Pathogens love it when we use emotional feelings, mental laziness, and paranoia for disease prevention and response policy
Look how happy this virus is based on RFK’s new decision to stop funding mRNA vaccine research! This adorable thing can’t wait to walk through that new door of opportunity to sicken and kill people!
by Kevin Reed
Pathogens like viruses and bacteria love it when their human hosts make poor choices. It makes their little lives so much better. Bad decisions make it easier for pathogens to spread. The hosts are more susceptible to disease, easier to sicken or kill. Maybe the hosts behave in ways that make spread faster and easier. And, here we are today, doing this exact thing.
In yet another example of current lawmakers sliding down conspiracy holes to frame our national policy, this week we had RFK, the current United States secretary of health and human services, cancel just under $500M in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to fight disease.
Where is this all coming from?
The controversy around mRNA vaccines and mRNA technology largely stems from a combination of political distrust, perceived overreach, and misinformation, especially surrounding…..dun dun dun…..no surprise at all - COVID-19! Currently all mRNA vaccines that are fully approved or authorized for public use are for COVID-19, so you can see right away why so many people are buying anger and misinformation about mRNA vaccines, in particular.
To capitalize on that, RFK produces pseudo-science, conspiracy-drenched statements around mRNA vaccines, tapping into and feeding off of these feelings around the mRNA COVID vaccine. And that’s what all this is based on: emotion and feelings. There’s no data to back up his claims on mRNA vaccines.
The “political distrust” around COVID has no basis in fact around the vaccine. It’s just anger over how things were handled overall by a group of people who differ with an equal number of people who, based on observable evidence, think the handling of the novel virus went pretty well overall. This ties in to the “perceived government overreach” for things like mask mandates, business closings, and mandated vaccines in some jobs. But again, that has nothing to do with the science behind an mRNA vaccine. It has to do with opinions and emotions like anger based on opinions that are, often, not based in fact.
There was plenty of misinformation around COVID too, which didn’t help, and all the subsequent anger as responsible authorities tried to combat the misinformation. But all that has nothing to do with the effectiveness or safety of mRNA vaccines. It has to do with even more feelings and emotions.
RFK’s recent statements include ones like this:
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don't perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract. Here's the problem: mRNA only codes for a small part of viral proteins usually a single antigen. One mutation, and the vaccine becomes ineffective. This dynamic drives a phenomenon called antigenic shift meaning that the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine.”
The first sentence simply has no basis in the real world. The COVID vaccine is, not surprisingly, an mRNA vaccine. In real life, from the onset of the pandemic until 2022, mRNA COVID vaccines saved an estimated 3.2 million deaths, and averted 18.5 million hospitalizations. That’s just in the USA. Not too shabby.
The rest of the statement is nothing more than jargonized rigmarole. But don’t take my word for it.
Granted, the ‘mRNA’ part of ‘mRNA vaccine’ does sound a bit ominous. But what’s it mean? Hell, I don’t know, so I’m looking it up right now!
mRNA stands for “messenger RNA”. It’s like a little instruction note your body uses to tell its cells how to make proteins. The “mRNA” is in the vaccine’s name because that’s the tool the vaccine uses to deliver the instructions. It never changes your DNA (a common conspiracy claim) and disappears after your cells read it.
What’s the difference between a typical vaccine and an mRNA vaccine?
An mRNA vaccine uses a temporary instruction note (messenger RNA) to teach your body how to recognize and fight a virus—without ever giving you the virus itself. This is different from a traditional vaccine that sometimes puts a weakened virus into your body so your defenses can recognize the virus. Here’s a little side-by-side comparison:
RFK’s statement mixes a grain of truth with a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, which is typical of conspiracy theories. It’s one of the key things that makes them work so well. I wanted to break it down step-by-step and compare it to what’s known about both mRNA and traditional vaccines.
“One mutation, and the vaccine becomes ineffective.”
This is simply not accurate. A single mutation in a virus rarely makes any vaccine completely ineffective. COVID-19, like the flu, mutates regularly. Over time, enough mutations in the spike protein can reduce how well antibodies recognize it, which can lower vaccine effectiveness, especially against infection. But both types of vaccines often still protect well against severe illness, hospitalization, and death, because immunity involves more than antibodies. T-cells still recognize parts of the virus that don’t change much, and so they can continue the fight. This is true for all vaccines against rapidly mutating viruses, so what tiny speck of distorted truth was in the statement applies to all vaccines, not just mRNA ones.
“This dynamic drives a phenomenon called antigenic shift”
Except, no. Antigenic shift is a specific scientific term describing big, sudden changes in a virus’s surface proteins, usually from mixing genetic material between two virus strains. This is exactly what we’re hearing about today as bird flu jumps from birds to cows, cats, and humans, possibly brewing up the next, likely more lethal pandemic (which they were working to develop an mRNA vaccine for until this administration). COVID-19 and most viruses do not do “antigenic shift” in the way flu does—they undergo antigenic drift, which are small, gradual mutations over time.
Further, vaccines do not cause antigenic shift. Mutations are a natural result of viral replication, especially in large, uncontrolled outbreaks. Mutations are a staple of evolution for all organisms, all sizes, all types. All that evolutionary machinery was there billions of years before humans made vaccines in 1796.
“Three influenza A (H5N1/bird flu) virus particles (rod-shaped). Note: Layout incorporates two CDC transmission electron micrographs that have been inverted, repositioned, and colorized by NIAID. Scale has been modified. Credit: CDC and NIAID” Photo: NIAID, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
“The vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations”
This is misleading framing and information out of context, per usual for conspiracy hysterics. Viruses mutate when they replicate. More infections = more replication = more opportunities for mutation. Vaccines actually reduce opportunities for mutation by lowering the number of infected people and shortening the time those people are contagious.
In theory, if a vaccine partially blocks infection in a very large population, selective pressure could favor variants that escape immunity—but this is far less significant than the mutation pressure from uncontrolled spread. The biggest driver of new variants in COVID-19 has been uncontrolled transmission in unvaccinated populations. It’s played out in real life, and is well-documented.
“Prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine”
This misinformation tactic is something, I’ve learned, called reversed causation. Pandemics are prolonged by high transmission, not vaccination. Incomplete global vaccination coverage, political resistance, and poor public health measures give the virus more time and space to evolve – this is why I say that pathogens love this type of policy, because it plays perfectly into their tiny microbe hands.
If mRNA vaccines “prolonged” pandemics, we’d expect highly vaccinated countries to have longer, worse outbreaks. This is the opposite of what happened in the real world.
How does this compare to traditional vaccines? Both are equally affected by viral evolution. For example, flu vaccines (traditional, protein-based or inactivated virus) have to be updated annually because the virus changes, not because of the vaccine platform. The advantage of mRNA is speed—you can update the formula in weeks, rather than the months it takes for egg-based flu vaccines.
“This colorized transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The protruding capsidstructures (so-called Spike protein) of the virus give these viruses their name, corona being the Latin term for crown.” Photo: NIH, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
And on and on and on you can go with RFK babblings.
The thing is, anyone can look this up for themselves! The key is not to listen to people telling you things, unless those people are telling you things backed up with real life evidence. Even then, take just a few minutes to do some verification across reliable sources.
Who cares?
Well, any person who likes to be healthy should. mRNA vaccines are effective and quickly updateable, with many key ones in development.
But now, because of emotional hysterics, misinformation, paranoia, and mental laziness of large numbers of people who believe whatever a person tells them without verifying it, a large chunk of the population are fuming mad about mRNA vaccines, for literally no valid data-backed reason whatsoever.
RFK has leveraged all that baseless anger to cut mRNA vaccine funding for projects that were trying to develop vaccines for the following:
Infectious Disease Vaccines
Influenza (flu)
RSV (respiratory syncytial virus)
Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
HIV
EBV (Epstein–Barr virus) and HSV-2 (genital herpes)
Malaria, Nipah virus, Mpox, Lyme disease
Avian influenza (H5N1)
Cancer & Other Therapeutic mRNA Vaccines
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines:
Autogene cevumeran (BioNTech/Genentech) targets tumor-specific neoantigens post-surgery
mRNA‑4157/V940 (Moderna/Merck) combined with pembrolizumab has shown efficacy in melanoma and lung cancer trials
KRAS-targeting cancer vaccine mRNA‑5671
Pancreatic cancer vaccine trials
Those are some serious diseases. Why are so many people actively advocating against their own health?
Mental laziness. Emotion. Feelings.
Them’s not good reasons. And their actions are now impacting all of us. We all lose this research because of a large group of people that are swallowing misinformation and misguided anger.
mRNA vaccines work. They don’t harm people. mRNA vaccines provide strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death, especially in the months after vaccination. Their effectiveness against infection (especially mild cases) wanes over time, but this is common across all respiratory vaccines, including whole-virus ones. mRNA platforms allow rapid updating to address new variants, which is a strength, not a weakness.
If you know someone who’s buying misinformation around mRNA and other vaccines, consider helping them take the first steps towards understanding, for themselves without anyone telling them, what the reality is.
If you know someone spreading mis or disinformation, consider calling them out or writing up a response to it.
We can do better than this.
Thumbnail photo: NIAID, Wiki Commons: “Bird Flu - three influenza A (H5N1-bird flu) virus particles (rod-shaped) - 812.jpg: Colorized transmission electron micrograph of avian influenza A H5N1 virus particles (gold), grown in Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells. Microscopy by CDC; repositioned and recolored by NIAID. Credit: CDC and NIAID Featuring Halloween-appropriate colors, which tend to be popular year-round. Stay safe this Halloween!”
