A reporter’s career as a vaccine Guinea pig

 

by Joseph Gresser

ESSEX JUNCTION — A few days before Christmas I sat alone in a small examining room waiting to receive an injection of either an experimental vaccine against COVID-19 or a small amount of salt water.

The shot started my career as a Guinea pig.

In October, at one of the briefings held by Governor Phil Scott, Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont (UVM) Medical Center, said the hospital along with the Lerner College of Medicine and the Vaccine Testing Center, would be one of 80 locations in the U.S. to conduct trials of a vaccine developed at Oxford University in association with AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company.  She put out a call for volunteers.

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