I herewith would like to unmask the misinformation provided by I. Gerstenbluth and A.J. Duits. According to their reply, these gentlemen seem to feel offended by my letter from April 19, which I sent in reaction to their interview that went online on April 13.
From their extensive and overwhelming reply and appended ‘Take home messages for laymen’ (!), it is obvious that they were sufficiently confident to not expect me to criticize ‘top experts’ or ‘health officials’ for debunking statements that do not match their mandate, no matter the mocking tone of their interview. As you will appreciate from my comments to any single element of their reply (which I will share as soon as time permits), their counterarguments are not only misleading but are a disgrace for all those who did do a proper homework in that they invested time and energy in understanding the population dynamics of the current pandemic and how its course is being altered by the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns.
It is clear from their reply that I. Gerstenbluth and A.J. Duits rely on conventional vaccine knowledge and vaccination mantras in trying to explain the benefit of vaccines, no matter the conditions of their deployment. Adhering to the principle of ‘the more, the better’, they have been bombarding me with a plethora of arguments and references from the literature in an attempt to make their case. Unfortunately, their lofty rhetoric often rings hollow. I am even wondering whether they actually read these publications in full as I found out that the more relevant ones actually support the scientific insights I am trying to convey rather than they would lend credibility to their simplistic interpretation of this pandemic. This may easily happen when one limits screening of references from the literature to a search by keywords. While ignoring or not understanding the elements building the scientific foundation of my analysis (as abundantly shared on my website www.geertvandenbossche.org) and declining a public scientific debate, these two doctors are joining forces to teach me about codes of ethics (!) and compile a number of irrelevant scientific arguments. As already mentioned, I will deal with every single argument to demonstrate that none of them provides evidence that the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns are to be considered a sound approach to controlling a pandemic of a highly mutable virus that naturally causes an acute self-limiting infection. Protagonists of these campaigns consider every decline in cases as an effect of vaccination whereas people’s nonadherence to infection prevention measures (and soon to vaccination!) is to be blamed for a surge in cases. As explained on multiple occasions, this viewpoint is beyond simplicity and illustrates a complete lack of understanding of the complexity and multifactorial interactions that are inherent to the population dynamics of a pandemic, especially when modified by human intervention. As far as their lessons in ethics are concerned, I think time has come for them to focus on the single most important ethical principle which is ‘respect and preservation of human life’. It is clear that stubbornness and a blind indoctrination approach are not going to best serve this principle unless they are willing to assume full responsibility by publicly declaring that the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns, especially using mRNA vaccines (!), will undoubtedly confer herd immunity and take control of the growing panoply of viral variants, including those that are now coming close to resisting current Covid-19 vaccines.
Geert Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Belgium and Germany. After his career in Academia, Geert joined several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals) to serve various roles in vaccine R&D as well as in late vaccine development.
Geert then moved on to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle (USA) as Senior Program Officer; he then worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva as Senior Ebola Program Manager. At GAVI he tracked efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. He also represented GAVI in fora with other partners, including WHO, to review progress on the fight against Ebola and to build plans for global pandemic preparedness.
Back in 2015, Geert scrutinized and questioned the safety of the Ebola vaccine that was used in ring vaccination trials conducted by WHO in Guinea. His critical scientific analysis and report on the data published by WHO in the Lancet in 2015 was sent to all international health and regulatory authorities involved in the Ebola vaccination program. After working for GAVI, Geert joined the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. He is at present primarily serving as a Biotech / Vaccine consultant while also conducting his own research on Natural Killer cell-based vaccines.
Email: info@voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org
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