Dr. Phlip McMillan, John McMillan
Vaccine hesitancy is making headlines again. Measles outbreaks are returning in places where they were once wiped out, and officials are quick to pin the blame on the unvaccinated. But is the story that simple?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a seasoned virologist and vaccine developer who’s worked with GSK, Novartis, and the Gates Foundation, says the real source of the problem lies within the very institutions meant to protect us. In his view, it’s not “anti-vaxxers” who broke public trust. It was the scientific missteps and messaging failures of public health authorities themselves. From rushed vaccine rollouts to ethical shortcuts, he believes the COVID-19 response left the public confused, alienated, and suspicious – and with good reason.
A Voice of Experience
This isn’t a fringe opinion. It’s a warning from the inside. Dr. Vanden Bossche helped design global vaccine programs for leading institutions and has spoken out about problems in vaccinology long before they were politically safe to mention. Early in the pandemic, he predicted that hasty vaccination during an active outbreak could fuel viral escape. It wasn’t until years later that the implications of his concerns began to show up in variant patterns and shifting vaccine recommendations.
He didn’t just raise alarms. He backed them with immunological reasoning grounded in decades of vaccine research.
The Core Indictment
His core argument is blunt: “Growing vaccine hesitancy should be blamed on vaccine developers, regulators, and public health authorities, not on so-called anti-vaxxers.”
According to Vanden Bossche, the mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign broke fundamental principles of vaccinology. Unlike traditional vaccines, the COVID shots used novel platforms, including mRNA and lipid nanoparticles. These products were rolled out on a global scale while the virus was still actively spreading. That decision, he argues, not only lacked a sound scientific basis. It also undermined public understanding of what vaccines are supposed to do.
Second, the narrative never held still. Two shots. Then three. Then every six months. Each update seemed to rewrite the rules. Eventually, booster schedules were proposed every six months. For people trying to follow the science, the shifting guidance felt less like adaptation and more like improvisation. That narrative instability, paired with inconsistent messaging about what the vaccines could actually prevent, led to deep confusion.
And third, the novel technologies at play — from mRNA to lipid nanoparticles — weren’t communicated as experimental. The term “vaccine” implies sterilizing immunity, something that stops infection and transmission. But COVID-19 vaccines never offered that. “Any serious vaccinologist,” Vanden Bossche argues, “must acknowledge that the mass vaccination campaign violated basic scientific principles.”
The Contagion of Doubt
One of the most damaging outcomes has been the spillover of doubt from COVID-19 vaccines to all vaccines. When the public sees authorities avoid hard questions, they begin to draw their own conclusions, sometimes incorrectly. If COVID vaccines were rushed, people ask, what about the others? Why were uncomfortable questions met with silence or censorship? Why did experts hesitate to admit that something went wrong?
If COVID vaccines need multiple boosters and still don’t stop infection, why should we trust childhood shots? This common logic is flawed but understandable. Without transparent communication, the scientific distinction between established live-attenuated vaccines and experimental platforms is lost.
Vanden Bossche believes this confusion could have been avoided if authorities had simply acknowledged that not all vaccines work the same way. COVID vaccines were a new kind of intervention, with different strengths and risks. Instead, as trust evaporates, suspicion spreads. Not because the science failed, but because leaders failed to explain and own their mistakes.
Ethical Red Lines Crossed
For Vanden Bossche, the ethics are as concerning as the science. “No one should ever be coerced into vaccination.” That principle matters most when the intervention is new, and the recipient is healthy. If a therapeutic drug harms a sick patient, it’s tragic but sometimes unavoidable. But if a vaccine harms a well person, that’s an ethical breach. Especially, he adds, when those individuals were never at high risk for severe COVID-19 in the first place.
And then there’s the psychological harm. According to Dr. Philip McMillan, a researcher and clinician, when someone is compelled to take a treatment they believe is harmful, it can trigger real physiological effects. This is a phenomenon known as the “nocebo effect.” It’s the mirror image of the placebo effect, and it’s well-documented in clinical research.
For those at low risk of severe COVID, especially children and the previously infected, the calculus should have been different. It wasn’t.
The Path to Redemption
Vanden Bossche believes that the way forward is to reestablish humility and scientific honesty.
Vaccinology isn’t a perfect science. It’s a high-stakes balancing act. Pretending otherwise only makes things worse. He calls for full transparency about risks and limitations, even for traditional vaccines, and demands a return to genuine informed consent.
He also believes the field needs new directions, not just fancier platforms, but better immune understanding. Instead of focusing solely on triggering antibody responses, we need to explore how to train the body’s innate immune defenses, like Natural Killer (NK) cells, to respond broadly and safely, without provoking harmful overreactions.
Most of all, it’s time to stop vilifying dissent. The people asking hard questions are not enemies of science. They may be its last defenders.
If trust is like glass, then the COVID-19 vaccine rollout dropped and broke it. You can glue it back together, but it’s never quite the same. That’s the scale of the damage done. Restoring public faith in vaccines will take more than slogans and mandates. It will require real engagement, open admission of past errors, and a renewed dedication to ethical medicine.
The question now isn’t who to blame. It’s whether we’re willing to do the hard work of earning that trust back, through open science, ethical humility, and above all, listening to those we once dismissed.
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