Today I had an appointment for my second injection for the Novavax vaccine trial. I go to the clinic a couple minutes early, but I had to wait quite a while because, as they told all of us waiting in the waiting room sitting as far apart as possible, one of the participants undergoing the injection had passed out. But it wasn’t because of the injection. She passed out when they were trying to draw blood. According to one of the employees, “She said she looked away but then she heard the needle pop through her skin, and that’s when she fainted.”

This time I got an injection in the other arm, but it was the same injection as last time: a 2/3rds chance I got the vaccine, a 1/3 chance I got saline. I gave urine and blood again and had the world’s shortest physical by the same doctor as last time, who said, “She looks excellent,” to which I replied, “Why, thank you!” This time I couldn’t see inside the syringe to see if it was the same weird blue color. This time Bobbie seemed to really jab it into my arm, which hurt pretty good. Just like last time, my arm started burning right about five minutes after the injection.

Tonight my arm is sore, though not a whole lot. It’s throbbing a little.

I go back in two weeks to give more blood.

I asked when the trial would be unmasked, and they said they didn’t know. They said that if I get a chance to get a real vaccine, to call them first and they’d let the cat out of the bag.

This clinic has also been conducting Moderna trials. In the waiting room beforehand and in the clinic break room where we had to wait for half an hour before we could leave, just in case we had an adverse effects, there were other people there who had been in the Moderna trial last year. They had received their first injection in August and their second in September. Today they were informed that they had received placebos and so they were given the real Moderna vaccine today. I asked a lady who had just gotten hers if the real one felt any different than the placebo injections, but she said no. She had been convinced that she had received the real vaccine last year, but it turned out she didn’t after all.