‘Formal, Unequivocal Apologies’ Needed to Restore Public Trust After COVID Vaccine Mandates

The public deserves “formal, unequivocal apologies from governments and medical bodies” for COVID-19 vaccine mandates and for “silencing truth seekers,” according to a paper published Oct. 9 in the journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.

Vaccine mandates and lack of transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic eroded public trust, which deepened the divide between health authorities and the people they serve, according to authors Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Andrea Lamont Nazarenko, Ph.D.

“The pandemic demonstrated that when scientific integrity is lacking and dissent is suppressed, unethical decision-making can become legitimized,” they wrote. “When this happens, public confidence in health authorities erodes.”

Trust in public health agencies plummeted during the pandemic. Confidence in decision-making at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fell from 73% in 2020 to 61% in 2025, according to polling firm KFF.

Public opinion on physicians and hospitals also suffered, with trust dropping from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024, according to a study in JAMA Network Open.

Restoring faith in public health agencies requires “long overdue” apologies, as well as “full transparency of data, independent evaluation of evidence, and accountability through both policy change and public acknowledgment of harm,” the paper’s authors said.