A Student Scientist Wanted to Explain Vaccines to His Mom. Then He Went Viral.

Better science communication can help combat the coronavirus pandemic. But as Mother Jones has reported since the beginning of the outbreak, scientists are frustrated by the lack of coordination and coherence in the Trump Administration’s public health messaging. “The government is missing a huge opportunity in not using social media as a means to get people aligned on COVID messaging,” a microbiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera told us in November. “Science communication just can’t be an afterthought,” said Yale epidemiologist and science messaging expert Saad Omer.

The Trump administration could learn a thing or two from Rob Swanda, a 26-year-old PhD student at Cornell, whose social media talents have earned him overnight science communication stardom.

When Swanda first created his viral video explaining the mRNA technology used in two coronavirus vaccines, he had a smaller audience in mind: his parents. “My mom is a hairstylist,” he told me on a recent Zoom call. Her clients were asking how the vaccine worked.  He knew he could help them understand things clearly. “So you can imagine my shock that it has been seen by over 3 million people,” he said. 

The video is an energetic and simple explainer of how mRNA, a new genetic technology, is being used in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Using a whiteboard, Swanda explains complex science in a way that has connected with over 4 million people so far. 

Explaining jargon like “mRNA,” “spike protein,” and “lipid nanoparticle”, Swanda breaks down fears about the vaccine. “Being cautious of how the thing how the mRNA vaccine works is very reasonable, it’s a new innovation,” he says. “But if we just only relied on the old technology, like the attenuated or weakened version of the virus, we’re still waiting on those clinical trials to end, so how many more months are we going to be waiting?” While mRNA isn’t new in the newest sense (mRNA vaccines have been development for the last decade or so), it’s never been utilized on such a massive scale. And because the mRNA process eliminates the need for labs to grow a protein and then inject it—the mRNA teaches your body to make the protein itself—it cuts out a time-consuming production step in traditional vaccine manufacturing.

So far, feedback has been good. “I was pleasantly surprised that like 99.9 percent of everything has been super positive,” he says. But there’s still that .01 percent. Some commenters accused him of “listening to music” in his AirPods, or claimed that he “was being paid by these companies.” (A few even insinuated that Rob was a pawn of Bill Gates.)

But that hasn’t dissuaded Swanda from the task at hand. Between the pandemic and an encroaching climate crisis, science is increasingly part of our everyday lives, and Swanda believes that he and his peers can use viral social media communication to help. “The connectedness of this new generation coming into science is going to be super critical for pushing out new research that’s going to span multiple disciplines,” he says. “We can use that.”

Check out more of Swanda’s science explainers on YouTube.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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