ABSTRACT
This chapter recognizes the enormous public health achievement of Covid-19 vaccines while critically examining where discussion and policy around them became dogmatic. It identifies biases in estimates of effectiveness, particularly the “healthy vaccinee bias,” and shows how these influenced both scientific publications and public communications. The authors explore absolute claims of safety, lack of acknowledgement of missing data, and insufficient attention to individual and group variation in risk–benefit profiles. They assess contentious policies, including vaccine mandates, ongoing booster campaigns, and vaccination of children, asking whether these were supported by the vaccines’ immunological properties and the available evidence. Financial interests and institutional incentives are also considered as potential drivers of overreach. The chapter’s message is not anti-vaccine but anti-dogma: by distinguishing between justified confidence and unwarranted certainty, it offers lessons for maintaining trust in vaccines while avoiding the policy missteps that can undermine it.
