COVID vaccine coercion backfiring?
Researchers have concluded that COVID-19 vaccine policies may actually be accomplishing the very opposite of their intended goals. In a new preprint research paper that is still awaiting peer review, international investigators led by Professor Stefan Baral, MD, of the Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, argue that “current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided.”
Prestigious Investigators
In addition to Johns Hopkins University, institutions represented by researchers on this multidisciplinary team include the University of Oxford’s Centre for Ethics and Humanities, Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Edinburgh Medical School’s Division of Infection Medicine, University of Toronto’s School of Public Health, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Department of Medical Statistics.
Drawing on the diversity of the researchers’ fields of expertise, the team examined coercive vaccine policies from the perspectives of “1) behavioral psychology, 2) politics and law, 3) socioeconomics, and 4) the integrity of science and public health.”
Shocking Findings
The paper notes at the outset that, despite a dramatic shift in global vaccination policies prompting “ethical, scientific, practical, and political concerns,” there has been only “limited evaluation of their potential unintended consequences.”
The investigators summed up their results in the title of their paper: “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good.”
The team took for granted the validity of the claim that COVID-19 vaccines have been profoundly effective in “decreasing global morbidity and mortality burdens.” Nonetheless, even accepting this assumption of a “profound” benefit from the vaccine as fact, they found that “current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided. Such policies may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations.
“Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing.”
Follow the science?
The questionability of the science behind vaccine mandates was highlighted in their review of recent literature: “de Figueiredo et. al. (2021b) found that vaccine passports in the UK would induce a net decrease in inclination to vaccinate among those who had not received a full vaccination dose, while Bell et. al. (2021) found that UK healthcare workers who felt pressured to vaccinate were more likely to have declined the COVID-19 vaccine. Finally, Jorgensen et al. (2021) found that the reintroduction of vaccine passports in late 2021 in Denmark increased distrust among the unvaccinated, “
Public senses they’re not being told the truth
People sense that something about their government has changed, and not in a good way: “Oversimplified public announcements, downplaying uncertainties and potential adverse events, and misleading information communicated from health authorities regarding vaccine efficacy and disease risk, have helped facilitate various layers of cognitive dissonance (a psychological stress precipitated by the perception of contradictory information).
“Mandates, passports, and segregated restrictions create an environment where reactance effects are exaggerated because people with low vaccine confidence see the contradictory information as validating their suspicions and concerns.”
The media’s role in eroding public trust - exaggerating COVID danger, hiding vaccine danger
Mainstream news organizations were found to have played a major role in engendering distrust of vaccine policy, by both exaggerating the danger of COVID and hiding the dangers of the vaccines: “The media have often downplayed the age- and comorbidity-based risk of COVID-19 while promoting population-wide vaccination across all age-groups .... As vaccination programs have moved down the age spectrum, the media has followed suit by over-emphasizing the risks of COVID-19 for young adults and then children in turn ...”
“Early evidence of blood clotting complications were reported as “one in a million” events … but ultimately proved much higher … More recent safety signals associated with myocarditis in young men … and with the Moderna vaccine in particular … have been downplayed …”
The government’s role
The paper goes on to warn ominously how the general public had been alienated by world leaders stigmatizing the unvaccinated while eroding civil liberties for all citizens and, in some nations, suddenly adding mandatory booster shots to the schedule (which they called “moving goalposts”). They found that these governmental actions actually brought more people to believe government actors are conspiring against their citizenry (i.e., conspiracy theories):
“Some of the major concerns include adoption of implantable tracking devices (including micro-chips), digital IDs, the rise of social credit systems, and the establishment of authoritarian biosurveillance governments … Aspects of vaccine passport policies combined with [technological] innovations – as well as censorship by social media companies of vaccine trial issues from reputable sources like the BMJ … may reinforce and exacerbate suspicion and distrust…”
A new direction needed
The investigators conclude with an urgent call for change: “We believe mandatory policies centering on COVID-19 vaccination status should be urgently reconsidered …”
