“Experts” aae a Threat to Public Health
20th January 2022
The columnist Katharine Whitehorn was apparently fond of saying: “you can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.” I remembered this as I listened to Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, describe his plans to “make sure that people get their vaccine” at a panel hosted this week by the World Economic Forum.
Bancel wants to make regular COVID-19 booster shots more attractive by bundling them with vaccines against other, more familiar ailments. “Our goal is to have a single annual booster, so that we don’t have compliance issues where people don’t want to get two to three shots a winter, but they get one dose where they get you know, a booster for corona, and a booster for flu and RSV [respiratory syncytial virus].” Skeptics, Bancel reasons, will be more willing to take a COVID shot if it comes conveniently packaged with other shots they might get anyway.
This strategy seems perfectly designed to have the opposite of its intended effect. When surveyed last September, 88% of those who remain unvaccinated against COVID said that that “there’s too much pressure on Americans to get a COVID-19 vaccine.” Almost as many (80%) suspect that “public health officials are not telling us everything they know about COVID-19 vaccines.” If those same public health officials, demonstrating their characteristic humility, now proceed to make second-class citizens out of anyone who resists their new omni-vax—what is likely to be the result?