Taking Moderna vaccine ‘badge of honor’ for this college junior
Jack Morningstar says it’s “a badge of honor” to be on the positive side of pandemic history.
The 21-year-old from Maine is part of Cambridge-based Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine — and he’s convinced he received the real shot and not a placebo.
“I had a mild fever the day after I got the shot and some arm pain,” said Morningstar, who is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s exciting. I’m going to tell my grandkids I was part of ending the pandemic.”
Moderna is said to be only days away from announcing results of a mammoth Phase 3 vaccine trial and on Friday sought permission to seek authorization in Switzerland. It also follows Pfizer’s stunning news that its vaccine candidate is 90% effective against COVID-19.
Morningstar said the world needs all the vaccines it can get now.
“I’m counting down the days for this nightmare to be over,” he told the Herald Friday. “Vaccines will be our best hope. It’s not a competition. We’ll need more than one to cover the world.”
Morningstar said UNC is one of Moderna’s clinical trial sites around the U.S. that drafted some 30,000 volunteers willing to roll up their sleeves to test the company’s mRNA vaccine.
Both Pfizer and Moderna products use messenger RNA (mRNA) to guard against COVID-19. It will be a first if the FDA approves either using this futuristic technology.
Messenger RNA medicines are “sets of instructions … (that) direct cells in the body to make proteins to prevent or fight disease.” In this case, those proteins battle the coronavirus, Moderna states on its website. Your own cells are basically put to work to fight the virus.
“I’m going to tell my grandchildren that it was a time of great madness, but we found a vaccine and it ended the pandemic,” Morningstar said of his seat in this viral war. “We’ve had civil unrest, questions on how to handle the pandemic, bodies stacked in refrigerator trucks and hospitals overwhelmed.”
That’s why this young political science and business double-major has a message for anti-vaxxers — “don’t be stupid and irresponsible.” And to fellow students, he adds, “thousands of people are dying each day while the rest wait for the economy to open up.” So stop holding big parties, he urged.
“I get it,” he said, “I’m part of a low-risk population, but if you’re not going to be afraid for yourself, be afraid for others. Just give it another two to three months.”
Morningstar added it’s “a badge of honor” to be part of the Moderna double-blind trial. Two of his friends also joined, but they didn’t have the mild symptoms he experienced. That’s why he’s convinced he’s one of the few people on the planet immune to this plague.
“I wear a mask, because I don’t want to scare anybody,” he added. “But I’d like to go on a trip.”
He’d be a good ambassador for getting in line for a vaccine.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3kwWrhU
Post a Comment