Season Kickoff of Free the Vaccine
This week we had our first meeting with a new wave of volunteers. Participants learned who we are, what we do, and spoke to each other for a few minutes about our excitement for the campaign! Our new group is aged from under 18 to over 65, from 24 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and working in fields from economics, to medicine, to music, and education. In addition, we are happy to announce we have officially partnered with the Arts Corps as one of the leading organizations behind Free the Vaccine for COVID-19!
As always, Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 emphasizes an audience-driven, experiment-informed approach that strives to empower individuals to employ the creative tactics we teach during weekly meetings in their advocacy work. And we walk the walk. While most hour-long zoom calls end in snoozing (or boozing), Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 meetings have a surprising element. The end of our last meeting in July became the Season Finale and participants got one striking cliffhanger in the form of a soap opera developed by our team ending with a “Who Shot J.R.” moment. Mid-way through our first meeting, “The Season Premiere” on Wednesday, attendees saw the soap opera return with Nurse Merith, “S.L.”, Rebecca, an Evil Rebecca, and Dr. James Miles. The mystery continues…
These elements of our meetings – soap operas, awards, game shows – remind our participants that we appreciate the hard work and time they are dedicating to our campaign, and most importantly, that keeping things fun keeps our group’s vitality up, especially when the issues we’re facing are dire.
The Week in Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 Podcast
One of the exciting new developments this season is our introduction of a news podcast available to everyone no matter your involvement in the campaign. This will soon be a public podcast feed, but you can get a sneak preview of the first episode here — stay tuned for more updates!
Vaccine Development
If you are new to Free the Vaccine, or even if you need a recap, you may be wondering what is happening in the world of vaccine development. While tens of hundreds of scientists around the world have been pooling their resources to develop a vaccine, a few have advanced to Phase 3 trials, in which vaccines are administered to thousands of people and infection rates are compared with a placebo. Updates on the current Phase 3 vaccine trials can be found here. Our job now is to use our skills and training to make sure pharmaceutical greed does not keep these vaccines out of the public’s reach, if they are proven safe and effective.