As you all know, I was in the Moderna study. I volunteered last July. My appointment was September 2nd and I had my first jab. Second jab was September 30th.
I convinced 2 of my friends to join the study. The conversation generally went something like this:
Quote:
"You're getting the experimental vaccine?
Yep
I don't know if I'd do that. Being a lab rat
Someone has to do this if we're going to have a vaccine.
Do they pay you?
Some
How much?
They say up to $2000
SIGN ME UP!"
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So they joined and had appointments a little later than mine.
The study was to see how effective the vaccine could be. 30,000 volunteers. 20,000 receiving the vaccine and 10,000 receiving a placebo. Double blind study, so the researchers did not know who received the vaccine, nor the patients. In the end, Moderna was shown to be 94.5% effective. FDA approved it for emergency use in December and everyone is getting the shots.
Part of the "deal" was that if the vaccine was approved, we could request to be "unblinded". And if it turns out you had the placebo, you would be given the vaccine. And either way, you could continue in the study, since the second part is to study how long the anti-bodies last.
All three of us requested to be unblinded. Buddy #1 went to a different clinic and was unblinded last week. Vaccine. Myself and Buddy #2 went in on Monday to be unblinded, me at 8AM and him at 10AM.
A month back, I went ahead and had an antibody test and it came back negative. I read somewhere on the internet that the antibodies produced by the vaccine were different, so I blew off the test.
About 8:10AM, nurse walks in with her clipboard & computer. She pulls up my information.
Placebo. Placebo?
PLACEBO!!!
I convinced 2 other guys to go in to the study. One of three of us was likely to get the placebo. And it was
ME.
Damn-it-all! Both of them had the real vaccine.
So going over the original "reactions" we had, I had no arm pain at all and only felt tired and some slight muscle/joint pain. And I only had a headache after second injection. The other two guys had significant injection site pain on the day of the first injection and for a day or so after. And for the second injection, both felt like
Crap the second day with fever.
10:27AM on Monday, they gave me the first real injection. And yes, I had arm pain. Crap, picking stuff up with my left arm hurt on Monday night. Best description is it felt like one of my high school buddies had punched me in the arm, like high school buddies do. Feel fine now. I'm scheduled to have injection #2 on February 19th.
Just thought I'd share my little adventure...