Did Folding@HOME or other distributed computing projects actually make a significant difference in the creation of COVID vaccines?
Like many, when I heard about Folding@HOME and how I could contribute to the fight against COVID, I put my hardware to work. Now that's it has been a while, what effect did those projects ultimately have on the outcome? Did it actually help with the creation of vaccines, or was it effectively just a massive waste of energy?
How did I completely miss this, the video linked in another comment does a decent job of explaining. Is there anything like this currently going on for other research elsewhere? Would love to get involved.