I'm one of two people on the project who aren't actively sick with COVID or were exposed to COVID, and the other guy can't work the labs. Everyone's been vaccinated, so that's at least some small comfort, but holy shit if there hasn't been a worse time for this to happen. Not in a whiny entitled "why does this extra work happen to me!" but more like "we hit a snag, everyone's sick and unable to help even if they could, and I'm vastly under-qualified to be the de facto brains of this operation." And I could keep the things running, if they were running. Instead, I'm working back from the first principles to see why/if the model doesn't work, and since I never done gaseous phase reaction like that it's straining my grasp of statistical physics. Like, the kind of SP I've been using for the last three years was almost exclusively about inert things close to absolute zero, ya know?

Oddly, this side-project is the most 'lost' I've felt since the phd programme started, so I guess it's gonna be a good exercise. Sink or swim, bitch!