Tour manager Mitchell Drosin has spent most of his life on the road, including over 30 years with legendary raspy-voiced country-folk singer-songwriter John Prine, who died last April from complications related to COVID-19. With his friend's passing and a desire to do his part for humanity, Mitchell decided to become a vaccine volunteer. He enrolled in a clinical trial for a vaccine against a disease that has infected more than 100 million people worldwide.
"My main motivation was I wanted to help the world get back to normal, and I thought it was a safe enough trial to do. Reading about it and not hearing about any deaths or anything like that, I said I'll be a guinea pig. And because I'm not working now owing to the collapse of live music shows, I definitely have the time.
"I started in the music business when I was 18, and I'm now 61, so I've been doing this for 43 years straight. I was with John Prine for over 30 years, and so I never had the time. Just like I could never join a sports league or anything because I would never know when I would be on the road or not on the road."
Mitchell and his wife signed up to participate in Johnson & Johnson's clinical trial for a single dose COVID vaccine, one of the most closely-watched shots against the novel coronavirus.
"The Johnson & Johnson people called me on December 1, and I was very excited to be a candidate. They said it would be a two-year trial, and the first visit we had was the longest. It took about three hours where they went over a lot of things, took blood, gave us a COVID test, showed us how to fill in the survey, and then gave us the vaccine.
“Of course, I don't know if I received the placebo or the actual vaccine, and now I visit every 70 days. So far, I've been twice, and they do bloodwork every time."