The Third Big Lie of Vaccinology
- by Clayton J. Baker, MD | Guest Writer
- Published
- Opinion
The Third Big Lie of Vaccinology—Insisting My Immunity is Dependent on Your Vaccination—runs contrary to basic logic and rationality.
This Big Lie is based on fear-mongering and scapegoating, two of the most irrational and anti-scientific approaches to manipulating human behavior. It is surprising and dismaying that this lie is successfully foisted upon the population so often, but here we are.
If My Immunity Depends on Your Vaccination, Then the Vaccine Doesn’t Work
Disproving this Big Lie is so straightforward that I fear insulting the reader’s intelligence by spelling it out step-by-step. Let us do so in the form of a standard syllogism.
If:
- Person A has received a vaccine for a given disease, and
- The vaccine “worked”—it provided person A with immunity to the disease
Then:
- Another person (Person B) cannot give person A the disease.
That’s all there is to it.
Should I (Person A) insist that you (Person B) are still a threat to infect me with the disease for some reason, for example, that you are unvaccinated, then I am stating that the conclusion of the syllogism is false. If the conclusion is false, then at least one of the premises must be false. If I did in fact get the vaccine, then the first premise is true. In that case, the second premise must be false.
In other words, if I get vaccinated and my immunity is still dependent on your vaccination, then the vaccine doesn’t work.
Period.
The Liar’s Defense: Moving the Goalposts
Now, if I was an intellectually dishonest vaccine zealot (and such people do exist), I very likely would respond to this exposure of my Big Lie by employing a favorite argumentative fallacy of vaccinology: moving the goalposts.
Deliberately ignoring the fact that my Big Lie has been disproven, I might deceptively shift the argument in a number of ways. Such tactics were employed again and again during Covid.
Perhaps I’d make the pseudoscientific claim that everyone must be vaccinated to achieve the quasi-mythical state of “herd immunity.” Never mind that the flawed concept of herd immunity is only even theoretically possible with vaccines that provide “sterilizing” immunity, which the large majority of vaccines do not provide. The Covid vaccines couldn’t and didn’t provide sterilizing immunity. (Fauci and company knew this from the start, but they still peddled the lie of herd immunity to push for mandatory vaccination against Covid.)
Maybe I’d take a totalitarian approach, and insist that your vaccination is a social responsibility to which you must comply, and which you have no right to refuse. This argument violates the 4 Pillars of Medical Ethics, especially the first: Autonomy. It also contradicts fundamental American jurisprudence, as stated by Justice Benjamin Cardozo in 1914: “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how often or in where I move the goalposts. The fact remains: if I get vaccinated and my immunity is still dependent on your vaccination, then the vaccine doesn’t work.
We noted before that the Third Big Lie of Vaccinology is steeped in fear-mongering and scapegoating. Pushing such emotion-based reasons for belief serves a second purpose: it also promotes magical thinking about vaccines. If you are programmed to hold nonsensical, fear-based beliefs about immunity, you can easily be convinced of fantastic, even magical absurdities about public health as well.
Magical Thinking and Mass Vaccination
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) on February 13, 2025. An outbreak of measles was declared in West Texas two days later. The Pharma-funded mainstream media quickly attempted to blame the outbreak on Kennedy’s confirmation, even though the first reported case had occurred in January.
It is absurd to blame Secretary Kennedy’s presence at HHS for a measles outbreak beginning prior to his confirmation. How could he be responsible? Is Kennedy some kind of evil wizard, capable of time travel?
Of course not. But the pro-vaccine lobby foments magical thinking among the public. Apparently, the mere existence of an “anti-vaxxer” as head of HHS is sufficient to trigger a plague upon the land.
At the time of this writing, there have been a reported 1,912 cases of measles in the US in 2025. Meanwhile, in Canada, a country with slightly more than one-tenth the population of the United States, there have been more than 5,000 measles cases in 2025, as of October 30.
Still, the vaccine zealots blame Secretary Kennedy—and, of course, President Trump. Fiona Havers, a former CDC official who resigned shortly after Kennedy arrived at HHS, stated this regarding the 2025 measles cases in the US:
“I do think that this is far worse than it would have been under another administration,” she added. “It is not a coincidence that the first year where we’ve had we will have had [sic] 12 months of continuously circulating measles in [sic] the first 12 months of this administration.”
Wow. Donald Trump even makes measles more transmissible. Talk about magical thinking.
Poor grammar and personal animus aside, Havers neglects to offer an explanation for the much higher rate of measles in Canada. Furthermore, her accusations ignore the following:
- measles outbreaks take place every year, even in heavily vaccinated countries like the United States. Some years are worse than others.
- the measles outbreaks in the United States are almost certainly fueled in large part by the huge influx of unvaccinated illegal aliens entering the country in recent years.
- no change in recommendations regarding measles vaccination has been made during Secretary Kennedy’s tenure. In fact, Kennedy has publicly advocated for measles vaccination while at HHS.
The Goal is Not to Eradicate Disease. The Goal is to Eradicate the Unvaccinated.
The Third Big Lie of vaccinology—that My Immunity is Dependent on Your Vaccination—is an illogical, anti-scientific, fear-based justification for scapegoating and magical thinking. It provides an emotion-based rationale to blame the unvaccinated for the failures of vaccines. It is a false argument intended to impose mandatory vaccination of the entire population.
The unvaccinated pose an existential threat to the entire vaccine enterprise. The unvaccinated are the control group that exposes the ineffectiveness and dangers of supposedly “safe and effective” vaccines. The unvaccinated are also the segment of the population that resists the tyrannical impulses so inherent to vaccinology.
Mandatory vaccination of an entire population is not imposed to eradicate disease. It is imposed to eradicate the unvaccinated.
This article was originally published by the Brownstone Institute. C.J. Baker, MD is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester
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