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I emerged from the nondescript medical office building in south Charlotte, North Carolina just after sundown on December 11. The enrollment process had required three in-person visits over the course of a month, but at last I was an official participant in the coronavirus vaccine clinical trial run by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Belgium-based division of Johnson & Johnson.
I had been given an injection, a painless prick high up on my left deltoid, but I didn t know whether it was the experimental COVID-19 vaccine or a placebo. Either way I was ready to put my body on the line for science.