1/n: Good morning esp. to our animal techs, who bled ~200 mice last yr on this day. It was the 2-wk post-prime timepoint, & we just had to peek at the antibody responses.

Do you think they knew those mice had gotten the vaccine they would themselves get only a year later? https://twitter.com/KizzyPhD/status/1349682608536317952

2/n: We’d immunized 3 mouse strains, w/ multiple doses of mRNA-1273 to not just be prepared to show protection (ala @Baric_Lab @SarahRLeist), but also to be prepared to show that sub-protection was not a cause for vaccine-induced enhancement.

3/n: These figs never make it into my talks cause who care about mice when u have 94.1% human efficacy?
So fig. 2 ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2622-0) shows IgG antibodies that bind the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein 2 wks after the 1st dose, particularly in the modestly-high dose (1 ug) groups.

4/n: Data aside, the overextension of tenderness from our animal care team during this time when “timing” is imperative is just... I love them for that.

5/n: The overextension of tenderness... period. B/c many of them are Black ( Auntie Terri and Marlon), they have provided a place of comfort for me for the past 6 yrs. When I want to let my hair down, I go to the basement and kick it in the animal facility break room.

6/n: For those invested in diversity/inclusion, this is also the reason why you see Black PhD students having lunch with janitorial staff or purposely taking the city bus. So-called “self-segregation”... coping in diversity-immature environments. >>> https://www.amazon.com/Black-Kids-Sitting-Together-Cafeteria/dp/0465060684

7/n: Also, JP. Shoutout to JP. He’s not black so maybe this is awkwardly placed (oh well lol), but he def holds me down on the animal experiment front. I’m sure we stress him out with last minute changes, etc. but he handles it like a champ.