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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how the moralization of COVID-19 vaccination as a "public good" created an epistemic gap for Post-Vac Syndrome. This paper analyses how the alignment of scientific advice with moral legitimacy complicates medical care for vaccine injuries.

Paper long abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific knowledge was mobilized as a primary order of justification for biopolitical interventions. Following the concept of "Regimes of Living" (Collier & Lakoff), this paper explores how technical facts were folded into moral imperatives, specifically the principle of solidarity, to stabilize immunization as the core strategy of pandemic preparedness.

While effective for public health governance, this strategic alignment produced a significant epistemic and clinical blind spot: Post-Vac Syndrome (PVS). Drawing on qualitative interviews with PVS patients and a discourse analysis of scientific-political advice in Germany, I demonstrate how the moralization of vaccination created a regime in which medical care for those with vaccine-related injuries is structurally hindered. Because experiential knowledge of PVS contradicts the dominant narrative of safe vaccination and solidarity, it is often excluded from advisory infrastructures as a politically sensitive disruption.

The paper argues that scientific advice, when tightly coupled with the moral economy of a political campaign, creates a infrastructure in which access to medical care is more difficult. Patients respond by mobilizing their own knowledge-infrastructures to challenge and expand the established regime. By examining the struggle of PVS patients for credibility, this contribution reflects on the constitution of expertise in times of crisis: How do moral narratives underline medical consultation? Through which orders of justification are these regimes maintained, and how can they be deconstructed?