The Vaccine Debate: When Both Sides Talk Past Each Other
Geert Vanden BosscheMar 10, 2026
For those fed up with the endless, lowbrow squabbling between pro- and anti-vax roosters, here is a simplified version of my previous Substack article (https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-debate-when-ideology), slightly extended by a few additional comments. Hopefully, it offers some genuine insight and encourages a more constructive search for ways to achieve population-level immune protection without causing harm. For anyone willing to understand it, this may help cut through the absurd polarization, hardly worthy of science, and the primitive animosities it keeps fueling within an already divided scientific community. And as if the spectacle were not already theatrical enough, an increasing number of influential figures — often armed with strong opinions but limited immunological literacy — have now entered the arena, adding fuel to the fire of polarization and turning what should be a biological discussion into a political spectacle.
Seriously, do they think this is going to add any value to solving public health challenges?
The Vaccine Debate: When Both Sides Talk Past Each Other
Watching the public debate about vaccines has become increasingly frustrating. On one side are strong supporters of vaccination. On the other are vocal critics. Both groups argue passionately and often bitterly, each convinced they are defending science.
But to many observers the debate has started to look strange: the two sides often talk past each other instead of addressing the same question.
The reason is simple. They are looking at the issue from two very different perspectives.
One perspective focuses on public health at the population level. People in this camp think mainly about herd immunity: how to reduce disease in an entire population and prevent outbreaks.
The other perspective focuses on the individual. People in this camp worry primarily about side effects and possible long-term health consequences for individuals receiving vaccines.
Both perspectives raise legitimate concerns. But because they start from different assumptions, they rarely engage with each other's main arguments. As a result, the debate never really moves forward.
Over time I realized something important: neither side is necessarily wrong. The real problem is that both are asking the wrong question.
Instead of endlessly arguing about whether existing vaccines should be accepted or rejected, we should be asking a different question:
Can we design immunization strategies that protect populations while ruling out risks to individuals?
Long before the COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic, I had already been thinking about this dilemma.
My conclusion is that we may need to rethink how we stimulate the immune system.
Current vaccines primarily work by activating what might be called the immune system's 'special forces': the adaptive immune system. These are highly specialized defenses such as antibodies (Abs) and certain types of T cells that are trained to recognize a specific pathogen.
But our bodies also possess a powerful 'first line of defense', known as innate immunity. This system is less specific but extremely fast and capable of fighting many different pathogens.
Many common viral infections are actually controlled largely by this early defense system.
During the C-19 pandemic, for example, we saw repeated infections with increasingly infectious SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) variants. Yet many unvaccinated people experienced only mild symptoms or recovered quickly. This illustrates how adaptable and resilient the innate immune system can be.
When innate immunity is properly activated, it can often eliminate most of a pathogen early in the infection, leaving only a small amount of work for the specialized immune cells.
However, the opposite situation can also occur. If highly specific immune responses are triggered first — such as through Abs that target a particular virus — the broader innate response may receive less stimulation. This usually works well when Abs perfectly match the virus. But if the match is imperfect, problems can arise. The pathogen may escape immune recognition or the immune response may become unbalanced. We saw clear evidence of these phenomena during vaccine-breakthrough infections with SC-2 variants that escaped vaccine-induced immunity.
For this reason, strengthening innate immune defenses in a safe way might offer a different strategy for protecting populations.
The idea is to train the body's natural early defenses so they respond more effectively to many pathogens, without needing to target one specific virus.
One possible way to do this is to expose the immune system to very small synthetic fragments resembling parts of the pathogen displayed on the surface of infected or altered cells in their early stages. These fragments do not contain any virus, genetic material, or other infectious components. Their purpose is simply to alert the innate immune system's surveillance cells and improve their ability to recognize infected or abnormal cells early.
These fragments (we call them 'peptides') can be extremely small, fully synthetic molecules produced with high purity. They don't contain any DNA, no mRNA, and no added stimulants (so-called 'adjuvants'). Their role simply consists of helping the innate immune system recognize when something is wrong.
If such an approach works beyond preliminary proof-of-concept, it could strengthen the body's natural defenses while avoiding many of the side effects associated with strong adaptive immune responses. It could even allow immune training to be delivered through something as simple as a small skin patch, applied before seasonal epidemics or future pandemics.
In that case, people could voluntarily strengthen their immune defenses in advance.
Such an approach could represent a new direction in immunization science:
Let me state upfront that I am a completely independent scientist with absolutely no commercial interest in promoting this type of immunization. However, many years of experience in this field, further strengthened by my analysis of the current immune escape pandemic, allow me to encourage researchers to pursue this creative path instead of engaging in endless squabbling about the merits and drawbacks of current vaccines.
Unfortunately, though, the current pharmaceutical model will never support it, as it focuses mainly on developing highly specific vaccines — often one product per pathogen and repeated updates when new variants appear.
That is why the debate about vaccines has become so polarized.
In conclusion: the two sides are fighting over the same issue, but their goals are fundamentally different. One wants population protection. The other wants absolute individual safety. Within the current framework of vaccination, those goals simply appear incompatible.
Meanwhile, the endless argument consumes enormous time and energy. And while the debate continues, pathogens simply keep evolving.
There is an old proverb: when two dogs fight over a bone, a third dog runs away with it.
In this case, the third dog is the pathogen:
When the two camps keep fighting about vaccines, the pathogen quietly wins.
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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