Saturday 18 April 2020

Coronavirus pandemic and grocery shopping: No need to wipe down food packaging, FDA says

https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-pandemic-and-grocery-shopping-no-need-to-wipe-down-food-packaging-fda


Heads up, consumers: When running the essential errand that is grocery shopping during the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S., there’s no need to wipe down the food packaging after you’ve returned home, according to a federal agency.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to quell Americans’ fears that their food packaging may be contaminated with the novel coronavirus, as recent studies have suggested it can live on certain surfaces between hours and days.

But in a statement posted to its website on Thursday, the FDA said: “We want to reassure consumers that there is currently no evidence of human or animal food or food packaging being associated with transmission of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.”
“This particular coronavirus causes respiratory illness and is spread from person-to-person, unlike foodborne gastrointestinal or GI viruses, such as norovirus and hepatitis A that often make people ill through contaminated food,” it added, noting there are currently no nationwide shortages of food, though some stores may be out of certain products. (Speaking of, what drives people to panic buy?)
The FDA also provided tips on how to protect yourself, other shoppers and store employees when buying essential items. For instance, it advised to:

  • Prepare a grocery list in advance 
  • Wear a face mask or covering while in the store (this is in line with recently updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] guidelines, and is now mandatory in hot spots like New York)
  • Practice social distancing while shopping, make sure to stay at least 6 feet away from others 
  • Thoroughly wash your hands after returning home and again after putting the groceries away 
“Again, there is no evidence of food packaging being associated with the transmission of COVID-19. However, if you wish, you can wipe down product packaging and allow it to air dry, as an extra precaution,” the FDA added.
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Dr. Nicole Saphier agrees with new MIT model: America needs to 'hunker down for a bit more,' open with caution

https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-nicole-saphier-mit-coronavirus-study-reopening-america


America needs to "hunker down" for a bit longer to avoid a potentially "catastrophic" resurgence in coronavirus cases, Dr. Nicole Saphier urged Saturday.
Saphier -- a Fox News contributor -- agreed with a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology model predicting an "exponential explosion" in COVID-19 cases if the nation's lockdown measures are lifted too early.

"We don't need this model to tell us that. We know this. We know if we open up too fast, too soon that we're just going to be in the same place again in a couple of months," said Saphier, appearing on "Fox & Friends Weekend."
The MIT model -- made using publicly available data from China, Italy, South Korea and the U.S. -- followed the SEIR model, which groups people into "Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Recovered" categories.
A new MIT model shows if the United States were to relax lockdown policies too soon, a catastrophic 'explosion' of coronavirus cases would follow.
A new MIT model shows if the United States were to relax lockdown policies too soon, a catastrophic 'explosion' of coronavirus cases would follow.
MIT researchers enhanced the SEIR model by training a neural network to determine the efficacy of quarantine measures and better predict the spread of the virus.
"In the case of the [United States], our model captures the current infected curve growth and predicts a halting of infection spread by April 20," wrote researchers Raj Dandekar and George Barbastathis.
"On the other hand, we forecast that relaxing or abandoning the quarantine policies gradually over the period of the next 17 days may well lead to approximately one million infections without any stagnation in the infected case count by mid-April 2020," they added.
This model comes as some state governors relax lockdown guidelines and President Trump continues to roll out a three-phase plan to reopen the country's economy. The "Opening Up America Again" plan relies on governors to decide when their states should reopen.
"To preserve the health of our citizens we must also preserve the health and functioning of our economy," the president said at a press briefing Thursday.
On Friday, a key coronavirus model lowered its estimate of total U.S. deaths, but Saphier, a breast cancer imaging specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, urged caution.
"We have to be careful when we look at models, because ... models aren't necessarily predictive of the future," she said.
"However, we do need to take caution and look at these because this particular model coming out of MIT is an enhanced SEIR model which is something that we look at. ... MIT specifically looked at the virus causing COVID-19. So it's a little bit more accurate.

"And what they are showing is we can't just say now we are at the equilibrium or that plateau phase, and now we can start opening," Saphier added.
"So we have to be very careful when we are starting to reopen the economy, but we have to reopen the economy. We have to start doing that. But we really need to hunker down for a little bit more to make sure that we continue to see [a] decrease in cases."
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Recipes 🍅🍠🍤🍗🧀 - CAULIFLOWER AND VEGETABLE CURRY

CAULIFLOWER AND VEGETABLE CURRY
By PASCALE PEREZ-RUBIN, the Jerusalem Post, APRIL 17, 2020 
https://www.jpost.com/israeli%20Food%20and%20Jewish%20Recipes/Pascales-Kitchen-Making-sweet-music-in-the-kitchen-624817



CAULIFLOWER AND VEGETABLE CURRY

Makes 4-6 servings.

Ingredients


½ cauliflower, separated into florets
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. oil
2-3 Tbsp. olive oil
150 g. tofu, cubed
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 red onion, quartered and separated to pieces
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. freshly ground ginger or 1 cube of frozen ginger
½ cup frozen green peas
½ cup frozen green beans
1 Tbsp. curry powder
400 g. coconut milk
½ tsp. turmeric
Salt and pepper to taste
½ tsp. paprika
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped finely

Serving suggestions:
1 tsp. sesame oil
2 scallions, chopped
½ cup roasted peanuts


Directions


Add the cauliflower florets to a large pot. 

 Add salt, oil and water to cover. Cook about 20 minutes, until cauliflower has softened. 

 Drain. 

 Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the tofu cubes. 

 Sauté until they have browned. 

Heat olive oil in a large pot and sauté the onions. 

 Add the garlic and ginger and sauté them another two or three minutes. 

 Add the peas and beans and mix well. Add the curry powder, coconut milk and mix. 

 Bring to a boil and then add the turmeric, pepper, salt and paprika. 

 Mix and then add the fried tofu pieces, cauliflower and cilantro. 

 Mix gently and cook for another 10 minutes. 

 Before serving, drizzle with sesame oil and sprinkle chopped scallions and roasted peanuts on top.
Level of difficulty: Medium. Time: 30 minutes.

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Coronavirus:WHO Director Has a Long History of..

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15901/world-health-organization-cover-ups

Coronavirus: 

WHO Director Has a Long History of Cover-Ups

by 
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, faces increased scrutiny over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Tedros has a long history of covering up epidemics and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, where he served as the minister of health and minister of foreign affairs. In that role, he oversaw a massive expansion of China's role in Ethiopia. China is Ethiopia's biggest foreign investor, largest trading partner and largest lender. Pictured: Tedros (left) meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on January 28, 2020. (Photo by Naohiko Hatta - Pool/Getty Images)

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is facing increased scrutiny over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than two million people around the world and killed at least 150,000.

Adhanom, who goes by the name Tedros, is an Ethiopian microbiologist who, with the help of China, began a five-year term as head of the WHO in July 2017. He has been accused of misrepresenting the severity and spread of the coronavirus in an attempt to pander to China.

The historical record shows that Tedros, the first African and the first non-physician to lead the WHO, has a long history of covering up epidemics and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, where he served as the minister of health and minister of foreign affairs.
In May 2017, when Tedros emerged as the top candidate in a three-way race to lead the WHO, the New York Times reported accusations that Tedros covered up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia when he was the country's health minister between 2005 and 2012.
Tedros claimed that cholera outbreaks occurring in 2006, 2009 and 2011 were only "acute watery diarrhea" — an infectious disease known in the rest of the world as cholera. He said that the outbreaks were limited to remote areas of the country where laboratory testing was "difficult" and that international concerns were overblown. The epidemics eventually reached neighboring countries including Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. The New York Times explained:
"WHO officials have complained privately that Ethiopian officials are not telling the truth about these outbreaks. Testing for Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which cause cholera, is simple and takes less than two days.
"During earlier outbreaks, various news organizations, including The Guardian and The Washington Post, reported that unnamed Ethiopian officials were pressuring aid agencies to avoid using the word 'cholera' and not to report the number of people affected.
"But cholera bacteria were found in stool samples tested by outside experts. As soon as severe diarrhea began appearing in neighboring countries, the cause was identified as cholera.
"United Nations officials said more aid could have been delivered to Ethiopia had the truth been told."

The director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Lawrence O. Gostin, said that he called attention to Ethiopia's long history of denying cholera outbreaks because he believed the WHO "might lose its legitimacy" if it is run by a representative of a country that itself covers up epidemics.
"Dr. Tedros is a compassionate and highly competent public health official," Gostin told the New York Times. "But he had a duty to speak truth to power and to honestly identify and report verified cholera outbreaks over an extended period."

Tedros dismissed the accusations against him by playing the race card. He said that criticism of him stemmed from a "typical colonial mind-set aimed at... discrediting a candidate from a developing country."

The Guardian reported that the Ethiopian government has been reluctant to acknowledge the cholera outbreaks "for fear of damaging the economy." The Washington Post explained that Ethiopian authorities have a propensity for refusing to call bad news by its real name:
"Acute watery diarrhea [AWD] is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the Vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.
"But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.
"The government is apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.
"This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD instead."
In a similar manner, when international aid groups in 2016 sounded alarm bells over the lack of rain, Ethiopian authorities, including Tedros, were divided over whether they should call it a drought. The Post reported:
"The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and left the country forever associated with famine.
"'We don't use the f-word,' explained an aid worker... referring to famine."
Similar allegations of cover-up were reported while Tedros was Ethiopia's foreign minister between 2012 and 2016. In October 2016, for instance, Tedros wrote in a blog post that he opposed efforts by Human Rights Watch to force Ethiopia to accept an international investigation into the way the government responded to anti-government protests.
The protests began in November 2015 due to public anger over the government's heavy-handedness. They escalated in October 2016, when government security forces fired on a large crowd of festival-goers. The protests, which eventually spread across the country, left hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands detained.

Tedros's cover-ups continued after he became the director general of the WHO. In September 2017, a group of American physicians, in an open letter addressed to Tedros, accused him of failing to investigate outbreaks of cholera in Sudan:
"The mandate of the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) could hardly be clearer; in the words of the Organization: 'Our primary role is to direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations' system. Our goal is to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people.'
"And yet this impressive mandate is daily made a mockery of by WHO's refusal to refer to the cholera epidemic raging in Sudan by name. Neither your organization nor the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will refer explicitly to the fact that what you continue to call "Acute Watery Diarrhea" is in fact cholera, Vibrio cholera — a fact established by laboratory tests in Sudan....

"To be sure, the Khartoum regime has made clear that it will punish Sudanese journalists and health officials who dare to use the word 'cholera,' and no doubt threats have been issued to WHO, demanding that you be complicit in silence about this terrible disease. The regime's motive is transparently a desire that the 'reputation' of Sudan not be compromised by associations the regime perceives would inhere in any accurate designation of a disease that is clearly out of control. But the effect of WHO's silence is to ensure that Sudan has not received international medical resources necessary to combat cholera — preeminently massive supplies of re-hydration equipment; medical epidemiologists as well as specialists in treating cholera epidemics; and water/sanitation equipment and engineers. 
"By yielding to the Khartoum's regime's threat, you are complicit in the failure to respond to a disease that currently threatens many hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians — and is currently active in twelve Sudanese states.... 
"Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan is reprehensible. Your failure to transport stool samples from victims in Sudan to Geneva for official confirmation of cholera makes you fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread, out of control, with daily new reports confirming that this is indeed a cholera epidemic. 
"The inevitable history that will be written of this epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light."

In October 2017, Tedros appointed the late Robert Mugabe, the authoritarian leader of Zimbabwe, as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Tedros had praised Zimbabwe as "a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide health care to all." After global outrage, Tedros rescinded the appointment.
Writing for the Sunday Times, Rebecca Myers wrote:
"Diplomats said [Mugabe's] appointment was a political payoff from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — the WHO's first African director-general — to China, a long-time ally of Mugabe, and the 50 or so African states that helped to secure Tedros's election earlier this year... 
"Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing's financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries."

Columnist Frida Ghitis, writing for The Washington Post added:
"The WHO director's decision to honor the dictator is a misjudgment of breathtaking proportions. The stain it has left on the WHO will not be easily cleansed. We must find out what was behind it. If an investigation proves that giving this prestigious appointment to a brutal human rights violator was the result of corruption, Tedros must leave. In fact, Tedros's tenure should already be regarded as probationary, and his judgment in question.... 
"Some speculate that Tedros's decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros's victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China's muscle in the world."

In July 2018, China Global Television Network (CGTN), a state-owned media outlet, reported that Tedros had met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing. It was Tedros's second visit to China since he took over as the director general of WHO. CGTN stated:
"The Chinese state councilor [Wang Yi] went on to say that healthcare was an important part of global governance and China's national development strategy. He said Beijing was willing to deepen cooperation with the WHO under a number of initiatives, such as their joint 'Health Silk Road' project, various China-Africa health development plans, as well as the organization's five-year action plan for health, employment and inclusive economic growth. 
"Dr. Tedros welcomed Wang's comments, saying their enhanced cooperation would improve health standards in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative."

As Ethiopia's foreign minister, Tedros, an executive member of the Marxist-Leninist Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), oversaw a massive expansion of China's role in Ethiopia. China is Ethiopia's biggest foreign investor, its largest trading partner and also its largest lender.

Writing for Politico, Simon Marks explained:
"Over the course of the last decade, Ethiopia has become increasingly dependent on Chinese investment. 
"The Export-Import Bank of China put up $2.9 billion of the $3.4 billion railway project connecting Ethiopia to Djibouti, providing the landlocked country access to ports. Chinese funds were also instrumental in the construction of Ethiopia's first six-lane highway — an $800 million project — the metro system, and several skyscrapers dotting Addis Ababa's skyline. 
"Beijing also accounts for nearly half of Ethiopia's external debt and has lent at least $13.7 billion to Ethiopia between 2000 and 2018, data compiled by John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies shows."

Ethiopia is now ensnared in a debt trap that leaves the country vulnerable to pressure from Beijing.

On April 15, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced that he will withhold funding to the WHO while his administration reviews the group's "mismanagement, cover-ups, and failures" related to the pandemic. The United States is the WHO's largest donor, providing approximately $900 million for the two-year budget cycle of 2018 and 2019.

In a statement, the White House said that the WHO "has longstanding structural issues that must be addressed before the organization can be trusted again." It added that the WHO was "vulnerable to misinformation and political influence" and that measures were needed to "counter China's outsized influence on the organization."

That same day, members of the U.S. Senate demanded that the WHO provide information, records and documents regarding the origins of the coronavirus as part of a larger investigation into the global response to the pandemic.

In a letter to Tedros, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and other Republican Senators requested a sweeping list of materials regarding what they called "WHO's failed and delayed response to the Coronavirus."

Meanwhile, an online petition calling for Tedros's immediate resignation neared one million signatures. The petition, posted on the Change.org website, states: "We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General."

Timeline of WHO's Efforts to Pander to China

Several media outlets have published timelines of Chinese efforts to conceal the extent of the coronavirus from the rest of the world (here, here, here and here). Following is an abbreviated timeline of Tedros's complicity with China:
  • December 30. Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old doctor, sounded the alarm about a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Li sent a message to a group of other doctors warning that seven patients had been quarantined at Wuhan Central Hospital after coming down with a respiratory illness that seemed like the SARS coronavirus. The police in Wuhan subsequently reprimanded and silenced Li, requiring him to sign a letter acknowledging that he was making "false comments."
  • December 31. Taiwan contacted the WHO after seeing Li's reports of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in Wuhan, but the WHO kept it from the public.
  • January 1. An employee of a genomics company in Wuhan received a phone call from an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, ordering the company to stop testing samples from Wuhan related to the new disease and to destroy all existing samples.
  • January 3. China's National Health Commission (NHC), the nation's top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.
  • January 9. China identified the new coronavirus as the cause of a mystery disease in Wuhan.
  • January 14. WHO tweeted: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus." A day earlier, WHO had reported the first case outside of China — in Thailand.
  • January 20. China confirmed human-to-human transmission of new coronavirus.
  • January 21. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the United States in the state of Washington. The patient had recently returned from Wuhan.
  • January 23. Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was placed in lockdown. China closed all internal transit from Wuhan to other cities in China, but did nothing to stop international flights.
  • January 28. Tedros praised China's "transparency" regarding the virus.
  • January 30. Tedros visited China and praised the country's leadership for "setting a new standard for outbreak response." He also declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
  • January 31. The Trump Administration announced travel restrictions to and from China, effective February 2.
  • February 4. Tedros rebuked President Trump's travel restrictions, saying that they "can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."
  • February 7. Doctor Li Wenliang, the coronavirus whistleblower, diedin Wuhan after being infected with the virus. His death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger online in China.
  • February 14. Tedros said that WHO was "seeking clarity on how clinical diagnoses are being made so that other respiratory illnesses, including influenza, are not getting mixed into the COVID-19 data." He also warned against criticizing China: "This is the time for solidarity, not stigma."
  • February 28. WHO, in a 40-page report, praised China's response to COVID-19: "China's bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic."
  • March 11. Tedros finally declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic: "We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher."
  • March 18. An executive director of WHO, Mike Ryan, criticizedPresident Trump: "We need to be careful of the language we use lest it lead to profiling. The pandemic flu of 2009 started in North America, and we didn't call it the North American flu. This is a time to move forward and fight the virus together. Viruses know no borders and they don't care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank."
  • March 20. Tedros said that Wuhan reported no new cases of coronavirus.
  • March 29. Ai Fen, a Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus, disappeared amid concerns that she had been detained by Chinese authorities. Her whereabouts are unknown.
  • April 8. A day after U.S. President Donald Trump accused the WHO of being "very China-centric," and threatened to cut funding to WHO, Tedros responded: "Please quarantine politicizing COVID. We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave." Tedros also said that criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic was motivated by racism.
  • April 16. A second wave of Covid-19 erupted in the northern Chinese city of Harbin.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

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Lead NIH coronavirus researcher suggested pandemic could be 'genocide', said doctors would let blacks die

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-researcher-pandemic-genocide-blacks-nih


EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who is described by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the "lead" member of the U.S. government team racing to find a coronavirus vaccine, has engaged with online theories calling the pandemic a black "genocide" and condemned what she called "systematic oppression" by white people, a review of her social media posts by "Tucker Carlson Tonight" reveals.
Corbett has also reposted a tweet urging Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, to "check" their "privilege."
She further slammed the White House coronavirus task force in February, saying it "is largely people (white men) he appointed to their positions as directors of blah blah institute. They are indebted to serve him NOT the people."
Late Friday, a senior Health and Human Services (HHS) official told Fox News: "HHS career ethics officials are reviewing the matter." Fox News is told the inquiry is being taken “very seriously.” Making unprofessional social media posts about sensitive government work can violate federal ethical guidelines.
Corbett, 34, is an immunologist with the Vaccine Research Center, a division of NIAID. In her social media posts, first reported Friday by "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Corbett adopts a strikingly casual and conspiratorial tone. Her Twitter biography reads: "Virology. Vaccinology. Vagina-ology. Vino-ology. My tweets are my own. My science is the world’s."
On March 29, Corbett tweeted out a Bloomberg article about how the poor are dying at higher rates from coronavirus. In her tweet, she said that doctors would deliberately choose to deny ventilators to black Americans, leaving them to die instead.
"I tweet for the people who will die when doctors has [sic] to choose who gets the last ventilator and ultimately... who lives," Corbett wrote. "The poor. And, while the article doesn’t explicitly say it... the black."
FILE - Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, left, senior research fellow and scientific lead for coronavirus vaccines and immunopathogenesis team in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, talks with President Donald Trump as he tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., last month. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
FILE - Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, left, senior research fellow and scientific lead for coronavirus vaccines and immunopathogenesis team in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, talks with President Donald Trump as he tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., last month. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Someone replied to Corbett on April 9: “It’s so scary to think about. I know when it comes down to it people will be turned away or left to die because they are black.” Corbett replied that same day: “Yep. Both.”
Another user declared, “They hate us. This virus is a sure fire way to get rid of us without having to lift a finger.” Corbett replied: “Some have gone as far to call it genocide. I plead the fifth.”
"I am praying that policies reflect this is [sic] multiple ways," she wrote, referring to addressing systemic racism. "They must or we will be doomed in the next pandemic(s) too."
Adams, the surgeon general, told a press conference last week that black Americans suffer more from obesity, diabetes, and other ailments that increase the risk of death from coronavirus.
After Adams recommended that black Americans avoid cigarettes and alcohol to project their health during the epidemic, Corbett retweeted another user’s thread saying the suggestion was “offensive because they ignore systemic racism.” That thread ended by saying, “Dr. Fauci and Dr. Adams, check your privilege. Think critically. Stop spreading harmful fallacies that support white supremacy.”
Corbett herself commented, “Pasting this thread here because it’s appropriately put. Black people are not dying more because of their behaviors. That is just a cop out to adjust accountability.”

And, in a Twitter argument last week, Corbett said that “Merit [is] defined by prejudices.” Another user responded, “So can we just dismiss anything white men are involved in because they’re intrinsically malevolent?”
Corbett’s response: “White men are not be dismissed. But the systems that they (ancestor or current) curated are.”
When the poster asked Corbett if she was advancing an "immoral" notion, she replied: "No. Not at all. Nothing is immoral about dismantling systematic oppression."
In the meantime, some of Corbett's other posts suggested that she was enjoying her role to an unusual degree.
"What's better than bomb data emailed (at 5:30 pm) by team members fully graphed in beautiful color schemes and clear labeling???" she wrote on Thursday. "I'll wait..."
On March 20, she wrote: "Last yr, I took *17* trips (weekends domestically & other); this year, I have cancelled bucket list vacations (Netherlands, Spain, Jamaica, Greece). This the reason 'millennials' should be fighting for research funding for future pandemics... We deserve to be in dese streetz!"
On March 19, Corbett seemingly attempted to explain her tone on Twitter. "I decided to take matters into my own hands when I saw the people being left out of the direction and the press and the... you get the point," she wrote. "So... here I am 'COVID-19,' but make it fashion.”
In an interview earlier this month with CNN, which called Corbett "NIH's lead scientists for coronavirus vaccine research," Corbett told Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta that "several of our previous projects" -- including MERS and SARS research -- informed the government's ongoing coronavirus vaccine research.
In general terms, Corbett told the hosts that a specific protein would play a key role in the vaccine efforts. She also said that vaccine "rapid response" had improved in recent years, in part because "we've researched coronavirus vaccine development for the last 7 years, particularly under my direction, the team has researched this coronavirus development for 5 years."
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett.
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett.
Various other media outlets -- including The New York Times and Fox News -- have previously covered Corbett's role as the lead coronavirus researcher.
Fox News reported earlier this week that Corbett has long been called a superstar scientist. She got a full scholarship to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she majored in biology and sociology.
She received a doctorate from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill in 2014 and joined the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center as a postdoctoral fellow the same year.
On April 16, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., praised Corbett on Twitter, saying she was "leading the charge around the clock to develop a vaccine for coronavirus. The world owes you and your team a debt of gratitude."

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