A sandbox is a safety mechanism that provides an isolated environment to allow a new program before its official launch to operate within a virtual or simulated environment so that the impact on the formal operating system can be fully examined and assessed. A new program needs to first pass through the tests in the sandbox before it can be executed in the formal production system. This process is often used on those programs which have “untrusted sources” or are considered “destructive”, “intention undetermined” or “unpredictable”.

The massive roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccination program is similar to the scenario of a sandbox, where experiments and tests are conducted within a reality that is comparable to simulation. In the face of Covid-19, whether biotechnology can provide a verifiable safety mechanism is yet unknown and requires the test of time. Before this outcome can be verified, what is clear as the readable result of the test, for now, is only the political problems of humankind.

SANDBOX（沙盒）是一種安全機制，為電腦作業系統中提供隔離環境，讓將要正式運作的新程式，能先在一個虛擬或模擬的環境裡試運行，以檢測程式可能對正式作業環境的影響。新程式必須先通過沙盒裡的測試才能移到正式環境執行，而那些也通常是「來源不可信」、「具破壞力」、「無法判定意圖」或「難以預測」等程式。

大型COVID-19疫苗接種場域，宛如沙盒般，於實境中進行類似模擬空間裡的實驗檢測。面對COVID-19的世界，生技科學能否帶來真確的安全機制尚不可知，仍須更多時間試煉，在結果確認前，反倒先被檢測出的，是人類的政治問題而已。