‘He’s wrong,’ one expert said

“It is a single antigen vaccine. And for respiratory illnesses, the single antigen vaccines have never worked,” Kennedy said when asked by CBS’s chief medical correspondent, Jonathan LaPook, why the decision was delayed.

“A tenet of virology is that you go after one of the proteins on the surface that generates a good immune response, and that’s what you target. This principle has withstood the test of time because we’ve made multiple good vaccines in that manner,” said Marks, who was pushed out of the FDA late last month at the behest of Kennedy.

“This is another example of Kennedy being an ignoramus about vaccination, if not other things as well. And you can quote me on that,” said Stanley Plotkin, a co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine and of the vaccine that protects against rubella.

All Covid vaccines target a single antigen, a part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus known as the spike protein. Most flu vaccines effectively target a single antigen, the hemagglutinin protein on the exterior of flu viruses. And vaccines against respiratory syncytial viruses are also single antigen vaccines, targeting RSV’s F protein.