The risks of vaccinating children against Covid now clearly outweigh the benefits, the Government has been told by a group of MPs and scientists.
In an open letter to the Government’s vaccination advisory committee – the JCVI – the MPs including Miriam Cates, Esther McVey and Sir Desmond Swayne and scientists including Professor Allyson Pollock, Dr Roland Salmon and Professor Brent Taylor write that “the risk to benefit ratio for child Covid vaccination has worsened since September”.
They continue:
The risks of adverse events (including but not limited to myocarditis) increase as more doses are given, and any advantages are reduced as vaccine effectiveness in suppressing Omicron transmission decreases (especially given widespread natural immunity). Given that any potential benefits of vaccinating children were calculated to be marginal at best in the first place, we suspect that this margin has not only evaporated but actually reversed in light of the characteristics of the new and dominant Omicron variant and the increase in robust and durable naturally-acquired immunity. …
Unlike the elderly and clinically vulnerable population – for whom the potentially life-saving benefits of vaccination substantially outweigh any risks from vaccination – our children face no such threat from COVID-19 yet have 50 or more years of healthy life expectancy ahead of them that could be compromised by long-term vaccine harms. It is crucial that, if we are to proceed with the mass double vaccination of healthy children, we are absolutely certain that this policy will do more good than harm. Furthermore, we need to give consideration to what precedent is being set for triple or even continuous and regular vaccination for this age group.
We believe that the benefit to risk ratio of child vaccination should be reassessed in light of the Omicron variant and new evidence on both vaccine harms and superior natural immunity. We urge the JCVI to review this new evidence and provide updated advice to the Government with regards to the mass vaccination of healthy 12-15 year olds.
Brent Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Community Child Health at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and formerly a JCVI member for eight years, said:
The JCVI made a very sensible and laudable recommendation when it advised the Government last September against the mass vaccination of healthy children against COVID-19. The Committee was rightly concerned about the unknown potential harms of the new vaccines, in particular myocarditis.
Since the unfathomable decision of the CMO to go against that advice, second doses are now being offered to children despite further evidence of the potential harm of myocarditis, most worryingly the frequency, especially following the second dose. The latest CDC data reports elevated rates of post-vaccination myocarditis for boys aged 12-15, 2.5-24 times higher in the seven days after first dose and 24-228 times higher in the seven days after second dose.
So, whilst the absolute risks are still low they cannot be described as trivial and the absolute risk from COVID-19 to healthy children is negligible. Additionally, the vaccines stop neither infection nor transmission and many children will have broad and robust natural immunity following infection. I’m afraid the mass vaccination of healthy children is not based in sound evidence. It is time for the JCVI, the CMO and the Government to reassess all the evidence now available and alter its recommendation accordingly.
Prof Taylor appeared on GB News this morning to discuss the letter – watch it here.
'You need to balance the benefits against the risks'
— GB News (@GBNEWS) January 8, 2022
Professor Emeritus of Community Child Health, Brent Taylor on a letter calling for the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation to review the benefits of jabs for 12 to 15 year olds.Freeview 236, Sky 515, Virgin 626 pic.twitter.com/shFbGsInsz
This is an important intervention by lawmakers and eminent scientists and medics that deserves to be taken seriously by Government. I hope the JCVI, Chris Whitty, Sajid Javid and others involved in making these decisions are listening.
Here is the letter with the signatories in full.
January 2022
To Members of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation,
Re: Review of Child Vaccination Programme
On September 3rd 2021 the JCVI advised against recommending the mass vaccination of healthy 12-15-year-olds against COVID-19. The principal reason given for this was that, while the known benefits and harms from vaccination to this age group were both very small, the Committee was concerned about the unknown potential harms of the new vaccine, particularly the long-term and possibly serious risks of myocarditis. The JCVI estimated that for every one million 12-15-year-olds vaccinated with two doses, 2.54 ICU admissions would be avoided and up to 51 cases of myocarditis caused. Subsequently, the risk of myocarditis and other adverse events has been shown to be greater than believed by the JCVI at the time.
The Government referred the matter to the CMO, asking him to consider the ‘wider benefits’ to children of vaccination. On September 13th 2021 Professor Chris Whitty recommended that one dose of the vaccine be given to healthy 12-15-year-olds on the basis that it would possibly provide ‘marginal benefits’, specifically in reducing the time spent out of school as a result of Covid infection. This was calculated as a saving of, on average, 15 mins of education per child. (This estimate did not take into account disruption even from short term vaccine side effects and is also based on assumptions about the level of protection one dose of the vaccine gives against infection which have proved to be over-optimistic.)
The risk and benefit calculations made by the JCVI and the CMO were based on less complete data on both the harms and benefits of vaccinating children compared to the evidence now available. Four months later, we are in a very different position, with the virulent Delta variant almost completely replaced by the milder Omicron variant. Additionally, society now has a higher level of robust immunity from natural infection than it had when teenage vaccination was approved.
We have seen in recent weeks that Omicron is significantly more infectious than Delta (based on secondary attack rates, it was originally twice as transmissible as Delta, but this has declined to 1.3 times as transmissible as naturally acquired variant-specific immunity to it has risen). Vaccines are also far less effective at stemming the transmission of Omicron, compared to Delta (protection appears to fall to zero, three months after vaccination).
More data have emerged about the frequency of harmful side effects of Covid vaccination. One study found that for males under 40, risk of myocarditis was up to 14 times higher after vaccination than after infection (101 cases after the Moderna second dose, compared to seven cases after infection). It is particularly important to note that the risks of myocarditis in young men and boys seems to increase significantly after a second dose of the vaccine – which is why Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty initially recommended just one dose be given to 12-15 year olds – and yet we are now offering second doses to children, despite the evidence of risk growing.
The risks of adverse events (including but not limited to myocarditis) increase as more doses are given, and any advantages are reduced as vaccine effectiveness in suppressing Omicron transmission decreases (especially given widespread natural immunity). Given that any potential benefits of vaccinating children were calculated to be marginal at best in the first place, we suspect that this margin has not only evaporated but actually reversed in light of the characteristics of the new and dominant Omicron variant and the increase in robust and durable naturally-acquired immunity.
Furthermore, the negligible risks of Covid infection to children have become even more nugatory if, as it appears, Omicron is associated with less severe disease, whereas the benefits of natural infection (rather than vaccination) in terms of longer lasting immunity are becoming more clear.
Unlike the elderly and clinically vulnerable population – for whom the potentially life-saving benefits of vaccination substantially outweigh any risks from vaccination – our children face no such threat from COVID-19 yet have 50 or more years of healthy life expectancy ahead of them that could be compromised by long-term vaccine harms. It is crucial that, if we are to proceed with the mass double vaccination of healthy children, we are absolutely certain that this policy will do more good than harm. Furthermore, we need to give consideration to what precedent is being set for triple or even continuous and regular vaccination for this age group.
We believe that the benefit to risk ratio of child vaccination should be reassessed in light of the Omicron variant and new evidence on both vaccine harms and superior natural immunity. We urge the JCVI to review this new evidence and provide updated advice to the Government with regards to the mass vaccination of healthy 12-15 year olds.
Yours sincerely,
Miriam Cates MP
Steve Brine MP
Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester
Philip Davies MP
Richard Drax MP
Baroness Foster of Oxton
Marcus Fysh MP
Paul Girvan MP
Chris Green MP
Mark Jenkinson MP
Pauline Latham MP
Karl McCartney MP
Rt Hon Esther McVey MP
Lord Moonie
Dr Andrew Murrison MP
Greg Smith MP
Graham Stringer MP
Sir Desmond Swayne MP
Derek Thomas MP
Sammy Wilson MP
William Wragg MP
Dr David Bell, Public Health Physician, formerly working on infectious diseases for the WHO
Professor Anthony Brookes, Genomics and Health Data Scientist, University of Leicester
Dr Iona Heath CBE, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (2009 to 2012)
Professor Marilyn James, Health Economics, University of Nottingham
Dr John Lee, Retired Professor of Pathology
Professor David Livermore, Medical Microbiology, University of East Anglia
Professor David Paton, Industrial Economics, University of Nottingham
Professor Allyson Pollock, Clinical Professor of Public Health, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University
Dr Gerry Quinn, Biomedical Sciences, University of Ulster
Dr Roland Salmon, MRCGP, FFPH, former Director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Wales)
Professor Brent Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Community Child Health, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Professor Philip Thomas, Risk Management, Visiting Academic Professor, University of Bristol
Professor John Watkins, Epidemiology, Cardiff University
Stop Press: Good coverage of the letter in the Sunday Express.
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They sure do seem to want to kill off all the older folks by continually “boosting” them. It might save them from having to increase the pension age.
Ah, is that a solution (albeit rather a final one) to France’s problem of having to raise the pension age from 62?
Nothing to do with excess deaths for under-50s….
Excess deaths for under-50s are much harder to explain away, excess deaths for over-50s can be hidden or ignored or explained away more easily.
It isn’t what they aren’t saying. Its the way they aren’t saying it..
Exactly. These decisions are supposed to be based on risk/benefit analysis. Why don’t they explain what that was, and why don’t they explain why they withdrew the AstraZeneca jab?
‘Why don’t they explain why they withdrew the AstraZeneca jab?’
That is a VERY good point that has been totally ignored by the MSM and the entire political class. Its as if all the razzmatazz around ‘the UK’s covid vaccine’ never happened. Its just been wiped from history entirely. Its never mentioned at all now.
I think its a good angle for us sceptics to take – we need to start asking (very innocently) ‘Why was the AZ vaccine withdrawn?’ at every possible occasion.
Please see my email to Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trials, and Chair of the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, asking who initiated the plan to vaccinate the entire global population against SARS-CoV-2 when it was already known it wasn’t a serious threat to most people?
My email to Andrew Pollard, sent in June 2021, raises serious questions about the ethics process which approved covid-19 vaccine trials involving healthy people not at risk of covid-19.
It’s time for retrospective critical analysis of how the current global covid-19 jab rollout came to pass…
i think we all have a pretty good idea of some of the reasons behind this, but as I’ve said elsewhere it’s still worth asking why the crooks behaved like crooks. At least they can’t say they weren’t told. The people who did approve this plan should have bullet proof reasons as to why they didn’t give equal weight to independent medical organisations such as the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (who promoted vitamin C, vitamin D etc. to protect against viral infection), and that conflict of interest was absolutely not a factor. And even if they get that far, there still may be questions to answer.
Because the msm are now as corrupt as the AZ described by Oliver Wright (now working for the Times muppets) in his 2014 Independent piece (see here and here)
Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors | The Independent | The Independent
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
The COVID-19 vaccination programme continues to reduce severe disease across the population
Read: The so-called COVID-19 vaccination does not protect against severe disease.
while helping to protect the NHS
Against the threat of budget cuts, perhaps? The NHS is supposed to use medication to help people and not to help itself to something.
Beat me to it https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/25/covid-vaccine-booster-jab-nhs-uk-end/
Prof Lim should be awarded the ”Dipshit of the Year” award, as should anybody else falling for this total cobblers in 2023.
“The U.K. will continue to offer the first two doses to over-16s.” Oooh hang on a minute..isn’t that the one that’s based on the original Wuhan strain that has been extinct for 2 years now?
“Hmmm you know what? I’m totally regretting not getting one of those obsolete, ineffective, sudden death-inducing novel technology pretend vaccines. I think I’ll take the plunge this year so I can be protected from a virus that I appear to have survived so far with no problems whatsoever. Why not?” Said no sensible, unvaxxed person ever! :-/
Or I’m really itching to get two doses of something said not to be sufficient for anything ever since autumn 2021! Otherwise, it might not be not protected against severe COVID in the proper way!
BTW, your dipshit is really a compliment. This is not an inept person. It’s someone trying to keep the COVID gravy train rolling with sufficiently limited damages that it can actually keep on rolling for a while. This means this guy is either evil (wants to do bad stuff to people because he wants bad stuff to happen to hem) or a psychopath (doesn’t care what happens to other people provided he’s fine).
Oh I think he’s all of the above. Nobody can plead ignorance at this stage, especially nobody with ”Professor” as their title! He’s complete and utter scum of the earth.
Oops, think I just misgendered Prof Lim, who is apparently female. At least the name “Dipshit” is unisex though…
Spot as usual Mogs , it’s beyond reason that the first two jabs are still being offered, bizarre in fact ! Show us the medical reason health experts ? what’s that ! Oh you can’t!!.. Chunts !!!
And sadly I know someone (81) who will willingly line up for extra jabs this year, despite a rapid decline in health (which could be either age or vaccine related, but who’s to say?), and also a poor soul in a care home with dementia who gets jabbed routinely because he hasn’t got the wherewithall to question it. Last time I saw him his decline had been rapid, but again, no questions will be asked when he dies because, well, old sick people die, don’t they?
Yes the only people who get a caveat for my scathing statement above are the people who are too cognitively impaired to make an informed decision on their own behalf, such as people suffering dementia, learning difficulties or people who are profoundly disabled with no way of communicating effectively. Unfortunately these individuals are completely reliant on their caregivers for their health and welfare. It’s all very crap.
That’s an unfortunate side-effect of modern, urban rot: A family is grand parents, parents and children living in a single house. By the time the grand parents die, the children are old enough to become the parents. That’s how stuff worked not that long ago (150 years, roughly).
NB: I’m no better in this respect, as I’m living 434 miles distant from my parents.
Many, many folk don’t have the critical thinking skills or the backbone in combination to withstand the coercion & pressure following on from the military grade psychological terrorism which the governments have willingly waged on their populace.
What is not known by laypersons is that the ability to understand complex language & complex information declines with age in the normal population. Only relatively (last 20 years) recently known within the SLT profession & great resistance from medics etc to acknowledge this & change the style of information dissemination to their elderly patients. Align this with the also relatively unknown fact that the elderly tend to focus on positive things & ignore negative information, it makes a perfect storm for the older generation to believe all the lies which have been spewed out by the propaganda machinery.
Our governments have been waging a war against us in contravention of the Geneva Convention & the international laws of military engagement.
Sounds like the elephant quietly whispered this in the JCVI members’ ears.
According to Wikipedia, in the last two years. Wei Shen Lim received ‘more than £25001 in research funding from Pfizer’. Not saying he’s corrupted, but is he impartial?
There’s better information available here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221121201039/https://www.brit-thoracic.org.uk/about-us/committees-and-advisory-groups/clinical-audit-leads/35589/
The text is partially unreadable, but can be gathered from the page source. As of 2022, Wei Shen Lim is in control of
Unrestricted investigator initiated funding for a multi-centre pneumonia study in which WSL is the Chief Investigator.
or, put into other words, for the time being, he is – for all practical purposes – on the Pfizer payroll, has received an undeclared amount of money significantly larger than £25,001, and is essentially free to spend that as he sees fit. And he’s a public servant responsible for expert advice on vaccination in the UK at the same time(!).
I’m not saying that this is a striking example of corrupt official selling the population of the UK down the river because this really speaks for itself.
“Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair of COVID-19 vaccination on the JCVI, said: “The COVID-19 vaccination programme continues to reduce severe disease across the population, while helping to protect the NHS.”
Just think how much worse the excess deaths and ambulance waiting times would be without the “vaccinations”…
Despite only recently approving this for 5+, going so far as to book them appointments for these injections, just like that, they’re dropped.
IMHO the whole quackcine programme should be STOPPED for all age groups not just the under 50’s
Regarding Alex Berenson’s Substack.
Put the odds of Covid hospitalisation against the odds of adverse reactions….
Question is why they did not drop these vaccines 2 years ago. Or with the benefit of the Pfizer papers did not ever start with these vaccines in the first place.
The Covid Pandemic Hoax. “A story for the ages”
They are slowly, slowly trying to distance the Government from the policy which has killed thousands, massively injured tens of thousands and had adverse effects for hundreds of thousands.
There will never be an admission that the experimental monkey juice is to blame for these. It will all be blamed on lack of access to healthcare “during the Covid emergency” and the evil people who instigated and carried out the policy will get away without any kind of censure.
The EVIL they carried out is so huge, and so many powerful people as well as ordinary healthcare providers are implicated, that they daren’t do otherwise.
Continuing to promote the snake-oil will make defence against murder more difficult – the link between the ‘vaccines’ and people dropping dead wasn’t at first clear – should these evil people ever be put on trial.