About Rosanne Hertzberger: Scientist and Author Exploring the Interface Between Science and Everyday Life

About Rosanne Hertzberger

Every week, scientist Rosanne Hertzberger writes about the interfaces between science and everyday life.

About Rosanne Hertzberger

Every week, scientist Rosanne Hertzberger writes about the interfaces between science and everyday life.

She is the initiator and chairman of the board of the Crispatus Foundation, where a women’s research collective is developing a vaginal probiotic. Since 2017 she has been researching the metabolism of vaginal lactic acid bacteria in the Systems Biology Lab at VU Amsterdam.

She previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) and conducted PhD research at SILS, UvA & NIZO Food Research in collaboration with Nestle Research Center. She published two books: ‘The Big Nothing – why we have too much faith in science’ (2019) and ‘Ode to E-numbers – Why e-numbers, ready meals and preservatives make our lives better ‘ (2017).

More about Rosanne Hertzberger is to read on her site.

People say so many things. There are people who do great work grumbling and pissing vinegar. They say they feel sick and tired every day, but show up every day and eventually close the gaps in the schedule. There are people who claim to have dropped out, to have given up on ‘The Hague’, but still keep coming back to cast their vote.

You shouldn’t pay attention to what people say. You have to pay attention to what people do. Only then do you know how the flag hangs. Therefore, vaccination rate is one of the more reliable thermometers in society’s bottom. When vaccinating, you do not measure what information young parents have received, but how much they have trusted that information. You measure whether people believe that the governments and authorities behind the National Immunization Program want the best for your child. That they will not be bribed, that they are independent, that they can compete with the lobby of the pharmaceutical industry and that they have made reasonable considerations. If they trust that, they will have their child vaccinated. So they do that en masse. Until about 2015, 95 out of 100 Dutch parents obediently rolled up their babies’ sleeves and legs. At least fifteen years of disinformation campaigns have failed to break that trust.

The introduction of the new whooping cough vaccination for pregnant women is a good example of how great that confidence is. It is one of the least effective vaccines, with a long history of public distrust, being the first vaccine to be offered to pregnant women just before the corona crisis, rather than to their babies shortly after birth. That pregnant mother is not allowed to smoke or drink, has to avoid certain herbal teas and receives all kinds of other health advice and was now suddenly offered an injection by her midwife. No neighbor, aunt, or sister could tell her that they had also received it during their pregnancy without consequences. A recipe for failure you would think. Still, 70 percent said yes.

It is precisely why the latest vaccination rate is so alarming. Participation in the National Immunization Program fell slightly in the years before the corona crisis from 95 percent to 94 percent for the measles vaccine. But now he has fallen hard. 2022: 88.8 percent, maybe a little higher, but not much.

You will always hear the same refrain from the experts. This is due to disinformation online, unfamiliarity with the diseases they protect against, lack of trust in the authorities. But if you ask me, the great jab aversion did not start with distrust directed against the authorities. It started with distrust of the authorities. Somewhere the authorities have antagonized the people. And I guess that was in September 2021. After a summer in which the usual 80 percent good citizens showed up for the corona vaccines, unlike in other countries, and as usual simply voluntarily. Then the health authorities, with the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) in the lead, decided that it was wise to abolish the voluntary nature of vaccination in the Netherlands for a few percent extra vaccines. You were only allowed to come to work, or in the pub, or at the association with a vaccine. A QR code on your phone had to show whether you had obeyed. The result was a lot of people who were vaccinated despite their hesitation or aversion. To this day it is claimed that it was not coercion because there was a cumbersome way out with testing, but in practice social life was made impossible for unvaccinated people. They were scapegoated and excluded, not only by governments, but by society as a whole.

There, in September 2021, something fundamental was broken in the relationship between the population and the authorities. Frankly, I’m glad that vaccine enthusiasm didn’t drop further.

It is important that we do not forget how it started: with the distrust of the authorities against the citizen, not the other way around. I fear that the consequences in the coming years will be more serious than just falling vaccination rates and the return of an outbreak or two. The legal philosophers at the Health Council have been calling for more coercion, for example in childcare, for years, even before the big dropout started. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has now gained experience with measures to correct a vaccination rate that is just a few percent lower than desired. They won’t call it coercion. Pediatricians will try to make it right at the health centers. You still have the choice, though. You still have the option not to take your child to the nursery.

Rosanne Hertzberger is a microbiologist.

A version of this article also appeared in the July 1, 2023 issue.
2023-07-01 00:00:00
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