Want to make $1,000 and maybe get cured of COVID? Vaccine volunteers are needed at 90 U.S. locations

I wondered last week what the logistics might be of enlisting 30,000 volunteers for Phase 3 of Moderna’s COVID vaccine trial. This week we’re finding that out.

More than 90 health care organizations have been enlisted to recruit volunteers who will be administered . . . something. It might be Moderna’s prospective vaccine. It might be a placebo. Obviously if you’ve got the virus you’re hoping you’ll get the vaccine, but that’s how these trials work. The researchers have to compare the reactions of the vaccine recipients to those of the people who got the placebo, and it doesn’t work unless no one knows which one they got.

By the way, they’ll pay you. Trial participants who complete all phases will receive $1,000, which is a lot of money for some people.

You don’t have to be COVID-positive to participate in the trial, but they’re looking for people of high-risk. And they emphasize that if you get it while you’re in the trial, you’ll get the full extent of care. I gather that means they’re not just going to make you rely on a vaccine that may or may not work.

I do have some questions about this: If you don’t have to be COVID-positive to participate, then how are they going to know if the vaccine has any effect? And if you get COVID during the trial, and then they give you the full range of care everyone else is getting, then how do they know if the vaccine cured you?

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If the idea of the trial is to vaccinate non-COVID people and then see if it keeps them from getting the disease, how do they test that? By then exposing you to the virus to see what happens?

I don’t claim to be an expert on these trials, so these are not skeptical questions as much as they are curious ones. But it would be nice if someone in the know would answer them.

I haven’t seen a definitive list of all 90 organizations taking part in the trial. Here in Detroit, Henry Ford Health is on board and you can volunteer for the trial here. Hopefully there is some local media coverage in your area of other participating institutions.

Anyone who participates in the trial is doing something important for the country, and for the world. I don’t think life will ever be what it should be again, until we’ve got this vaccine. If Moderna’s entry works – and let’s pray to God it does – then the sooner we can be confident of its effectiveness, the better.

On with the trial!