| | | He's killing people.
The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
A Belgian virus expert has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.
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Vanden Bossche is a veterinarian and virologist with an impressive set of credentials, including being head of vaccine development at the German Center for Infection Research. On paper, he appears to be a trusted voice that should be listened to.
However, Vanden Bossche has been in the process of starting a large-scale demonization of the current attempts to vaccinate the world against COVID using the shots developed by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. In March, Vanden Bossche sent an open letter to the World Health Organization that made wild claims about the dangers of mass vaccination. These include the idea that vaccination turns people into asymptomatic carriers due to “shedding,” that vaccinating people in high-infectious areas will lead to more mutation, that these variants will confer vaccine immunity on the virus, and that the vaccine will lead to permanent susceptibility to COVID.
Literally none of these are true, and have been thoroughly debunked. Other statements from Vanden Bossche seem to imply he thinks the vaccines will create super viruses the way over exposure to antibiotics does to bacteria, which is not how any of this works.
At this point, it’s worth taking a closer look at Vanden Bossche, which Dr. Vincent Iannelli did in an exhaustive article. The results range from disappointing to disturbing. Despite his credentials, Vanden Bossche is hardly the world-renowned expert that he is made out to be from fans of Weinstein’s show. He is only board certified in veterinary virology, microbiology, and animal hygiene, and hasn’t published a research paper since 1995. He has never published any research on vaccines, and people who actually have, such as Dr. Angela Rasmussen, have called his scaremongering “baseless.”
I’ve professionally published more work on vaccination than Vanden Bossche has, and I dropped out of college to run the local Rocky Horror Picture Show. Despite that, Vanden Bossche has a plan, and not surprisingly it is the exact same plan as Wakefield.
Vanden Bossche thinks some types of vaccination for COVID would be great. Specifically, he touts the power of “Natural Killer (NK) cells capable of recognizing these unconventional antigens.” It just so happens, that Vanden Bossche is working on an NK vaccine as an independent researcher, according to his letter.
It’s not hard to connect the dots. A seemingly prestigious scientist who is a lot less impressive when looked at with a critical eye begins crying doom about the current state of vaccination. Rather doing publishing research, he takes to Twitter and YouTube to get his message out, the hallmark of all great science. As an alternative, he offers a new path forward using technology that he is personally working on and stands to profit from. I suppose we should be grateful that Vanden Boscche isn’t teaming up with a disgraced quack who thinks his bone marrow cures autism like Wakefield did. At least, not that we know of.
Weinstein has embraced Vanden Bossche as part of his growing media presence that seeks to profit off misinformation and misery. By escalating the fear of vaccination, the crisis is prolonged, and the fear is maintained. That makes for ripe marks willing to hearken to their brand of conservatism. It’s an incredibly dangerous game where human lives are being wagered for financial gain. The effects of Wakefield’s scam are still being felt today, and a resurgence during COVID could be catastrophic.
The people who claim that current vaccination efforts are harming us, such as Weinstein and Vanden Bossche, do not appear to be arguing in good faith. It looks like a con, an old one at that, and we fall for it at our peril.
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