The true tragedy of the Covid-19 vaccines – The Telegraph

Indeed, some public health officials exaggerated the benefits and underplayed some of the risks. Thrombosis caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine and myocarditis caused by the messenger-RNA vaccines of BioNTech and Pfizer have emerged as rare but serious side effects.

The pandemics legacy now seems to include greater public mistrust of vaccines in general. Measles is on the rise. More people are refusing the MMR jab. A recent Unicef survey found that vaccine confidence had fallen in 52 out of 55 countries.

Who is responsible? Public health officials tend to blame antivaxx campaigners with lurid conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, and they are partly right. But perhaps they should also look in the mirror. Misinformation came from both sides, and by overpromising what the vaccines could do, and demanding vaccine mandates, many scientists and government officials contributed to scepticism.

For example, the US government tried to reassure people about messenger-RNA vaccines by implicitly criticising live vaccines like those used for measles: The mRNA vaccines do not contain any live virus. Instead, they work by teaching our cells to make a harmless piece of a spike protein. So, live vaccines are not harmless?

Americas leading infectious-disease expert, Anthony Fauci, said in May 2021 that vaccination makes it extremely unlikely not impossible, but very, very low likelihood that theyre going to transmit it In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. That turned out to be wrong, as he later admitted, with the jab doing little to prevent reinfection and transmission.

Preventing transmission was the excuse used for vaccinating children, yet when that excuse evaporated, the policy continued. For young age groups, wrote a clutch of doctors in the BMJ in December 2021, the harms of taking a vaccine are almost certain to outweigh the benefits.

Authoritarianism made the problem worse. France criminalised criticism of vaccine mandates; Canada froze the bank accounts of truckers for protesting against them. Part of the reason governments were so reckless in forcing vaccines was probably that they wanted an exit from lockdowns, which were imposed for longer and more often than promised.

Some of us urged ministers not to claim too much for vaccines or pretend there would be no side effects as that would backfire. But the Government pressed ahead with mandates to prevent care-home workers going to work unless vaccinated. A study by doctors concluded: Our data suggest that debate around mandates can arouse strong concerns and could entrench scepticism. Policymakers should proceed with caution.

This was compounded by a baffling refusal to acknowledge that natural immunity from Covid itself had a role in protecting people. In 2020 a paper in The Lancet stated that there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection. Yet we now know that it lasts longer and is more effective than the protection provided by a jab.

The backlash against vaccines will go too far. Italys former health minister Roberto Speranza, who imposed vaccine mandates, can no longer walk in a street without angry Italians calling him a murderer. But public health officials worldwide must concede that overblown claims and underestimated risks of the vaccines developed during Covid have hurt the reputation of a valuable medical technology.

To hear more on this story, listen to Episode 6 of The Lockdown Files podcast, The Forgotten Victims, using the audio player in this article, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The true tragedy of the Covid-19 vaccines - The Telegraph