Dr. Madhava Setty and Dr. Elizabeth Mumper attended last week’s World Vaccine Congress in Washington, D.C., where they observed that the more than 3,100 people, mostly from the pharma and biotech industries and regulatory affairs, who attended the event were highly focused on converting the vaccine-hesitant.
Last week I attended the 23rd World Vaccine Congress in Washington, D.C. — which bills itself as “The Most Important Vaccine Event of the Year”:
“Our event format allows for whole-sector topics, giving an opportunity for people to find out more about their specific area of research and their job-function. By running parallel niche conference channels over the 3 days, it increases the relevance of the whole event for everyone who attends.
“During the sessions you will learn how cutting-edge research efforts can be integrated with
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- Pharma
- Biotech
- Academia
- Government
“to produce more and better vaccines to the market.”
More than 3,100 people, largely from the pharma and biotech industries and regulatory affairs, attended the event.
Keynote speakers included prominent figures from public health agencies, including Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); various directors of research at BioNTech and Moderna; and academic bigwigs like Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine (my own alma mater).
During the three full days of the conference, neither I nor Dr. Elizabeth Mumper encountered another physician presently in clinical practice.
The event was open to anyone willing to pay the entry fee, which started at $495 for students and went up to $1,000+. But from what I could tell, this was largely a gathering of big and small pharma, biotech and leaders in regulatory affairs.
General impressions
- The majority of attendees truly believe they are doing the right thing.
- The majority of attendees look no further than recommendations from agencies of public health to guide their opinions. In other words, they fully believe COVID-19 mRNA (and other) vaccines are exceedingly safe and have saved millions of lives.
- Beyond members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and officers from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), few, if any, are aware of vaccine trial and post-marketing observational data around COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.
- The keynote speakers and expert panel moderators who raised the topic of “vaccine hesitancy” were dismissive of those who managed to avoid vaccination and were openly contemptuous of those who encouraged others to do the same.
- Except for a few instances, the tone of the presentations and round table discussions were collegial. Aside from the pointed questions that Mumper and I were able to pose, there were no open hints that any of the attendees questioned the conventional narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic response.
- One-on-one exchanges revealed encouraging signs that not everyone there has bought the conventional narratives around the pandemic.
- Calls for public-private “partnerships” were a common theme.
I was able to attend only a fraction of the hundreds of presentations and panel discussions during the conference. Below I summarize the most important points from the sessions I attended and key conversations I had with the presenters.
Note: Throughout this article I have quoted myself and others. I do not have access to any audio or video recordings from the sessions, if there are any. Quotations are paraphrased from my own recollection and are not to be taken verbatim.
Introduction to the conference: Anti-vaxxers are dangerous, expect annual COVID vaccinations…
Read full story: World Vaccine Congress: A Report From the Belly of the Beast • Children’s Health Defense