https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizzmekia_Corbett

millenial committed to health equity (https://www.instagram.com/p/COiEcUmLKAL/) designed it from scratch would dramatically improve my trust.

I'm surprised it doesn't for more people (well, for non-right wingers anyway).

Given the training and certifications she would have had to complete/maintain to even be a millenial progressive scientist involved in Human Subjects Research all these years, there are prob few people more aware of the ugly history and distrust between the scientific community and vulnerable populations. Imho, it's highly unlikely somebody with her background and passion for disparities/inequities is on some Elizabeth Holmes-level corrupt genocidal shit.


Unfortunately, this virus is so politicized that the historic aspect of her involvement isn't celebrated to the extent it should be. But from her bio, we can see Kizzmekia's entire career had been building up to this moment. Pardon me while I stan for sis:


-Just after undergrad, Corbett works at NIH on respiratory synctitial virus pathogenesis (relevant!) and innovative vaccine development (relevant!) from 2006-2009

-During her PhD dissertation defense in 2014 on human antibody responses (relevant!) to Dengue, Corbett gets a random suggestion that she should tackle coronaviruses: https://twitter.com/CameronLabUNC/status/1418524282506907648/photo/1

-By fall 2014, she returns to NIH as a post-doc research fellow/viral immunologist and dedicates her early career to coronaviruses (eg. SARS, MERS, etc due to past outbreaks), focusing on their pathogenesis (relevant!) as well as development of novel coronavirus vaccines (super fucking relevant!).


Cut to 2020: As one could have predicted, human civilization experiences yet another coronavirus outbreak after the 2 last decade. But this time, Corbett's not only been studying respiratory virus pathogenesis, coronavirus pathogenesis, human antibody responses, and vaccine innovation for like 15 years, but she's now positioned herself as the leader of a high visibility research group at a high visibility institution (which, as a millenial Black woman in that area of science, would have already been some unicorn shit) able to meet this high visibility moment and almost single-handedly advance vaccinology by like a century:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJD0YHRj_kb/

I mean, damn! Can we give this brilliant sis some props please? I feel like Kizzmekia's story is such vindication for the fresh eyes and ideas of not only younger generations but underrepresented racial and gender groups as well. To advance the way she did, at her age, and especially in that particular area of science? She would have had to have gone way beyond just "doing everything right" and been no less than a fucking rock star. So, I'm ready to change the narrative about these mRNA vaccines from one of distrust to one of fucking BLACK EXCELLENCE. An okplayery progressive black millenial just made a Nobel Prize calibre scientific contribution (and mind you NO BLACK PERSON HAS EVER WON A NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSIOLOGY/MEDICINE) that will likely save billions of lives. That's cool af! And by getting the vaccine, we can not only do our part for personal and public safety, but showing support for Kizzmekia and Black professionals like her everywhere trying to blast past old ass gatekeepers and be great. The development, effectiveness, and innovation of these COVID mRNA vaccines is probably the most globally impactful achievement by a Black millenial to date, and hardly enough people are talking about it. Let's change that!