There was fear that the COVID-19 vaccine might cause you to make those types of antibodies because of some very old, antiquated and, frankly, untrue data. Vaccine enhancement doesn ’ t happen with coronaviruses, but it can occur in dengue, which I spent 5 years of graduate school studying. So when we had to prove that it would not happen with coronaviruses, I realized my dengue background overlaps with this moment. Meanwhile, the social aspects of health were overlapping, too, because Black and Brown people were becoming sicker and dying more from COVID-19. There was also the outreach portion to my work, which I was doing all along, but particularly in college around HIV. I think back to when I agreed to go on TV for the first time in mid-April 2020. The numbers around racial and ethnic disparities and the outcomes of COVID-19 were starting to come out and I realized: I need to talk. People need to see my face. They need to know that we ’ re working on this vaccine. People need to feel a little bit of hope. Some might say that when it comes to these viruses or diseases that science and public health are not that connected. But it all came together during the pandemic. I felt like I was supposed to be there. Your work at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases laid the groundwork for Moderna ’ s COVID-19 vaccine, which saved millions from severe disease and death. Initially, how did it feel when you realized the vaccine was effective? The moment was mid-February or so when we got the first animal data back. It ’ s simple: you vaccinate mice and then you test their blood to see how many antibodies they have against the virus. And we saw a very whopping response. We realized that the vaccine was doing something. When I rewatch that first TV
appearance on CNN in April, I feel like I may have come off a little bit hopeful and confident in saying: “ We ’ ll have a vaccine. Don ’ t worry. ” But I had seen the data, which the world hadn ’ t yet. That moment set the stage for the amount of hope I had going forward. It was hard to work in those conditions with isolation and the world shutting down ... at one point there were 3,000 people dying per day. But we knew we had something, so we kept pushing.
People and organizations often suffer from “ pandemic amnesia ” as outbreaks resolve. What lessons do you hope the scientific community and the general public will learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? How do we prevent another pandemic? One of the most important lessons that I want the scientific community to understand is that our work is bigger than us. Oftentimes, as scientists, we are so focused on a single question. There are people who spend 30 years working on one protein or gene, for example. Young Dr. Corbett in the lab
“ We always have to look at the bigger picture. ”
The pandemic helped a lot of virologists, immunologists, public health practitioners and doctors out of their immediate comfort zone and forced them to look at the big picture. Many people who were studying HIV, influenza or other viruses could easily transfer their work into coronaviruses. But they would have never thought about it previously.
3
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker