.

She ended her thread with what seemed like resolute defeat – and mentioned maybe she should just shut down the labratory.

Her thread went viral, with almost 4 thousand retweets, and 35 thousand likes. In a later tweet, she mentioned she saw the replies, and planned to keep on going.