Vaccine Insider: COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Campaign Must End

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked

Story at-a-glance

  • In an open letter, Geert Vanden Bossche, Ph.D., a vaccinology insider and former global director of vaccine programs, including work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has called for the mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to end
  • He’s reached out to the World Health Organization and other international health organizations to warn of the potentially detrimental consequences of further viral immune escape triggered by the current COVID-19 vaccination campaign, calling it the “single most important public health emergency of international concern”
  • The widespread COVID-19 vaccination campaign may efficiently turn what was a relatively harmless virus into a “bioweapon of mass destruction,” according to Bossche, who’s instead calling for creation of natural killer (NK) cell-based vaccines
  • Investigative journalist Rosemary Frei believes that Bossche has a “not-so-hidden agenda,” which is to push the development of this different type of vaccine and calls his open letter “a continuation of the overall COVID deception”

This article was previously published March 27, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

Geert Vanden Bossche, Ph.D., a vaccinology insider and former global director of vaccine programs, including work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has called for the mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to end. In the video above, he speaks with Discernable about one of his primary concerns with COVID-19 vaccines, which is immune escape.

Bossche describes a general principle in biology, vaccinology and microbiology that if you put living organisms like bacteria or viruses under pressure, via antibiotics, antibodies or chemotherapeutics, for example, but don't kill them off completely, you can inadvertently encourage their mutation into more virulent strains. Those that escape your immune system end up surviving and selecting mutations to ensure their further survival.

"It will have a very tough time … and a lot of these microorganisms will die," Bossche says. "But if you cannot really kill them all, if you cannot prevent, completely, the infection and if there are still some microorganisms that can replicate despite this huge pressure, they will start to select mutations that enable them to survive."

COVID-19 has a high capacity for mutation but, according to Bossche, if the virus isn't under pressure, it won't necessarily see a need to select mutations to, for instance, become more infectious. But if you put it under pressure, as is occurring during the mass vaccination campaign — or as Bossche calls it, the "one big experiment" — this may change.

"This in its own right would not be a disaster … because … viruses can only replicate and multiply in living cells," Bossche adds. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an enveloped cell, so it cannot survive long in the environment. However, during a pandemic, when the virus is virtually everywhere, it's not difficult for it to find a living host in order to replicate.

Some of Bossche's concerns have merit, but there's another side to this story, as noted by Rosemary Frei, who has a master of science in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary and is an independent investigative journalist in Canada. Frei believes that Bossche has a "not-so-hidden agenda," which is to push the development and widespread use of a different type of vaccine.

"[F]rom my experience as a former long-time medical writer and journalist — particularly a four-month stint with media-relations giant FleishmanHillard in 1994 (yes, I've worked for the dark side) — this has all the hallmarks of a drug company astroturf campaign," Frei says.

"It's another step in the decades-long erasure of the fact that our sophisticated and highly effective immune systems work well and don't need any assistance from the biomedical/pharmaceutical industry."1

Bossche: 'It's Exactly the Same as Antibiotic Resistance'

Bossche explains the dangers of mass COVID-19 vaccination and uses antibiotic resistance as an example. Antibiotics are increasingly losing their effectiveness against common bacteria, which have figured out how to evade the drugs. In the case of COVID-19, the virus may be developing ways to evade your "self-made antiviral antibiotics," or antibodies.

Your body has both cell-mediated immunity, which is part of your innate immune system, and humoral immunity, which generates acquired antibodies that are elicited in response to specific pathogens. While acquired antibodies, such as those generated by the COVID-19 vaccine, are germ-specific, cell-mediated immunity is not and serves to protect you from a broad range of potential invaders. Bossche explained:2

"As the innate immune system cannot remember the pathogens it encountered (innate immunity has no so-called 'immunological memory'), we can only continue to rely on it provided we keep it 'trained' well enough. Training is achieved by regular exposure to a myriad of environmental agents, including pathogens.

However, as we age, we will increasingly face situations where our innate immunity (often called 'the first line of immune defense') is not strong enough to halt the pathogen at the portal of entry (mostly mucosal barriers like respiratory or intestinal epithelia).

When this happens, the immune system has to rely on more specialized effectors of our immune system (i.e., antigen-specific Abs [antibodies] and T cells) to fight the pathogen."

COVID-19 vaccines are meant to induce highly specific antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2. However, as in the case of antibiotic resistance, it's essential that these antibodies are able to eliminate all of the virus. If not, a worsened outcome could result, including the immune escape that Bossche is warning of:3

"In case of bacterial disease it is critical to not only chose the right type of antibiotic (based on the results from an antibiogram) but to also take the antibiotic for long enough (according to the prescription). Failure to comply with these requirements is at risk of granting microbes a chance to survive and, hence, may cause the disease to fare up.

A very similar mechanism may also apply to viruses, especially to viruses that can easily and rapidly mutate (which is, for example, the case with coronaviruses); when the pressure exerted by the army's (read: population's) immune defense starts to threaten viral replication and transmission, the virus will take on another coat so that it can no longer be easily recognized and, therefore, attacked by the host immune system. The virus is now able to escape immunity (so-called 'immune escape')."

But Frei disagrees with Bossche's notion that viral resistance will create an uncontrollable mutant virus:4

"There is the possibility of viral resistance … but it's not the major threat Vanden Bossche attempts to scare us about by saying the virus is likely to mutate so much and so quickly because of the current mass vaccination campaigns that soon it could escape all current attempts to stop its spread. Remember, for example, that yearly flu mass vaccination hasn't caused influenza to spiral out of control and decimate the global population."

Mass Vaccination 'Creates an Irrepressible Monster'

Bossche believes that scientists, vaccinologists and clinicians are being blinded by the positive short-term effects COVID-19 vaccines may have for individuals while overlooking their "disastrous consequences for global health." In ordinary circumstances, an occasional viral "escape mutant" isn't overly concerning because it's unlikely to quickly find access to a host in which to replicate.

During a pandemic, however, it's quite easy for the mutated, variant virus to find new hosts, which could include those with asymptomatic COVID-19 or people who have received only the first of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, leaving them with a suboptimal immune response. According to Bossche:5

"The combination of viral infection on a background of suboptimal Ab maturity and concentration enables the virus to select mutations allowing it to escape the immune pressure.

The selection of those mutations preferably occurs in the S protein as this is the viral protein that is responsible for viral infectiousness. As the selected mutations endow the virus with increased infectious capacity, it now becomes much easier for the virus to cause severe disease in infected subjects."

He believes people who have had asymptomatic COVID-19 infections may experience a short-lived rise in S (spike)-specific antibodies, which suppresses the innate immune response, which could have disastrous effects, including for children:6

"This is to say that with an increasing rate of infection in the population, the number of subjects who get infected while experiencing a momentary increase in S-specific Abs will steadily increase. Consequently, the number of subjects who get infected while experiencing a momentary decrease in their innate immunity will increase.

As a result, a steadily increasing number of subjects will become more susceptible to getting severe disease instead of showing only mild symptoms (i.e., limited to the upper respiratory tract) or no symptoms at all. During a pandemic, especially youngsters will be affected by this evolution as their natural Abs are not yet largely suppressed by a panoply of 'acquired', antigen-specific Abs."

A perfect storm may have been created because lockdowns implemented since the beginning of the pandemic have meant that people have not had regular exposure to a variety of pathogens, which is necessary to keep the innate immune system in top working condition.

Frei again takes issue with Bossche's assessment, in part because she says he hasn't provided direct evidence to support his statements. Further, she notes, "Vanden Bossche downplays the effectiveness of the antibodies our bodies naturally produce as part of the second-line ('adaptive') part of the immune system that also has served us extremely well for millennia."7

Will Mass Vaccination of Elderly Increase Death in the Young?

In March 2021 Bossche stated that mass vaccination of the elderly against COVID-19 will dramatically increase morbidity and mortality rates in younger populations because, as the elderly become protected, the virus will seek out younger people to survive.

His predictions started coming true the end of April8 and, by August 2021, front line doctors were reporting that unvaccinated persons in their 20s and 30s were becoming severely ill with COVID,9 while 90% of persons age 65 or older were vaccinated.10

Bossche's reasoning was that if the virus escaped the S-specific antibodies that are temporarily increased in asymptomatically infected people, it could take advantage of the suppressed innate immunity, allowing the virus to multiply rapidly.

"Selecting targeted mutations in the S protein is, therefore, the way to go in order for the virus to enhance its infectiousness in candidates that are prone to getting the disease because of a transient weakness of their innate immune defense," Bossche said.11

Bossche also alleged that another problem was that variants of SARS-CoV-2 were reportedly circulating,12 which don't match well with the vaccine.13 He said people who have been vaccinated are potentially becoming asymptomatic carriers and are shedding the more infectious variants into the community:14

"We're also facing a huge problem in vaccinated people as they're now more and more confronted with infectious variants displaying a type of S protein that is increasingly different from the S edition comprised with the vaccine (the latter edition originates from the original, much less infectious strain at the beginning of the pandemic).

The more variants become infectious (i.e., as a result of blocking access of the virus to the vaccinated segment of the population), the less vaccinal Abs will protect.

Already now, lack of protection is leading to viral shedding and transmission in vaccine recipients who are exposed to these more infectious strains (which, by the way, increasingly dominate the field). This is how we are currently turning vaccinees into asymptomatic carriers shedding infectious variants."

There was controversy over the infectious variants that Bossche mentioned, however. Frei points out that, "Vanden Bossche also asserts that there's an 'ever[-]increasing threat from rapidly spreading, highly infectious variants,' but as I detailed in my February 3, 2021, article15 and accompanying video on the new variants, there is no proof that they are highly infectious or will be any time soon."16

Of course, we now know that Bossche was correct about the variants, too: The Delta variant is raging, the COVID vaccines are waning and triggering calls for booster shots as fully vaccinated people not only end up in hospitals, but learn they can transmit the virus asymptomatically. And, as Bossche predicted, other variants seem poised to take hold if the Delta variant dies out.

Perfect Storm for COVID to Resist the Human Immune System

Bossche believes it will only take a few more targeted mutations for the virus to fully resist S-specific anti-COVID-19 antibodies, whether they're produced from vaccination or natural infection. The result could be that this population becomes especially vulnerable due to their no longer useful S-specific antibodies in combination with a suppressed innate immune response. According to Bossche:17

"… [W]e'll have whipped up the virus in the younger population up to a level that it now takes little effort for Covid-19 to transform into a highly infectious virus that completely ignores both the innate arm of our immune system as well as the adaptive/acquired one (regardless of whether the acquired Abs resulted from vaccination or natural infection).

The effort for the virus is now becoming even more negligible given that many vaccine recipients are now exposed to highly infectious viral variants while having received only a single shot of the vaccine. Hence, they are endowed with Abs that have not yet acquired optimal functionality.

There is no need to explain that this is just going to further enhance immune escape. Basically, we'll very soon be confronted with a super-infectious virus that completely resists our most precious defense mechanism: The human immune system."

In essence, Bossche states that the widespread COVID-19 vaccination campaign will efficiently turn what was a relatively harmless virus into a "bioweapon of mass destruction," and that the combination of stringent infection prevention measures combined with the inadequate COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out will allow the pandemic to get worse instead of better.

Ironically, Bossche recommends that the solution to ending the COVID-19 pandemic, other than letting the virus run its natural course, is to create natural killer (NK) cell-based vaccines. He maintains that widespread use of NK cell based vaccines may assist the innate immune system to eliminate coronaviruses at an early stage of infection. But, according to Frei, this is a red flag in Bossche's open letter. She states:18

"It's not very logical to believe that the only solution to the theoretical possibility of immune escape, as espoused by someone who's got a long and strong focus on vaccination as opposed to other ways to improve health, is yet more mass vaccination.

… I do agree that we should stop the use of the current vaccines. But we also we need to stop production and use of antivirals and antibodies and all other parts of the Covid-industrial complex. Covid has an extremely high survival rate. So why develop yet another expensive, invasive and experimental solution to a problem that barely exists, if it does at all?"

Bossche does recommend exercise, healthy food, rest and a good mental attitude, along with staying away from toxic influences, to bolster the health of your immune system. But in the meantime, he says, "there is not one second left for gears to be switched and to replace the current killer vaccines …"19

He's reached out to the World Health Organization and other international health organizations to warn of the potentially detrimental consequences of further viral immune escape triggered by the current COVID-19 vaccination campaign, calling it the "single most important public health emergency of international concern," but so far all have remained silent.

Frei, meanwhile, is trying to spread the word that she believes Bossche's letter was simply "a continuation of the overall COVID deception":20

"When combined with the contents of his open letter, it's impossible to believe that he's in fact an insider who's now turned against his very high-powered comrades [including the drug industry and vaccine proponents] … It's more likely that he's their accomplice."

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