Originally posted by biglentil
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Separating Sense from Nonsense
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.
Jonathan Jarry M.Sc, 24 Mar 2021
"The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. These public commentators, often bedazzled with advanced degrees, have painted themselves as brave mavericks escaping from the mainstream herd to denounce the cataclysmic consequences of public health measures. The latest example of this phenomenon comes in the form of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who recently published an alarming manifesto. In it, Dr. Bossche makes a number of incorrect or exaggerated claims about the use of mass vaccination during a pandemic and urges international health authorities to stop the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines or else risk unleashing “a global catastrophe without equal.†This is scary stuff, but it’s all quite misguided.
In short, if we are concerned about the virus mutating to evade vaccine protection, the solution is to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible and to eventually reformulate the vaccines to match variants of concern that acquire this ability. And if we are concerned about the anti-vaccination movement, we should wonder why they were so quick to prop up the portentous letter of an alleged pro-vaccine scientist."
Take-home message:
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a veterinarian who recently released an open letter boldly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines will be harmful to humanity by allowing the virus to mutate in dangerous ways
If we are worried about dangerous variants emerging, it is much riskier to allow the virus to spread between unvaccinated people
If coronavirus variants emerge for which the current vaccines offer little to no protection, the vaccines can be reformulated to be a better fit, much like the annual flu vaccine
Dr. Bossche proposes the use of a new type of vaccine based on natural killer cells, which he claims he is working on but for which there is no published evidence
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking-pseudoscience/doomsday-prophecy-dr-geert-vanden-bossche
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