Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s Call For A Full Stop To Mass COVID-19 Vaccination Is Extremely Dangerous
Hooman Noorchashm
Recently Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a PhD scientist involved with vaccine development, has been making headlines with communities of concerned citizens, who are skeptical about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. This, after an interview with him was published on Youtube.
To be clear, I consider myself a vaccine safety skeptic too — because I understand deeply how the medical establishment and government policy can interact to cause the avoidable sacrifice minority subsets of people for the real or perceived benefit of the majority.
BUT, at the same time I fully acknowledge the potential power and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines in helping us achieve herd immunity — to not accept this fact of immunological science in the COVID-19 pandemic is dangerously regressive.
After listening to Dr. Vanden Bossche’s video carefully, I was initially encouraged by his statement that the most unusual, and potentially dangerous, aspect of the COVID-19 vaccine campaign is the vaccine’s mass scale deployment in the midst of a pandemic outbreak. This, I agree with 100%.
It is an unprecedented clinical activity in western vaccine science to be indiscriminately vaccinating millions of people daily without regard for who among them may be recently or currently infected.
https://youtu.be/9WFfVQZhR6o
BUT, I strongly disagree with Dr. Vanden Bossche’s argument that mass vaccination will cause “immune escape” by driving emergence of new variants that could bypass vaccine immunity. It is even more troublesome to use this line of reasoning to call for a complete halt to mass COVID-19 vaccination when so many uninfected persons are not immune. In stating this I am not at all naive to the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can mutate to bypass vaccine immunity. But I know, with mathematical precision, that this is far more likely to occur if we do not have enough people immunized to the current dominant strains of the virus with enough speed.
My point is that it is far more likely that slow and insufficient achievement of population level “herd immunity”, through vaccination, will cause immune escape and vaccine bypass by new mutant variants. It is not vaccination that drives emergence of new variants, it is natural infection of individuals, on mass scale that does so.
Let me explain my position as clearly as I can.
SARS-CoV-2 variants mutate, evolve in, and emerge from, naturally infected hosts: individual infected persons, that is!
So the more persons are naturally infected by the virus, the higher the chances are for variants, capable of escaping vaccine immunity, to emerge. Worse yet, the more people are naturally infected, the higher the chances are that variants capable of harming our children, as did the Influenza virus pandemic of 1918, would emerge.
So, in my opinion and contrary to Dr. Vanden Bossche’s contention, the single most critical aspect of our en mass vaccine effort that is dangerous from a “vaccine harm” perspective, is the indiscriminate vaccination of those persons who were/are already naturally infected — many of whom will even carry asymptomatic natural infections at the time they get vaccinated.
I am very concerned that these already infected persons will have adverse systemic immunological events and tissue damage following their vaccination, because of their recent prior natural infections — not because of the vaccine itself, intrinsically.
Consider that because most naturally infected persons are already immune, my proposition to delay their vaccination is nothing that most reasonable physicians could too easily label as being “unethical”. In fact, it is more likely than not that most naturally infected persons will be even more robustly immune than vaccinated counterparts. Certainly, an antibody assay (i.e., IgG and IgM) in a #ScreenB4Vaccine effort would easily demonstrate this natural immunity and identify the previously infected. So, it is wisest and safest to delay vaccination of the already infected until we have adjudicated, without a question, the question of whether the vaccine is safe in such persons.
Dr. Vanden Bossche’s opinion that we ought to stop vaccinating ALL persons, and especially those who are not naturally immune, is a recipe for a global scale disaster in this pandemic. What is he thinking?!?
Why is Vanden Bossche’s going to be a disaster?
Because leaving the population unimmunized, would simply accelerate the rate of viral mutations by leaving more individual persons fully open and exposed to becoming infected factories for new mutant variants. Not to mention that the mortality rate from natural infection is likely to be at least several hundred times higher than the aggregate of vaccine related deaths. So using natural infection as a means of achieving herd immunity is simply going to cost far more lives than the total of vaccine related deaths in this pandemic scenario. Of course, by stating this I am not justifying a immoral utilitarian postion — we must always balance the utilitarian good with maximal, ethical and scientifically based safety mitgation to the best of our abilities.
I would be happy to have a civil public discussion with Dr. Vanden Bossche on the fallacy and severe danger of the concepts he is promoting. Frankly, I find his reasoning scientifically disjointed — and I think it needs to be subjected to serious criticism, because it seems to be influencing many people, dangerously and incorrectly.
To be crystal clear, it is my opinion and immunological prognostication that the safest and quickest way to achieve herd immunity is to first exclude, from immediate vaccination, all persons who have had a recent prior natural SARS-CoV infection or have a documented underlying autoimmune disease or prior vaccine reactions. And to proceed with efficiently vaccinating ONLY persons with no evidence of recent prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, underlying autoimmune diseases, or prior vaccine allergies. Certainly, no person should be forced to undergo vaccination against their will or at cost of their liberty or freedom to participate in our civil society.
The calculus of vaccine safety and efficacy is a delicate but critical one that we must all size up and get right — because if we do not we risk peril to western civilization. This pandemic is not simply going away — divided and confused, it is likely to sink us.
On this record, I predict that a vast proportion of COVID-19 vaccine associated complications and deaths being observed in a minority subset of people across the world (i.e., thromboembolic event, vascular injury events, cardiac events and seizures), are occurring in the recently naturally infected. In the US alone, the recently infected, constitutes up to 20% of the population as of this writing. And I worry that FDA, CDC and the WHO are too ready to use the “true, true and unrelated” trope to dismiss a COVID-19 vaccine safety signal that is highly likely to be adversely affecting a minority subset of people.
#ScreenB4Vaccine is the one and only feasible mitigation strategy we must adopt to maximize safety in the current COVID-19 vaccine campaign — and, this will ONLY come from the consumer/market demand side: That is, a demand for a reasonable safety mitigation approach to protect the minority in harm’s way, as an adjunct to the vaccine’s efficacy at inducing the immunity the majority of us need to end this terrible pandemic.
For a background on why it is highly likely to be a severe error to indiscriminately vaccine the already infected, please read my letter of warning to FDA and Pfizer HERE.
FDA, CDC, WHO, Pfizer, Moderna, Astra-Zeneca and J&J will NOT act to eliminate and protect naturally infected persons from indiscriminate vaccination — only we can, by adopting #ScreenB4Vaccine with all immediate urgency.
(Update: You may read more about Dr. Vanden Boossche’s dangerous logical and scientific fallacy HERE.)