I’m never one to shirk a new experience. So when I saw on a work slack channel the opportunity to sign up for phase III clinical trials for another Covid vaccine, I jumped. I didn’t pause to Google the particular vaccine I was signing up for. I didn’t consider how to use the trial to “game” the vaccination system to get my shot sooner. I didn’t send the decision to my forebrain to consider the options. I sent out my resume in a heartbeat.

OK, I didn’t send a resume. Just an email. And it didn’t even include my LinkedIn profile. But I did send it out that fast.

I was as anxious as a teen applying to an Ivy League college – wanting, hoping, (almost praying) I’d get in. Was I old enough? Was I exposed enough? Was I too white, Northern European/privileged? They were signing up 30,000 people STAT and I had no red flags. Two days and two hour-long screening calls later I found myself at Beth Israel Deconness hospital getting myself weighed and indoctrinated.

Upon arrival I swapped out my personal mask for a BI-issued mask in cheery yellow. I made my way to the sixth floor research clinic and where I checked in and got a second mask – this one a familiar blue. Things moved quickly, and I waited in an exam room to meet the first of about ten researchers/nurses and staff after donning my last-but-not-least, pale red (red for research) surgical mask.

I’ve been involved with science research of some form or another for many, many decades, but a clinical trial is a special kind of special indeed. I didn’t have to take time off work, but I would have gladly traded in a half day of vacation for even just the experience of getting set up for the trial. I was so impressed with everything; the attention to every detail (all 30,000+ participants had the same thermometer for measuring our temperature each night); the thoroughness of keeping it double-blind: not even the person who gave me my shot knew if I had the vaccine or the placebo.

Anyone who thinks the people developing vaccines are in it for the money should have the chance to be in a phase III clinical trial. Every person I met was so thoughtful, so passionate about helping people. Everyone told me again and again how I was helping, how important people like me were. Everyone I met reminded me of the idealistic twenty-year-old college student I was. Every. Single. One.

The trial I’m in is for a Novavax vaccine (see below). It’s an older vaccine technology, the sort that doesn’t need special handling and will be manufactured and distributed in countries in Africa and South America. So I feel like I am doing my little bit for the rest of the world.

The trial runs for two years or until 100 people in either the control or the placebo group come down with Covid (that’s the amount that’s needed in a trial this size to prove efficacy). If I’m given the opportunity to have one of the approved vaccines, I plan on waiting until the trial is over. Gotta love big data. So it really is kind of a selfless act.

Since my religious bent is Humanist, this is almost a spiritual act. Every night I fulfill my ritual – taking my temperature, reporting any symptoms in the app on my phone. Stay tuned for the results of the study – I’ll share as soon as I know.

You can bet if I’m offered the chance to be a vaccine guinea pig again, I will jump.