What We in Public Health Get Wrong About Vaccines
Too many of us portrayed vaccines as a panacea against COVID-19 and treat them like a sacred cow against criticism
In one of the many interactions I’ve had on social media about vaccines in general and the COVID-19 vaccines in particular, an individual who shall go unnamed asked if a person who was vaccinated against COVID-19 was still capable of catching and transmitting the virus. “Yes,” I replied. I didn’t get a chance to follow up with a more nuanced discussion before the individual proclaimed that I, an epidemiologist with a doctoral degree in public health, had clearly stated that vaccines do not work.
He then went on another social media platform with a screen capture of my response to his question, claiming that “The Truth” was finally being spoken. I’m sure all seventy-nine of his followers on Twitter were impressed.
The nuanced discussion I wanted to have with him is that vaccines lower the rates of infection slowly at first, and then keep those rates down through a complicated mechanism that involves biology, immunity, social norms, and even legal processes. Vaccines are not a “magical forcefield,” as a friend put it, that somehow protects a vaccinated person from having a virus or bacteria land on them and begin to try and…
