On Vaccines and Trials…
Somehow I've found myself in the middle of a new epic adventure of scientific proportions that are so tiny no one can see it, and so large the whole world is watching. Daktari is recruiting participants for the Moderna trial for COVID-19 vaccine which is now in phase III. We like to do things together, so I called the phone number to see if I qualified to join as a trial participant.
First there was the labyrinth of office “park” parking lots. I missed the first entrance and the second entrance only had a small walk through connection to the offices on the first entrance. Then there was a maze of corridors inside the office called “Clin-Search”. Are you seeing the theme here of searching?
Then came the litany of questions, measurements, marking, charting, sticking, drawing blood for antibody screening, and then the nasal “swab”, (Covid-19 test) which was perhaps really checking if any brain cells were even thinking about Covid-19. I accidentally yelped out loud at that part.
They had me sit for 30 minutes while I got randomized and suddenly I, like Jean Valjean was just a number like 24601. Of 30,000 participants, half of us will receive a vaccine and half of us will receive a placebo. The reason is to compare 15,000 people over 25 months with another set of 15,000 people to see if the vaccine group has less Covid-19 infection than the placebo group. It’s a double blind study, meaning neither we nor the doctors performing the study will know who is in which group.
But I wasn’t blind to the big red BIOHAZARD sign on the door that I walked through to sit in the chair. The nice lady with the needles in the N95 mask had a tat on her arm which says “neither reckless nor afraid” (in Latin, no less). I asked her about it and she said it’s because she is also a paramedic who must be neither reckless nor afraid on the job. Maybe we all should take that approach to life. Maybe I will use a Bic pen and put that on my hand.
There’s a goofy big picture of her little dog on the wall and she tells me to look at it. I smile while she jabs me in the shoulder with either saline solution or mRNA-1273.
The mRNA1273 makes me think of Screwtape Letters. It’s a new way of thinking about vaccines and it is not a live virus. It is a playbook, so to speak, of the virus’s strategy. They inject it so that the body will know what kind of immune response to produce when the actual virus comes in. If you haven’t read CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters, you may want to do so now. In it, he is showing us the playbook of the demons that would harass and depress and destroy the human soul but for being found out. You get a peek from the opposite point of view and insight to the real enemy's tactics. Spiritual and Viral jujitsu maybe?
I went back through the Matrix (with purple sunglasses on top of my head, not all black like Keanu Reeves) to read my little 75 page paper book by NT Wright called “God and the Pandemic”. I had to wait 30 more minutes for observation. I hope to be observed not on my phone every time I must wait. Wait. What are they observing me for anyway? I don’t know...
Professor Wright tells us in his book that whatever the Christian response to pandemic is, it should be one in which all Christians of the world can join. Can all Christians join the vaccine trial? No, very few can. I want to encourage more people, especially those who represent minority populations in the trial. The reason we need more representation is that there are certain populations that are much more at risk in this pandemic. Those populations need to be included in the trial so that the efficacy will be more visible and how it effects different populations must be studied. We don't want to produce a lop-sided vaccine that isn't effective among the people who need it most.
So what can all Christians do? We can all pray to end Covid-19. Pray for a vaccine. Pray for the vulnerable. We can lay down our own will, and self-determination in order to take up the cross of Christ and bear one another’s burdens in this hour, or year, or generation, for as long as it takes. As we wander through global pandemic “together apart”, let us keep our eyes up! Look to Jesus. Look up! The god of Economy won’t save us. The god of the Academy won’t save us. The god of Your Opinion certainly won’t save you (but you may get a good buzz from it for a while). The God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, is the only one to actually save, and he calls us to be with him even through suffering and unto glory. Pray for the vaccine to be available to the vulnerable, that they don't get lost from the search.
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” I Peter 4:12,13
