Maybe there is something I can do

Really good news ("a triple whammy"). Plus volunteers worth knowing, and 7 other things worth your time

In early March, as the Seattle area gained a reputation for being the first Covid-19 “hotspot” in the United States, a 44-year-old mother of two named Jennifer Haller who lived in the area was feeling vulnerable and powerless.

Her chance to fight back came in the odd form of a Facebook ad, asking for volunteers to be injected with experimental treatments, as part of the first tests of potential coronavirus vaccines on human subjects.

Haller, who is also operations manager at a tech startup, jumped at the chance.

“We were all feeling so helpless,” she said later. (The Telegraph, $). “There was nothing I could do to stop this global pandemic. Then I saw this opportunity come up and thought: ‘Well, maybe there is something I can do.’”

After qualifying for the test via a 15-minute phone screening and filling out 45 pages worth of waivers and disclaimers, Haller showed up at Seattle's Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute before 8 a.m. on March 16.

She rolled up her sleeve to …