Timothy Caulfield: Stop Pretending To Be An Expert About Vaccines

If You Are Sincerely Worried About Vaccine Hesitancy, Step Aside

It has been two years, seven months, and thirteen days (957 total days) since the administration of my employer, the University of Guelph, locked me out of my office and laboratory. I spoke truths about COVID-19 when much of the world was not ready to hear them. As the University of Guelph still expects me to work, I would like to have access to my work spaces. My administration keeps sharing their policy stating that I should feel valued in my workplace; I don’t.

- B. Bridle -

This post on X was sent to me by several people over the past couple of days…

…it is relatively benign compared to many from this individual.

The news program in which Caulfield was interviewed about measles vaccines can be found here; he is in the latter portion of the segment. I have little interest in hearing about vaccines from a non-PhD, non-MD, non-vaccinologist with a history of disseminating misinformation about vaccines. But I will make some comments.

First, I noticed the tag line “#VaccinesWork”. Definitive statements like this do not help anybody. All they do is demonstrate a lack of understanding of fundamental biology. I’m not sure if I can come up with any biological principle for which there are not ‘exceptions to the rule’. Caulfield, surely you must know that there is not a single medical intervention on earth that is completely ‘safe and effective’. Nuances matter. And acknowledging them matters. Your social media posts fail to do this.

It appears that Caulfield is trying to guarantee the world that “vaccines work” in the context of measles. Of note, Canada has an official definition of an ideal vaccine, which is one that protects against both acquisition and transmission of a disease for the lifetime of an individual after a single dose. So, this is naturally what pops into the minds of Canadians when they hear someone assure them that a vaccine works.

So, Caulfield, how about the man in his thirties in Toronto, Ontario who recently contracted measles despite being fully vaccinated against it? This story was publicized five days prior to your interview.

Oops! There it is. Proof that the X post disseminated misinformation about measles vaccines. This is what happens when a person adopts the misguided strategy of trying to relay very complex, highly nuanced science in the form of ridiculously short sound bites. For this man in his thirties, the measles vaccine did not work. It failed to prevent him from getting measles.

Caulfield, please feel free to contact me if you would like to learn about the concept of low- and non-responders to vaccines.

In your interview, I noted that both you and state-funded reporter Adrienne Arsenault were aghast about the spike in vaccine hesitancy since the COVID-19 debacle. You correctly highlighted dissemination of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines as a major contributor. The problem is that you failed to disclose to Arsenault and the audience that you were one of the biggest contributors to the spread of vaccine misinformation. I have proven this by placing your personal opinions alongside the real science numerous times in numerous forums. You had to ‘eat crow’ over and over again as the COVID-19 narrative progressed; including backtracking on your very early guarantee that SARS-CoV-2 being the result of gain-of-function research was a conspiracy theory, and to many other examples to re-list here.

The reality is that that your archive of X posts and media presentations have not aged well. Partial evidence of this is the fact that you are among the world’s most ratio’d people on social media. Have you ever bothered to note that the large adoring following back in 2020 has dwindled and converted to a ravenous pack of wolves calling out how misinformed your messaging has been and continues to be?

If you were honest in this most recent interview, you would have stated something like, ‘you know, the reality is that I am not a vaccinologist. I do not hold a professional undergraduate degree, let alone a PhD in any medical science, and I don’t understand many of the nuances of vaccines. As a result, I have disseminated a profound amount of misinformation on the topic of vaccines, including vastly oversimplified information; simplified to the point of being misleading. I have also failed to disseminate the full scope of the science when it comes to vaccines. Through the spread of misinformation and by failing to facilitate the concept of fully informed consent, I am one of the many people responsible for the public rightly becoming hesitant about vaccines. It would be best for me to cease and desist in my misguided messaging about vaccines. Instead, I should point people to vaccinologists with excellent track records of speaking demonstrable truths over the past four years, despite me and many others making it tortuous for them to do so. Me stepping aside and deferring to real experts of integrity would be an excellent way for people’s faith in vaccinology to start being restored.’

Caulfield, you spouted the meaningless words that “it needs to be about the science” in your interview. Yes, it does need to be about the science. So, let a real expert disseminate the science, including showing members of the public where it is and making its complexities accessible to them.

With respect to your statement in the interview about how “we need to empathize and listen” to those who are vaccine hesitant, all I can do is ask you again to review your historical posts in social media. I think you will discover that your almost world record-setting ratio’ing is, in part, due to consistently showing a lack of empathy and listening to those who shared concerns; unless name-calling, belittling, swearing, and blocking accounts of people with dissenting voices is your way of listening and showing empathy.

I have long spoken out about the many inconvenient truths about COVID-19 shots because I saw there was a great risk of people’s confidence in how vaccinology is practiced plummeting if the messaging about the shots did not match their performance. And wow, the performance of the COVID-19 shots did not come close to matching what was advertised. Then there were the changes to the advertising in an attempt to downgrade people’s expectations. I spoke up to try to protect my field of study from profound harm by non-experts pretending to be experts.

Many people, INCLUDING YOU, CAULFIELD, accused me of spreading misinformation. Well, I will place my track record for the last four years alongside yours and any other self-proclaimed ‘misinformation’ ‘gurus’ anytime. Would you like to do this? The public might like to see which one of our track records stacks up better in light of the ever-accumulating avalanche of scientific data and constant unveiling of cover-ups and lies.

Blindly promoting every single vaccine as though it meet’s Canada’s definition of an ideal vaccine is a sure recipe for driving vaccine hesitancy. You can’t tell people that every car performs like a Ferrari and expect them to accept such a statement at face value. One way or another people will start to learn that the 1980 Russian Lada lemon of a car that you sold them doesn’t quite match the performance standards of a Ferrari.

Now, people will be looking to those who have demonstrated a willingness and nuanced ability to show where individual vaccines fall along the spectrum of ideal versus non-ideal, to figure out where the real truth lies. The problem is that there are so many people now who need access to the truth. This is coupled with the problem that there have been very few people with a willingness and ability to share the truth about vaccines; and these people have been de-platformed from state-funded media and other far-reaching sources. Consequently, it will take a very long time to earn people’s trust back.

To the ‘misinformation’ ‘gurus’: congratulations, you, along with big pharma and public health officials, have thoroughly destroyed people’s trust in public messaging about vaccines. You have shattered the field of vaccinology. Now, please step aside as those of us who tried to prevent your destruction now have the near-impossible task of trying to rebuild trust in vaccinology.

To everyone who has become vaccine hesitant: you should be. Public health officials, self-proclaimed ‘misinformation’ ‘experts’, and big pharma have driven you into hesitancy. They have done it to me as well. I practice vaccinology at the pre-clinical and translational stages of research. I will always promote the exquisite concept of a theoretically ideal vaccine. But, the reality is that the practice of vaccinology in the context of clinical trials has been broken by big pharma. We have every right to lack trust in them. We need not be apologetic about it. Instead, the people that oversaw the COVID-19 debacle need to apologize to us and then resign from their tasks. And I tell you this: you should never stand for being coerced into or mandated into taking any vaccine ever again unless you are confident that the information you are receiving is the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth. Otherwise, your right to informed consent is not being met. It should always be your choice, in the complete absence of coercive pressure. Educate yourself and take control of your own health because we have learned that many health professionals are insufficiently educated about the nuances of vaccines.

Great products will promote themselves; people cannot deny obviously great outcomes. For every new vaccine that comes to market, you should insist that the data to support it are completely transparent and made available to objective third-party scientists for independent evaluation. Further, the vaccine and funding should be provided to objective researchers so they can run independent studies and report the outcomes to the public. Data supporting a new vaccine should originate from properly designed experiments that include true placebo controls and long-term active safety monitoring. And oversight of these data should be from an agency that is supported by taxpayers to serve taxpayers, not the current model that has the bulk of their budget coming from big pharma. And finally, big pharma should be made liable for misrepresentation of their products and harms that they cause.

With governments becoming increasingly concerned about vaccine hesitancy and what to do about it, now is the time to let them know what needs to be done to earn your trust back.

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