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Award-winning science educator, molecular biologist, and lyricist Dr. Raven “the Science Maven” Baxter offered rapper Nicki Minaj the opportunity to discuss the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines this week through a shared love of music hip-hop.
“I’m an educator … but I’m also a rapper,” Baxter told Yahoo News. “Music has always been a way to send a message, and it doesn’t stop with science.”
Her invitation to Minaj came after the 10-time Grammy-nominated artist expressed reluctance to get the shot before Monday’s Met Gala in New York City.
“They want you to get vaccinated for the Met”, Minaj tweeted late Monday. “If I get vaccinated, it won’t be [be] for the Met. It will be after I have done enough research. I’m working on this now. While waiting for my loves, be careful. Wear the mask with 2 strings that grip your head and face. Not the cowardly one.
In a next tweet, Minaj suggested that COVID-19 vaccines could lead to impotence, which the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and many other health organizations say is wrong. There is no evidence that vaccines cause impotence in men or fertility problems in women or men.
Following the series of tweets, support for Minaj’s vaccine skepticism poured in. Fans of the rapper in Atlanta even gathered outside the CDC headquarters and called Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, a liar about the effectiveness of vaccines.
But the critical response was also swift, with Minaj finding herself in multiple feuds on Twitter with users, including MSNBC host Joy Reid, who expressed disappointment with the rapper for not cheering on his $ 22 million. followers to “protect themselves and save their lives” by being vaccinated. Minaj did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News.
Instead of lecturing the rapper with big words and scientific jargon, Baxter responded with an open invitation, Tweeter, “Nicki, if you want to chat with a scientist and a vaccine fan, I’m happy to talk!” Much love … be safe.
In a follow-up tweet, Baxter shared a rap song she made about how the immune system responds to vaccines at the cellular level. The song, which she said became known as “The Antibody-ody Song,” has since gone viral online, garnering more than 4 million views in less than four days.
“I understand all angles of conversation, with Nicki saying, ‘I want to do more research. I don’t want to be pushed into a corner just because I have to go to this event, ”Baxter said. “Then I understand that people are getting frustrated, because it’s been over a year and a half now that we’ve been in this pandemic, and the vaccines have been available for months and months and months now.”
“There must be room for all of these feelings,” she added. “And I don’t think it’s fair for us to force people to feel a certain way about making the decisions they make about their bodies. So I gave Nicki the opportunity to chat.
Vaccination hesitation based on years of mistrust of the medical system is nothing new. The most marginalized communities, primarily black Americans, have always and historically been excluded from adequate access to health care in the United States. And black Americans are less likely to have received a COVID-19 vaccine than other groups, according to data released this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Until real work is done in education, healthcare and more, that mistrust will always be there,” Dr Uché Blackstock, CEO of Advanced Health Equity, told Yahoo News during the initial vaccine rollout late last year. “It’s not mistrust of the vaccine, it’s mistrust of the system.”
Social media also continues to play a major role in promoting vaccine reluctance among Americans.
“There is a lot of disinformation, mostly on social media, and the only way we know of to counter disinformation and misinformation is to provide a lot of correct information,” Fauci said Tuesday. on CNN.
And yet, despite skepticism and misinformation online, more than 76% of American adults have received at least one injection of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to CDC data, and more than 180 million Americans are fully vaccinated. Yet many Americans, especially in rural and majority minority areas, remain skeptical of vaccines, despite their effectiveness.
In an era when people choose sides when it comes to Minaj’s vaccine tweets, Baxter sees an opportunity to connect. As someone who has taught at both the K-12 and college levels, she understands the power of meeting people where they are at on any issue.
“It’s important that people see a scientist who cares,” she said. “Here is a scientist who understands how to communicate in a way that is not like an academic journal that no one can understand.”
Minaj is yet to respond to Baxter’s offer, but thousands more have expressed support for the song and shared online how they learned from the video.
“It’s something that’s natural to me,” said Baxter, who started making music in high school.
“We need to make sure that we are creative in our outreach activities in informal spaces like the internet and that we make sure that [everyone] gets the message, ”she said, adding that as a scientist she doesn’t take offense at people doing their own vaccine research – as long as the information comes from authoritative sources.
“When scientists do their research, we also analyze our sources,” Baxter said.
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Frazer Harrison / Getty Images, Carlos Osorio / AFP via Getty Images
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