Fourth Covid vaccines doses are not currently needed, Government scientific advisers have said, as protection against severe disease from three doses is holding up. The Telegraph has more.
On Friday night, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) announced that booster jabs continue to provide high levels of protection against severe disease from omicron in older adults, including the most vulnerable.
The committee’s analysis found that, three months after receiving a third jab, protection against hospitalisation among those aged 65 and over remains at around 90%.
Ministers have been exploring the possibility of a fourth jab for several weeks after Israel, considered a global pioneer in Covid vaccination, launched such a programme last month.
But Prof Wei Shen Lim, the JCVI’s Chairman of Covid immunisation, said: “The current data show the booster dose is continuing to provide high levels of protection against severe disease, even for the most vulnerable older age groups. For this reason, the committee has concluded there is no immediate need to introduce a second booster dose, though this will continue to be reviewed.”
No mention of effectiveness against infection or transmission. Yet it is the vaccines’ supposed efficacy against transmission that is the basis of the vaccine mandates that will see many shortly lose their jobs. If the JCVI no longer thinks the vaccines are effective against transmission it should say so and advise the Government to end its hounding and harassment of the unvaccinated.
Meanwhile, the Times abandons liberalism in a recent leading article which backs vaccine passports (no tests allowed) for sports events, theatres and indoor restaurants, saying it’s “time to get tough on the antivaxers”.
In deporting arguably the world’s most famous antivaxer, and one of its most celebrated athletes, the Australian government has sent exactly the right message.
Emmanuel Macron’s threat to “emmerder”, or “piss off”, the unvaccinated is also well aimed. Rightly rejecting mandatory vaccinations or prison sentences, the French president’s plan to inconvenience refuseniks is a proportionate and justified tactic. The British Government should consider a similar approach, albeit one expressed in less demotic language.
At a conservative estimate, 61% of those in intensive care from to Covid in Britain in mid-December were wholly unvaccinated. At the end of December, 74% of Covid inpatients were unboosted. Unvaccinated adults are up to eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid than those who have been jabbed. Those who choose for no good reason to remain unvaccinated are not only endangering their own health, they are denying healthcare resources to those in need through no fault of their own.
Oh dear. They’ll be calling for banning the overweight from restaurants next. And why not have vaccine passports for the flu vaccine on the same logic? Wait, better not give them the idea.
Initially the idea of vaccine passports was to stop the spread. Now that people seem to be accepting that vaccines don’t do that, the argument has shifted to not taking up hospital beds – even though the NHS is not remotely overwhelmed by Covid patients, let alone unvaccinated ones. It’s starting to feel purely vindictive – how dare the unvaccinated not partake in the shared pandemic effort.
The truth is the pandemic is over. Maybe they sense that, and they hate the fact that the unvaccinated may come out the other side without ever having to take the medicine. Whatever the psychological drive behind this very illiberal turn, it can’t stop soon enough.
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