Your Vaccine Questions Deserve Real Answers | Kizzmekia Corbett | TED

So in summer 2018, I went on a first date. Now, in my early 30s, this, of course, was not my first first date. And so I wasn't expecting much except for some beers and tacos. That was until I was too many beers in and too deep in conversation. My question to him at the end of the night: "Do you plan to vaccinate your kids?" (Laughter) His reply? "Sure, except for the flu vaccine, because the flu vaccine has viruses in it, and every time I take it, I get sick." I guess he didn't realize that he was sitting across the table from a woman who had just invented a novel flu vaccine that was then slated for clinical trial. But -- (Laughter) At the same time, I was a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center. And so normally, that answer would have sent me packing onto my next first date, but I like this guy.

And so I stayed and I answered a few questions after getting another beer. I told him that, yes, the flu vaccine does have viruses in it, but those viruses are not alive and so they technically cannot "make you sick." Sure, you may feel a little groggy after getting the shot, but that's just a sign that your immune system is working. And I asked him a simple question. Did he know that there are 200 or more viruses that can cause flu-like symptoms or the common cold? Of course, he didn't have an answer, but that's what you get when you take a vaccinologist on a date. (Laughter) Surprisingly, he was not offended and he asked me out on a second date. And I got more than a second date out of this guy. I got my first understanding of what I now like to call “vaccine inquisitiveness.” It wasn't that he was just reluctant to get himself vaccines or to get his future children vaccinated.

It was that he had questions, concerns, misinformation buried deep down, for which he needed an expert like myself to answer without scorn and without judgment. Nevertheless, I went back into the lab and I did what I do, making vaccines. And then on December 31 of the next year, there was a report of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, China. It had sickened 27 people. This was a moment that my team had prepared for. You see, not only was I on the flu team, but I was also the scientific lead of the coronavirus vaccine team. (Cheers and applause) You see those orange proteins on the surface of this coronavirus? Those are called spike proteins. And those proteins are responsible for driving immunity. So we developed a spike protein with a small sequence change that made it an ideal vaccine candidate in case of a pandemic. And that's exactly what happened.

In January of 2020, that virus that was circulating was deemed to be a coronavirus. We joined forces with Moderna, and we promised ourselves that we were going to get into a phase-1 clinical trial in only 100 days. A purely scientific goal, by the way. But as I look back and I write this speech, I think there was probably a little bit of ego attached to it too. But that's OK because we did it. (Laughter) I mean. (Cheers and applause) After countless hours in the lab, testing that vaccine in mice and monkeys and determining that it was safe and effective enough to go into humans, that vaccine, mRNA-1273, or what you now know to be called Spikevax, went into a phase-1 clinical trial in only 66 days, a world record. (Cheers and applause) At the end of the year, that vaccine was determined to be 94 percent effective against disease.

So we were proud of ourselves, obviously. But what was the gut punch for me was that 20 percent of people were what the WHO would call vaccine hesitant. Now, vaccine hesitancy is not new. Even prior to the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy was deemed to be one of [the] top 10 global health threats. Top 10 global health threats. And that is something that even me, making vaccines, was not going to fix. And the truth of the matter is that vaccinologists, like myself, had long ignored this population of people who just were not going to take vaccines for one reason or the other. We were too busy publishing our data in world-renowned journals, kind of talking to ourselves. And the other truth of the matter is that we made some honest communication mistakes during the pandemic. And I'll be the first to just talk about myself. The first time I got on TV, I said that the vaccine was going to curb transmission.

And at that time it did. But what I should have said is that over time, as the virus mutates, the vaccine may not be as good at curbing transmission. And then we should have taken just a little bit more care and tenderness to talk to people about the possibility of vaccine injury. Even if vaccine injury didn't turn up in our clinical trials, there was always this possibility, and those types of stats didn't matter to someone who was reading headlines about vaccine injury and deciding whether they were going to get themselves or their loved ones vaccinated. You see, some people had questions and concerns that were genuinely valid. And some people actually had criticisms that were genuinely valid, too. Except for that one time the internet went ablaze when they said my hair was ugly on CNN. (Laughter) I like to think that I'm pretty cute. (Laughter and applause) Seriously though, one of the major concerns was that we were moving too fast.

And so I'm going to stand right here -- is this the middle? -- In the middle of this TED circle and say, there was so much research that was done prior to the pandemic. People studied coronavirus’s basic biology. The Nobel laureate studied how to make mRNA feasible to deliver medicines into the body. We even did our thing, too. Nevertheless, all of that research pushed the coronavirus vaccine out quicker, safer and more effectively. All of that notwithstanding, some people still had questions that needed to be answered. Some people were still vaccine inquisitive. No, they were not anti-vax and no, they weren't even anti-science. They were unconvinced. And it was our job as scientists to make them convinced. Except that failed communication lingered on, and I'm afraid that maybe some of that failed communication is the reason why today we have a rise in vaccine refusal.

Kindergartners are showing up to kindergarten without their full vaccine regimens. Measles is on the rise in many communities. And measles, by the way, is a vaccine-preventable disease. And for me, that's really unfortunate because I know that there are 23 viral families that have the potential to infect humans. So it's not a question of whether there will be another pandemic. It's a matter of when. And so I guess I'm lucky because I will always have a job. But as a vaccine inventor at Harvard University, my lab studies how to make nanoparticles or small protein balls into vaccines. We put viral proteins on the surfaces of those nanoparticles, kind of in a click-and-bait way, with small linkers that allow us to drive those viral proteins directly to the cells in the immune system that we need to make ideal vaccines for pandemics. We could put just about any type of viral protein on the surface, many of them at the same time, so that we can make vaccines that are hypothetically good against many viruses in one shot.

Great. Vaccine technology is going to go on and on and on, but I like to believe that vaccine hesitancy does not have to go on and on and on with it. If researchers would just open their minds to vaccine inquisitiveness, in the same way that we open our mind to scientific inquisitiveness. If community and science were to meet. And that's not really that revolutionary. We already know that when community and science meet, science advances faster, vaccine refusal turns into vaccine acceptance. Actually, when [a] vaccine inquisitive meets a scientist on a date, it turns into a marriage. (Cheers and applause) You know, one thing about this is that my husband still has questions every single time we take our children to get their vaccines. And I still have to find the answers. Not just as a scientist, but now as a mother, because I'm concerned about my children's safety and my children's lives depend on it.

Thank you. (Cheers and applause)