A COVID-19 vaccine has been framed as the ultimate solution needed to end the pandemic. A substantial number of vaccine candidates are in development, and several are undergoing clinical trials, with the first promising results recently published.1 While this provides hope as part of a solution to the pandemic it also raises concerns over how vaccines will be deployed and accepted. One challenge is ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ Evidence suggests that the public health benefits of approved COVID-19 vaccines will be undermined by hesitancy from populations to be vaccinated.2–9 Evident in the emergence of the new discipline of ‘infodemiology’ and ‘misinfodemic debates’10,11, there is an assumption that this reticence is primarily driven by people’s exposure to misinformation and that this can be countered by ‘inoculating’ publics with facts.1