How Vaccine Fanatics Fueled Vaccine Skepticism

How Vaccine Fanatics Fueled Vaccine Skepticism
City workers gather to protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in New York City on Feb. 7, 2022. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Jay Bhattacharya
Martin Kulldorff
Updated:
Commentary

The development of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the few successes during a pandemic that saw major failures in public health strategy and treatments. While the vaccines can’t prevent transmission, they have reduced mortality. Before the pandemic, there was almost universal trust in vaccines, and vaccine skeptics were a small but vocal minority.

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, senior scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute.
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