What you need to know
- Steve and Janet Wozniak Zoom-bombed a group of coronavirus scientists.
- They dropped in on a virtual SynBioBeta town hall.
- The pair made headlines earlier this year after suggesting they might have been the first coronavirus patients in the U.S.
Steve and Janet Wozniak dropped in on a team of scientists research coronavirus antibodies to thank them for their work.
A new Forbes report has revealed how the two have tried to assist scientists in antibody research after the became seriously ill early this year:
In December 2019, Steve Wozniak and his wife Janet took a cruise through Southeast Asia. They returned to their home in California in early January with a troubling cough."We had the worst experience you can imagine," Steve later said. Their illness began in the throat but quickly progressed into a severe lower respiratory infection with "convulsive" coughing. On January 13th, Janet was taken by ambulance to the hospital. "They did every test they could — everything they knew of — and they found nothing," Steve said. At that time, there was no test for COVID-19 available in the US.
The two have since recovered, and tests they've done with Stanford University surprisingly revealed they had not in fact had the disease despite having "all of the symptoms" and never being so sick in their entire lives. They've also done tests with UCSF professor Joe DeRisi, the results of which are still pending. The two are hopeful that they can contribute to the work in finding antibodies to COVID-19, which would be a key breakthrough in fighting the disease.
Nevertheless, the two dropped into surprise scientists at a SynBioBeta town hall:
This week, I had another chance to speak with Woz and Janet. The couple surprised the attendees of a virtual SynBioBeta town hall I organized on the topic of COVID-19 antibody research. They Zoomed in to thank the small army of biomedical scientists who have been working to help shed light on their illness — and develop antibody drugs.
Steve and Janet made headlines in the US earlier this year after suggesting that they were perhaps "patient(s) zero" in the U.S., unless the most recent set of tests reveals COVID-19 antibodies, it seems that's probably not the case.
