Risking Your Life to Test a Life-Saving Vaccine

Would you volunteer to be Injected with COVID-19? In the dark early weeks of the pandemic, thousands of young people from all over the world volunteered to be injected with Covid, in order to speed up vaccine trials. They formed an organization called 1Day Sooner, believing that speeding a vaccine up by even one day would save so many lives that it was worth risking their own. On January 26 at 12 pm PT, four volunteers will describe how and why they made this difficult choice. Larissa MacFarquhar, staff writer for The New Yorker, will moderate the panel discussion. Michael Specter, Stanford adjunct professor of bioengineering and staff writer for The New Yorker, will introduce the event.

Advance registration is required.

Volunteers

Aric Floyd is an actor and current Stanford student whose credits include HBO's Ballers, ABC's Days of Our Lives, and NBCUniversal's Versus, as well as several feature films and theatrical productions. He deferred matriculation to Stanford University in 2014 to pursue his acting career full-time but has since enrolled as an undergraduate. Floyd is currently completing a B.S. in physics. A regular supporter of the Deworm the World Initiative, Floyd recently became involved with the broader effective altruism community and is currently working with the Center for Effective Altruism on student outreach and diversity-minded community building.

Zacharia Kafuko is a molecular biochemist and the producer and presenter of an award-winning radio program - Science Bench. A 2017 recipient of the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). Before getting involved with 1DaySooner, he worked with orphaned children and also as a public health educator under the "Water for African Cities" program. Kafuko has been involved in Vaccine Equity advocacy and is leading 1DaySooner's African Chapter. He currently lives in the Seychelles.

Danica Angel Marcos is a philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) graduate from Lancaster University. She volunteers regularly with CLCC Homeless Services in London and is, consequently, a subcommittee advisor on the London Homelessness Crisis for Justice and Peace, Westminster.

Seán McPartlin is a graduate student in philosophy at Oxford, planning to specialize in animal cognition and moral & political philosophy. McPartlin has written about COVID challenge trials for the British Medical Journal, the American Journal of Bioethics, and the Telegraph.