Introduction:
My conscience compels me to respond to this recent Substack article by P. Offit. For decades this man has been guilty of unprecedented conflicts of interest, thereby tainting science itself while depicting anyone who does not subscribe to his doctrine (which I call ‘PR-OFFIT-ism’) as an ‘anti-vaxxer.’ He eagerly exploits his scientific reputation, one he has long since ceased to deserve, to gaslight all those who dare to expose his authoritarian behavior, his influence, and his conflicts of interest. For many months now, he has particularly targeted JFK Jr. To support these ad hominem attacks, he relies on long-outdated scientific claims and medieval dogmas which, sadly, still sound convincing to mainstream media ears but to critical and independent experts in the field are as hollow as the trunk of an old willow tree.
At the bottom, I inserted in bold directly into the text of Offit’s own Substack my PROFFITism-debunking arguments and comments. As these unequivocally show, behind this alleged icon of vaccinology hides an outright intellectual riffraff, one of the same species as A. Fauci and who, through false accusations, threatens the integrity and safety of influential people who question his authority in the vaccine field, as does JFK Jr.
But Offit also does not hesitate to compromise the health, and even the lives, of countless citizens, including children, through vaccination strategies lacking any objective scientific basis. I can only hope that my dismantling of Offit’s cheap and arrogant arguments will raise not only public eyebrows but also those of his fan club.
The vast majority of Offit’s comments and so-called critiques on RFK Jr. are quite shallow and indeed reveal the mind of someone resting on the laurels of the past and anything but evolved with science. Since ‘evolution’ is a foreign concept to him, he has up to this day never understood the evolutionary dynamics of this pandemic, and certainly not how these were steered by human hands in a disastrously wrong direction. To demonstrate how low-level and unscientific his comments really are, it suffices to read through this Substack. Offit’s comments and ‘critiques’ are driven far more by political, narrow-minded considerations and conflicts of interest than by true science. I, therefore, call the movement he leads ‘PR-OFFIT-ism’ rather than science.
Beyond the Noise is written by Paul Offit, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases physician, author, FDA advisor, grandfather, and co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.
The Vaccine Education Center at CHOP
RFK Jr. often offers scientific explanations for his policy decisions. Because these explanations aren’t supported by scientific studies, they should be labelled “scienze,” with a “z”.
Aug 12
On August 5th, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued a press release justifying the elimination of $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine projects funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). In May, HHS he also cancelled $766 million in funding to Moderna for development of mRNA vaccines against bird flu. These cuts leave Americans uniquely vulnerable to the next pandemic. RFK Jr. offered several reasons for the cuts, all in scientific terms and none supported by scientific studies.
I won’t even elaborate on the stupidity and perversity of such statements, If suffices to say that if there was ever a massively important decision taken that was in no way supported, let alone justified, by clinical trials, it was the large-scale COVID-19 (C-19) vaccination program that was forced upon countless citizens. Pretending now that the effectiveness and safety of those vaccines were supposedly “proven” and consequently demanding that those who want to undo their use carry the burden of disproving them is not only arrogant but also testifies to scientific shadiness in the least nuanced sense of the word.
“Scienze” Explanation #1: RFK Jr. said, “BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID.” The goal of COVID vaccines is to prevent serious infections: to keep people out of the hospital, out of the intensive care unit, and out of the morgue—not to prevent mild or moderate illness. A study by Yale School of Public Health estimated that the mRNA COVID vaccines prevented more than 3 million deaths. In addition, a CDC study published in 2022 found that the mRNA COVID vaccines caused a 90 percent reduction in intensive care unit admissions requiring mechanical ventilation. In other words, mRNA COVID vaccines have been remarkably effective at saving our lives.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #1:
Here, Offit thinks he can make his point by referring to two studies that have meanwhile been proven to have painted a completely misleading picture of the efficacy and safety of C-19 vaccines due to data manipulation. But “published is published,” thinks our grandfather, and so effectiveness is proven in his eyes. His babbling about protection against severe disease and hospitalization is equally far-fetched since this wasn’t even the primary endpoint of the clinical trials. As a secondary endpoint, protection against severe COVID-19 was anything but convincing as the evidence rested on very small numbers of severe cases and could certainly never justify such a massive vaccination campaign. But in fact this doesn’t even matter, because independently of all the data falsification and the withholding of key information, particularly by Pfizer, something hugely important has, unbelievably but true, escaped Offit’s simple mind. That is the fact that he doesn’t even grasp that ending a pandemic requires, as a conditio sine qua non, the establishment of herd immunity. Indeed, without herd immunity you will never get a pandemic under control, nor the continuing evolutionary dynamics of the virus with their accompanying waves of illness, hospitalization and mortality, as we are still witnessing daily six years after the outbreak.
If one decides to deploy vaccines in the hope of accelerating or consolidating herd immunity, then those vaccines must necessarily protect drastically against infection and transmission. What RFK Jr.’s decision essentially tells is that things went wrong right from the start in the design of the original Phase III trials of the first-generation mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, 2020), where the primary endpoint was defined as protection against PCR-confirmed C-19 disease. By designing a vaccine that protected only against symptoms but not against infection, entire populations of C-19 vaccinees became a gigantic pool of asymptomatic carriers who not only ensured further massive viral spread but also strongly fueled the evolution of variants, since vaccine-induced antibodies pressured the virus without preventing its productive infection and transmission. Such a condition of suboptimal immune pressure exerted by a highly C-19 vaccinated population inevitably leads to immune selection pressure on viral infectiousness and merely drove the pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) into a chronic stage with more and more cases of long COVID. Meanwhile, variants that are highly infectious thrive and can only be held in check by the immune system as long as it manages to mobilize what remains of its defenses to avoid acute (but not chronic) damage. In other words: when it comes to controlling a pandemic of an acute, self-limiting viral infection (ASLVI), any objective of immune protection against disease, including severe disease, is not only pointless but counterproductive. That Offit has still not understood this testifies to a dramatic limitation in his immunological and pandemic thinking. Because of his wrong conceptions and his focus on seemingly beneficial short-term health effects, his interpretations, and above all his arrogant critique of RFK Jr., cast a large stain upon him as a so-called vaccine expert and discredit many of his associated claims. RFK Jr., however, has indeed understood—thanks to his listening ear—that herd immunity is a conditio sine qua non to end this pandemic, and that C-19 vaccination, especially when using mRNA vaccines, only promotes the occurrence of vaccine-breakthrough infections caused by immune escape variants and thereby makes herd immunity simply impossible. In other words, when vaccines are deployed during a pandemic of an ASLVI, they must truly protect against infection and transmission if they are to contribute to herd immunity and bring the pandemic to an end -a point clearly understood by JFK jr. but not by Offit.
With regard to the emergence of herd immunity, the contribution of innate immunity, when trained by repeated exposure to the virus, has been totally neglected. This is because so-called experts like Offit, together with the incompetent public health authorities he has been advising, think that only adaptive immunity contributes to herd immunity. Hence, they concluded that, based on low average antibody concentrations in the population, herd immunity was a utopian goal. That was a gross miscalculation, especially when dealing with a virus that originally caused predominantly mild symptoms (or even asymptomatic infection) in the majority of the population. In other words: there was no need whatsoever to deploy vaccines -certainly not vaccines that, for lack of sterilizing immunity, only drove the prevalence of ever more infectious variants. Another disgrace that disfigures PR-OFFIT-ism is the mind-blowing ignorance of the fact that early treatment, as pioneered by P. McCullough and others, was the better, more humane, and much more effective way “to keep people out of the hospital, out of the intensive care unit, and out of the morgue.”
“Scienze” Explanation #2: RFK Jr. said that HHS would be “shifting funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.” All viruses mutate. Some more effectively than others. Influenza virus, for example, mutates from one year to the next so that natural infection or vaccination one year doesn’t afford protection the following year. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS, mutates during a single infection, which is why it’s been so hard to make an HIV vaccine. Measles virus—whose genome is like SARS-CoV-2—also mutates but has never mutated away from recognition by vaccine-induced immunity. And the measles vaccine has been around since the early 1960s. Although SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate, people remain protected against serious illness in large part because the sites on the virus recognized by T cells (which can kill virus-infected cells) have remained conserved across different variants.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #2:
What is wrong with the ambition to develop a universal vaccine for viruses that mutate in ways that render existing vaccines ineffective against new variants? RFK Jr. refers exclusively here to the development of a variant-unrestricted vaccine.
The prophet of PR-OFFIT-ism, however, claims that this is unnecessary because there exists sufficient T-cell–based cross-immunity between the SC-2 variants to guarantee protection. Offit demonstrates in black and white his ignorance by suggesting that these cross-reactive T-cells can even kill virus-infected cells! Once again, cross-reactive T-cells at best have a symptomatic effect, as they can only reduce productive infection (but never prevent it), thereby modestly mitigating symptoms. Offit thinks this is awesome because it means fewer people end up in the hospital, especially when these T-cells are further expanded or boosted by C-19 vaccination.
As already mentioned above, this know-it-all fails to realize that immune responses that merely mask symptoms without eliminating the virus -and thus without preventing its spread and replication- only contribute to further dissemination and viral immune escape. Moreover, his reference to cytolytic T-cells is completely irrelevant. Or can he perhaps provide a single example of cross-reactive T-cells that kill virus-infected cells and thus have a variant-unrestricted sterilizing effect?
The conclusion is therefore obvious: stimulating cross-reactive T-cells through vaccination will only contribute to the further and faster spread and evolution of the virus, which, in fact, is exactly what is happening now.
“Scienze” Explanation #3: RFK Jr. said that the “mRNA vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics.” The SARS-CoV-2 virus strain that first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China was called the Wuhan-1 or ancestral strain. That’s not the strain that left China. The strain that left China was the first variant; called the D614G strain, it was far more contagious, sweeping through Asia and Europe. The D614G variant was replaced by the alpha variant which was replaced by the delta variant. All these changes occurred before the mRNA COVID vaccines were available. Also, we have remained in the omicron variant era since November 2021.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #3:
It is clear that the Delta variant spread strongly and rapidly from India into Europe and the U.S. once vaccination rates there were high (spring–summer 2021). But even more so, Omicron spread at very high speed in highly C-19 vaccinated countries. This undeniably indicates that both Delta and Omicron gained an additional fitness advantage in highly C-19 vaccinated populations. Omicron consequently also caused countless vaccine breakthrough infections in these populations.
Offit tries to give the impression that since Omicron became dominant, mutations in highly vaccinated countries are negligible because we are “still in the Omicron era.” Has he never heard of genomic surveillance of SC-2 variants and how it demonstrates that the distance between early and late Omicron subvariants (e.g. BA.1 → JN.1) is even greater than that between Delta and BA.1? Indeed, the late Omicron subvariants (XBB, JN.1) immunologically feel almost like a “new virus”: their Spike protein differs more from early Omicron than Delta ever did from Omicron!
It is crystal clear that selection pressure especially affected Spike neutralization, i.e. the virus increasingly escaped anti-Spike antibodies. Know-it-alls like Offit will claim that this pressure arose equally from natural infection. Yet in the vast majority of the population, natural infection led only to fairly low antibody titers whereas C-19 vaccination and boosting induced very high IgG titers against Spike, usually far higher than those seen after most mild or even moderate natural infections. Hence, there can be no doubt that massive C-19 vaccination caused vaccinated populations to exert at least a significant additional pressure on viral infectiousness (indeed, the C-19 vaccines target precisely the Spike protein responsible for the virus’s infectiousness!). On this score too, Master Offit once again scores a negative.
“Scienze” Explanation #4: RFK Jr. said on an X video that, “HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.” While the mRNA COVID vaccines were a rare cause of myocarditis (i.e., inflammation of the heart muscle) primarily in boys and young men, the symptoms were mild, transient, and self-limited. (Myocarditis can also occur rarely after the protein-based Novavax vaccine.) Of interest, vaccine safety monitoring has shown no association between COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis in the past three years. Finally, between September 2024 and January 2025, mRNA COVID vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe COVID. The benefits of COVID vaccination clearly and dramatically outweigh its vanishingly small risks.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #4:
Offit’s claims also fly in the face of the findings of world-renowned cardiologist Peter McCullough and computational biologist Jessica Rose (PhD, with a background in immunology and applied mathematics). Based on VAERS data, J. Rose found that reports of myocarditis after C-19 vaccination in 2021 were about 223 times higher than the average for all other vaccines over the preceding 30 years. This proves beyond any doubt that there is a strong adverse safety signal linking mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, particularly in children and young adults, especially after the 2nd dose.
Offit’s statements are moreover inconsistent with the current CDC position. The CDC itself, via multiple high-quality surveillance systems, has demonstrated a causal association between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, particularly in young men shortly after dose 2, even if they insisted the absolute number of cases was much lower. Even considering vaccine-associated myocarditis alone, Offit’s claims already raise gigantic doubts. And then we are not even talking about the staggering correlations between vaccination and a myriad of other adverse effects.
The corruption, dishonesty, and conflicts of interest are so glaring in Offit’s case that they even raise eyebrows among many adherents of C-19 vaccination.
“Scienze” Explanation #5: RFK Jr. said that “HHS would invest in whole-virus vaccines and novel platforms that don’t collapse when viruses mutate.” Whole viral vaccines have been around since the rabies vaccine in the late 1800s. They’re not exactly a novel vaccine technology. More importantly, the whole killed virus vaccines that were used to prevent COVID in China beginning in late 2020 were less effective than the mRNA vaccines. Again, RFK Jr. is wrong about the science.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #5:
By comparing mRNA vaccines with inactivated COVID-19 vaccines, tries to claim that inactivated C-19 vaccines are less effective. Yet he cites a source that does not confirm the inferiority in effectiveness, particularly after a third dose. Thus, once again, he deceives his readers, most of whom will probably not even check the reference, blindly believing this vaccine guru.
Moreover, RFK Jr. simply says that HHS is searching for platforms that better protect against viral mutations. Although I must admit that in my opinion inactivated vaccines are not a suitable solution for developing a more universal vaccine (see: https://x.com/GVDBossche/status/1954073069380661608), the search of HHS is not limited to inactivated vaccines!
“Scienze” Explanation #6: RFK Jr. said that the mRNA COVID vaccines can become ineffective due to “antigenic shift, potentially prolonging pandemics.” The term “antigenic shift” is typically reserved for influenza virus, which has a segmented genome that allows for entire gene segments to be transferred from one strain to another. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t have a segmented genome. When antigenic shifts occurred in 1957 (“Asian flu”), 1968 (“Hong Kong flu”) and 2009 (“Swine flu”), influenza pandemics ensued. If SARS-CoV-2 underwent an “antigenic shift”, the entire world would once again be completely susceptible to this virus, and we would be right back to where we were in late 2019. Sounds scary. Complete nonsense.
“PR-OFFIT-ism” remark #6:
It is true that “antigenic shift” is mostly used to describe abrupt reassortment or recombination creating a new subtype/strain (typically in influenza when two strains reassort or recombine within the same host). However, antigenic shift can more broadly be used to denote an abrupt and large change in surface antigens, as occurred with early Omicron and again with its later descendants. That is merely a matter of definition.
Offit is completely wrong in claiming that antigenic shift implies a high vulnerability of the host. When individuals with high titers of previously virus- or vaccine-induced antibodies are exposed to such antigenically shifted variants, poorly neutralizing antibodies can enhance viral infection by promoting virus attachment and entry efficiency without necessarily causing severe disease (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36471381/; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34139176/). This is sometimes described as antibody-dependent enhancement of infection, which is very different from antibody-dependent enhancement of disease. It is clear that Offit is unfamiliar with the relevant literature and sticks instead to his long-ossified opinions. But where does that man get the arrogance to think that time has stood still, clinging so stubbornly to his medieval viewpoints that he doesn’t even hesitate to ridicule others who—unlike himself—have actually followed the dynamics of this pandemic? Shame on you, Mr. Offit!
Jonathan Swift, the 18th century satirist who wrote Gulliver’s Travels, said, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.” RFK Jr. counts on this. He counts on the fact that by the time scientists have unraveled his firehose of false information—his “scienze”—the harm will have been done. He counts on the fact that people will think that because he sounds like he knows what he is talking about, that he actually does.
One fact is unavoidable: three pandemic viruses have swept across the world in the last 20 years. The next one isn’t far away. With RFK Jr.’s “scienze” offered as explanations for why we are cutting resources, we will be far less prepared for the next one. And because we have consistently failed to limit the damage caused by RFK Jr.’s unrelenting anti-vaccine agenda, we will have only ourselves to blame.
These ad hominem attacks by Offit, who still imagines himself the new pope of vaccinology after Stanley Plotkin, testify to his boundless foolishness. If you want to be arrogant, at least make sure what you say is accurate. As the saying goes: “Insult is the coin of men who cannot argue; the poorer their reason, the louder their clamor.”
Offit: the so-called ‘pediatrician’ who isn’t even worthy of that title!
From the foregoing argumentation it is abundantly clear that Offit’s black-and-white assertions raise the gravest doubts about his insights into this pandemic and the public health damage caused by C-19 vaccination -more specifically by mass vaccination, the mRNA vaccines, and above all the C-19 vaccination of young children! In a recent interview P. Offit gave a shocking example of perverse advice by recommending C-19 vaccination of children under 2 years, because cases of severe disease and even deaths have recently increased in that age group (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-american-academy-of-pediatrics-is-diverging-from-cdc-vaccine-guidelines). But how short-sighted, narrow-minded and uneducated must he be not to understand that this problem is solely and exclusively the result of the ever-increasing infectiousness of the circulating variants -an indirect consequence of the C-19 mass vaccination?!
This very high level of viral infectiousness can now even cause symptoms in unvaccinated adults with a trained innate immune system (usually limited to some hoarseness and a few days of cough, except in unvaccinated individuals with underlying disease or unhealthy lifestyle). In very young children, however, who have not yet been exposed to the virus, innate antibodies (also called natural antibodies) can in many cases fail to neutralize such a high viral load. Thus we now occasionally find that these otherwise pluripotent natural antibodies provide insufficient protection to the very young child when exposed to highly infectious variants. In his linear way of thinking, Offit imagines that vaccinating these children against Covid-19 will solve the problem, thereby missing the point entirely. The problem does not lie in an inadequate innate immunity of children, but in an abnormally high level of infectiousness of currently circulating variants, which are mostly transmitted by chronically infected C-19 vaccinees. The virus evolved to this high degree of infectiousness as a direct consequence of mass C-19 vaccination, which -by generating suboptimal immune pressure in highly C-19 vaccinated populations-has been driving the selection of ever more infectious SC-2 variants.
The natural defenses (i.e. natural antibodies) of young children sometimes cannot withstand this artificially generated infectious pressure, so that indeed disease-and in exceptional cases, death-can occur. In fact, this phenomenon is similar to the one previously described for MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children) and white lung pneumonia in somewhat older children, which pseudo-experts like Offit already used at that time as a pretext to promote C-19 vaccination of children. Now it affects even younger children because viral infectiousness has risen even further, again as a direct result of ongoing immune escape from the C-19 mass vaccination experiment -a large-scale gain-of-function experiment conducted on the human species and stubbornly, yet recklessly, endorsed by anti-talents like Offit.
Instead of studying the evolution of his shares in the pharmaceutical companies, Offit should perhaps take a somewhat deeper dive into the literature on natural antibodies. I kindly refer him to my website: https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/blog/supportive-references-from-literature.
As long as the virus does not evolve into a final retaliation against this insane human intervention, some infants will remain vulnerable to symptomatic infection. Preventively, one can only advise to avoid exposing them to group contacts or close contacts with mildly and/ or chronically infected individuals. At the slightest onset of symptoms, these children should be immediately examined and appropriately treated at an early stage of disease (see early treatment protocols for COVID-19 by P. McCullough and others), including treatment with antiviral agents. Although the use of ivermectin is officially discouraged in children under 2 years (e.g. by WHO) because of insufficient clinical data, studies by Strobel et al., 2019 (Lancet Infect Dis) and Ly et al., 2019 (PLoS Negl Trop Dis) show that at least a single dose in these very young children did not cause serious side effects. Other smaller case series likewise indicate that the drug is well tolerated in this age group.
Conclusion
From all the above it is clear that Offit arrogantly rests on his outdated laurels, has not updated his knowledge at all, and understands immunologically about as much of the pandemic as a cow knows about algebra. Yet he has the guts to ridicule policymakers who genuinely care about the health of the American people and try to ban corruption and conflicts of interest from the health sector. I can only dream of confronting this arrogant yet scientifically senile fellow in a public scientific debate, to make him realize that it is high time for him to restrict his preacher role to that of grandfather.
Science does not benefit from PR-OFFIT-ism. What HHS, CDC, and NIH truly need are transparent and innovative solutions to complex public health challenges, fed by critical and committed scientists whose integrity precisely shuns -like the plague!- the hypocrisy and arrogance of PR-OFFIT-ism!
Offit, like Hotez, is a money whore, suckling at the BigPharma teet for blood cash. Truly vile subhuman creatures who never met a vaccine they wouldn't push.
Thanks for sharing Dr Bossche 🙏