It’s understating it to say that vaccines have become more controversial following the COVID pandemic. While vaccine skepticism has long existed, it has largely been categorized by much of the mainstream media and culture as a fringe, unscientific conspiracy theory.

However, while fringe, scientifically suspect anti-vaccine kooks do exist, the notion that any questioning of vaccines equates to radical anti-vaccine fundamentalism is simply disingenuous and untrue. Furthermore, expressing such an attitude ironically only serves to fuel greater vaccine skepticism rather than disabuse the public from embracing unsupported theories.

When Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, concerns were raised over Kennedy’s long history of vaccine skepticism. Recently, fears that Kennedy would use his position to dissuade the public from vaccines have seemingly been confirmed, according to some in the mainstream media.

For example, Kennedy recently announced that he is canceling some $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development. The COVID shots use that technology. Predictably, this decision raised objections. The New York Times quoted Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who responded, “This is a bad day for science.” Naturally, Hensley, who has been developing mRNA vaccines, does not want to see the flow of federal funding cut off.

In an apparent effort to head off criticism of the decision to cut mRNA vaccine development funding, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, wrote an op-ed published in The Washington Post titled, “Why the NIH is pivoting away from mRNA vaccines.” Bhattacharya argued that this decision was not a refutation of mRNA vaccine development, which he called a “promising technology.” Instead, it was about addressing a bigger problem. That problem is that the mRNA vaccine platform “has failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”

“No matter how elegant the science,” Bhattacharya writes, “a platform that lacks credibility among the people it seeks to protect cannot fulfill its public health mission.”

Bhattacharya offers praise for Operation Warp Speed, the effort by the Trump administration during the height of the COVID pandemic to quickly develop a vaccine. He notes that cutting red tape and the collaboration between the government and private sector to rapidly develop a vaccine using the mRNA platform were successful in many ways.

But he also argues that the Biden administration’s actions sowed public distrust in the vaccine. “Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not manage public trust in the coronavirus vaccines, largely because it chose a strategy of mandates rather than a risk-based approach and did not properly acknowledge Americans’ growing concerns regarding safety and effectiveness.”

He notes that a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year found that 60% of American adults have no intention of getting updated COVID vaccines, and as of April 2025, just 13% of children ages six months to 17 years have received an updated COVID vaccine. This is despite — or, in many cases, because of — recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bhattacharya is right. Public trust in the CDC and America’s scientific institutions has fallen precisely because of politics. “Science isn’t propaganda,” he observes. “It’s humility. And when public health officials stopped communicating with humility, we lost much of the public, an absolute necessity for any vaccine platform.” Vaccine mandates, along with the suppression of speech and the spreading of misinformation, have all served to erode Americans’ trust in the scientific community.

Pulling back on taxpayer funding of mRNA vaccine development is a corrective measure, not for mRNA vaccines, but for seeking to rebuild the American public’s trust.