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‘Formal, Unequivocal Apologies’ Needed to Restore Public Trust After COVID Vaccine Mandates

By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 15, 2025

The public deserves “formal, unequivocal apologies from governments and medical bodies” for COVID-19 vaccine mandates and for “silencing truth seekers,” according to a paper published Oct. 9 in the journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.

Vaccine mandates and lack of transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic eroded public trust, which deepened the divide between health authorities and the people they serve, according to authors Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Andrea Lamont Nazarenko, Ph.D.

“The pandemic demonstrated that when scientific integrity is lacking and dissent is suppressed, unethical decision-making can become legitimized,” they wrote. “When this happens, public confidence in health authorities erodes.”

Trust in public health agencies plummeted during the pandemic. Confidence in decision-making at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fell from 73% in 2020 to 61% in 2025, according to polling firm KFF.

Public opinion on physicians and hospitals also suffered, with trust dropping from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024, according to a study in JAMA Network Open.

Restoring faith in public health agencies requires “long overdue” apologies, as well as “full transparency of data, independent evaluation of evidence, and accountability through both policy change and public acknowledgment of harm,” the paper’s authors said.

‘Pandemic of the vaccine injured’

The “safe and effective” narrative surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine shifted over the years toward “unsafe and defective,” according to the authors.

Policymakers’ unwillingness to acknowledge the vaccine’s emerging safety signals may be “the most egregious failure” of all. “We are currently facing what some call a ‘pandemic of the vaccine injured,’” the authors said.

In 2022, a study in the journal Vaccine found that the risk of serious harms from the COVID-19 vaccine was two to four times greater than the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19. That same year, researchers surveyed 40,000 Germans and found a high rate of severe side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine that persisted for months or longer.

Studies from 2025 suggest the risks may not decrease over time.

• A preprint study found that genetic material contained within mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can integrate into the human genome, potentially contributing to the onset of aggressive cancer.
• An analysis of a Japanese database of 18 million people showed that people who received COVID-19 vaccines had a significantly higher risk of death in the first year after vaccination compared to the unvaccinated, and the risk increased with each additional dose.
• A peer-reviewed study published in EXCLI Journal was the first to uncover statistically significant evidence of increased cancer risk following COVID-19 vaccination in Italy.

In public health, policymakers must anchor their decisions in cumulative evidence that evolves with new knowledge, according to Malhotra and Nazarenko. “It is a profound failure of scientific and ethical responsibility to overlook these safety concerns,” they wrote.

Health systems must adjust to manage ‘psychological fallout’ of pandemic

The authors said the health risks revealed by the emerging COVID-19 vaccine studies illustrate one of the central lessons of the pandemic: evidence evolves. Policies must be adjusted as new evidence comes to light, but that didn’t happen, they wrote.

“If the full body of research ultimately shows a net harm from COVID-19 vaccination and pandemic-era policies, the greater barrier will be psychological, not scientific,” Malhotra and Nazarenko said. “Our social systems must therefore be prepared to manage the psychological fallout, responding with clarity and compassion.”

To rebuild legitimacy, institutions must actively uphold ethical principles that prioritize the public over political or corporate interests, they said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is taking steps in this direction, according to the authors.

In September, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led two roundtable discussions on long COVID that included doctors, researchers and patients. The talks were, in part, in response to “the calls that I get almost every day from people who are suffering from long COVID across the country and don’t know where to go and feel that their voices aren’t being listened to,” Kennedy said.

In August, Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in contracts and grants intended to develop mRNA vaccines. “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy said in announcing the move.

Restoring public trust hinges on informed consent and shared decision-making, according to the authors.

“A contributing factor to the prevalence of injury has been the extent to which government officials and public health authorities overrode the doctor-patient relationship, taking precedence over the ethics of individualized medicine,” they wrote.

Earlier this month, the CDC handed supporters of informed consent a win by updating its childhood immunization schedule to emphasize individual-based decision-making for COVID-19 vaccination in children 6 months and older.

‘Suppression may quiet critics, but it suffocates science’

In 2024, the journal Cureus retracted the first peer-reviewed paper to provide an extensive analysis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine trial data and post-injection injuries.

“Silencing contestation is not a neutral choice; it is contrary to the methods by which science corrects itself,” Malhotra and Nazarenko said.

“Voices that push the mainstream should be encouraged, not silenced. Yet, contemporary public health often substitutes condemnation for curiosity, marginalizing dissent even when data warrant debate,” they wrote.

According to the authors, Kennedy’s critics provide “the most striking example of silencing opposition.”

Vaccine lobbyists at a leading biotech industry trade group purportedly criticized Kennedy’s “anti-vaccine stance” during an April meeting, calling him a “direct threat to public health.” A spokesperson for the organization denied the statements.

Kennedy’s policies at the HHS have sparked similar claims from six former U.S. surgeons general, who said he is “endangering the health of the nation.” Several senators have made similar assertions and called for Kennedy’s resignation.

Corporations and regulatory bodies commonly use character assassination to weaken their opposition, according to the paper’s authors. Those in power silence dissent by discrediting critics with smear campaigns and labels like “anti-vaxxer,” shifting focus from evidence to identity.

“Suppression may quiet critics, but it suffocates science,” Malhotra and Nazarenko wrote. “The remedy for disagreement is better evidence and open debate — not censorship or character assassination. Robust science requires robust dissent.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 18, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights