International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research

Vaccinology is at the heart of modern theories of immunology, all of which need to be strengthened and updated at their foundations. Associating COVID-19 "vaccines" loosely with antibodies to some component of any one or all of those "vaccines" (or any other vaccine) may be a necessary criterion but it is an insufficient test of the  efficacy of any vaccine for preventing or diminishing some condition or disease. In general, if any pharmaceutical is to be causally related to some particular observed outcome after its administration to a person or group, it must, at a minimum, meet the Bradford Hill criteria. They require, more or less, showing a significant and substantial magnitude of the effect (its power), the consistency of the measured effect across cases and groups (reliability and reproducibility), the systematic elimination of other possible causes (all of them if possible) zeroing in on the claimed cause for the effect observed, the timing of the observable effect must be after its cause (in keeping with mathematical proofs of the logic of true narratives), the effect must vary reliably and measurably with dosage, a plausible theoretical explanation must exist for whatever cause-effect relation is claimed, empirical evidence must agree with that theoretical explanation and refute other proposed explanations, and there should be control evidence showing that in the absence of the cause, the effect does not occur. The IJVTPR invites theoretical and empirical research addressing the Hill criteria applied to any and all aspects of vaccinology theory. Any other work on subject-matter already dealt with in previous issues is also welcome, but preference will be given to articles showing how and why the whole business of vaccinology needs to be reconceptualized. If we have learned nothing else from the global COVID-19 disaster, surely we have learned this much at the very least: the theory of vaccinology requires a fundamental overhaul.