What It Was Like to Participate in a COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

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This week, as the state grappled with skyrocketing COVID-19 infections, overwhelmed hospitals and increasing deaths, the first parcels containing lifesaving vaccines began to arrive. The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, has been shown to be 95% effective.Kristen Choi, a researcher, nurse and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, signed up for a clinical trial of the vaccine after a recruitment advertisement popped up in her Instagram feed in August. She did not know whether she would receive an active vaccine or a placebo.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesShe wrote about the experience in JAMA Internal Medicine. The article caused mild alarm in some after she described experiencing adverse side effects that mimicked symptoms of COVID-19. However, far from discouraging people to take the vaccine, Choi said that she wanted to increase awareness about the potential for side effects and why they are actually a sign that things are working.I asked Choi over email about what it was like to take part in the trial. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Can you talk a little about how your interest in an ad for the trial turned into full-fledged participation?I hadn't considered participating in the COVID-19 vaccine trials personally until fairly late in 2020. I am a health services researcher who primarily studies child mental health services. I was also fairly busy clinically. Then, in August, I got an Instagram ad for the Pfizer-BioNTech phase 3 trial. I clicked on the ad because I wanted to look at their recruitment website from a research methodology perspective. I guess the recruitment strategy worked, because I signed up to participate myself. As I read about the study and considered it for myself for the first time, it seemed very important to me to contribute in this small way to vaccine science.Were you nervous about potentially receiving the vaccine, called BNT162b2?