Volunteers help fight disease by testing new vaccine
SEATTLE — The first people to roll up their sleeves to receive an experimental vaccine for the coronavirus say they were inspired to help because they wanted to do more to fight the disease than wash their hands and work from home.
Three of the study participants spoke this week following the trial’s first injections in Seattle. They said the shots were no more painful than an ordinary season flu vaccine.
Some will get higher dosages than others to test how strong the dose should be. They will be checked for side effects and have their blood tested to determine whether the vaccine is revving up their immune systems.
The volunteers said they weren’t acting in hopes of protecting themselves. They understand their role is a small part of what could be an 18month hunt for a successful shot that could be distributed widely.
They work in the tech industry and in health research. Two have children, and all three are working from home to slow the spread of COVID19.
They are a 43yearold operations manager at a small tech company, a 46yearold network engineer at Microsoft and a 25yearold editorial coordinator at an independent global health research center at the University of Washington.
Jennifer Haller, 43, works as an operations manager at a small tech company that normally runs out of a shared working space in Seattle. She learned of the vaccine study through Facebook on March 3, the day Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute started recruiting.
Neal Browning, 46, lives in Bothell, Wash., north of Seattle, with his fiancee and their daughters. He works as a network engineer at Microsoft, one of the first companies to require its employees to work remotely.
Rebecca Sirull, 25, moved to
Seattle from the Boston area in December to work as editorial coordinator for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
She joined the vaccine study as “a way to contribute to the situation in a positive way, considering, you know, the main guidelines that we all have right now are to stay home and do nothing, which is sort of a hard message to hear when you want to help out.”