https://www.wired.com/story/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-trials/ > Monday morning, 8 am. Neal Browning walked into the waiting room. He took in the reception desk, the play area for kids, the table full of magazines that he was too cautious to touch. There was another patient waiting, a woman in her forties with brown, chin-length hair. Browning wasn't sure whether she was here for the same historic reason that he was, so he decided to follow standard waiting-room procedure and sat quietly—no conversation, no eye contact. After a few minutes, a nurse called the woman back and he watched her disappear behind a door. Another few minutes passed and it was his turn. > First, there were questions: Still no fever? Still no contact with anyone who's been sick? Then there was a round of blood draws. Browning, a 46-year-old network engineer, had taken the morning off from his job at Microsoft, where he'd been unusually busy for weeks: His team was following the spread of a deadly new virus around the world, preparing firewalls and VPNs to allow a global workforce to suddenly start working from home. The engineers trailed the virus from Wuhan to the rest of China, to Europe, and to his own doorstep in Washington state.