The U.K. medicines regulator, the MHRA, has approved the Moderna Covid vaccine for six to 11 year olds, describing it as “safe and effective”.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved an update to the current U.K. approval of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, or ‘Spikevax’, that allows its use in Great Britain (GB) in six to 11 year-olds.
This approval takes into account the extension to use in children aged six to 11 years already approved by the European Medicines Agency on March 2nd 2022, as the original GB licence for Spikevax in adults was approved by relying on the EU decision.
Spikevax is authorised in children aged six to 11 in Northern Ireland under the update granted by the European Medicines Agency on March 2nd.
Dr June Raine, MHRA Chief Executive, said:
I am pleased to confirm that that the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna, ‘Spikevax’, has now been authorised in Great Britain in six to 11 year olds. The vaccine is safe and effective in this age group.
We have in place a comprehensive surveillance strategy for monitoring the safety of all U.K.-approved COVID-19 vaccines and this surveillance includes those aged six to 11.
It is for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to advise in due course on whether six to 11s should be offered vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna as part of the deployment programme.
How effective really is it against the immune-evading Omicron variant, though, and do the benefits really outweigh the risks in an age group at such low risk from the virus? There has been no assessment of this published by the MHRA, as far as I am aware.
The MHRA also today approved the Valneva Covid vaccine for 18-50 year-olds, which uses more traditional vaccine technology and so may be safer than the novel genetic vaccines.
The U.K.’s independent medicines regulator is the first in the world to approve the Valneva vaccine which becomes the sixth COVID-19 vaccine to be granted an MHRA authorisation.
It is also the first, whole-virus inactivated COVID-19 vaccine to gain MHRA regulatory approval. With this type of vaccine, the virus is grown in a lab and then made completely inactive so that it cannot infect cells or replicate in the body but can still trigger an immune response to the COVID-19 virus. This process is widely used already in the production of flu and polio vaccines.
June Raine said:
Our approval of the COVID-19 vaccine made by Valneva today follows a rigorous review of the safety, quality and effectiveness of this vaccine, and expert advice from the Government’s independent scientific advisory body, the Commission on Human Medicines.
Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, Chair of the independent Commission on Human Medicines, said:
The independent Commission on Human Medicines and its COVID-19 Expert Working Group has carefully considered the available evidence are [sic] pleased to say that we have advised that the benefit risk balance is positive. The vaccine is approved for use in people aged 18 to 50 years, with the first and second doses to be taken at least 28 days apart.
Interesting choice of words: not “safe and effective” but “the benefit risk balance is positive”. For everyone? Against Omicron? The trial is still ongoing so it’s not possible to review the findings for ourselves, though some information is provided here. Almost all trial participants are under 50, hence the approval being limited to the younger age range.
The U.K. has not actually yet purchased any doses of Valneva and also the approval doesn’t include use as a ‘booster’ so it has little immediate practical effect. In time it means a more traditional vaccine is available for those who wish to avoid experimental gene-based products – and unlike Novavax, not just based on the spike protein.
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Keep fighting the good fight, Tobes.
We shall prevail!
Hevenshualì.
To be fair, nobody’s born a ”man or woman”, that’d be silly. They should’ve put ”male or female” there. Maybe I’m just being anally retentive…
”Threadneedle Street employees were also advised that it is a “microaggression” to state that “everyone is born a man or a woman, it’s science”. Totally outrageous and cobblers!
I must say, this is funny but factually correct. Woketard Bank of England take note.
*Apologies in advance for the ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’ ear worm.
https://x.com/CartlandDavid/status/1830143017371464106
The BoE statement is a macroaggression to me.
And sorry, I am clapped out.
Only micro aggressions are discouraged, however macro aggressions are acceptable.
Priceless Mogs
I swear I’ve seen at least a couple of articles saying that DIE or DEI or whatever is waning.
“while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”
Not sure about this. It seems like basic business good sense to me to want to attract and retain good staff. When people do a good job, tell them this, and also reward them with better pay and more responsibility/autonomy. Equally when they screw up, tell them they have but also help them to do better next time, unless/until you eventually decide that they are beyond help within the constraints of a sustainable business. Treat each member of staff as an individual and judge them on what they contribute to your business. If this is “fostering a sense of inclusion” then great – but to me it just seems the same as “be professional”. But I would be suspicious of a business that sat down and said “hmm, we need to foster a sense of inclusion among our employees, how do we do that?”. Perhaps I am paranoid.
The business leaders have heard about this thing they have to stay in fashion with and outsource the courses. The exact content and nature of the courses often comes as a surprise to them. It makes sense for someone to bring it to their attention, and speak in terms of law – specifically that it is against the law to discriminate negatively against someone who believes what is bleeding obvious to every mentally stable individual.
“… “while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”
Except it fosters a sense of exclusion for those who do not buy into this bovine fæces, it is biased against them because they choose sanity and reality, and evidently can result in loss of promotion or disciplinary procedures.
My point was that even a well intentioned “fostering a sense of inclusion” may lead to trouble. In general I prefer people who try to deal with whatever situation life throws at you in a “good” way rather than people who consciously set out on some systematic program to “do good”.
Foisting one group’s beliefs onto another group does not engender tolerance and understanding.
Yes I know that. That’s not the point I am making. I am responding to what TY wrote, that it’s a “worthwhile objective”. I disagree with him. I think it’s a desirable byproduct of common sense, professional behaviour but should not be an explicit “objective”.
Seems that the tide is turning in the US where all this DIE nonsense started so I guess we can hope it sweeps over the Atlantic in due course. A caveat is that in the US it is the private sector that has got to work for its living that is doing it. And the other good news is that the Net Zero nonsense is quietly slipping away as well. I suspect that was always going to be the case when the targets get closer, the costs rise and reality punches you in the face.
I don’t share your optimism
As someone pointed out yesterday, the number of trans people in UK is about the same as the membership of the WI. Sadly though, the WI is fully committed to DEI, so they may not all have been women before they joined.
Pronoun usage only an issue when referring to one individual who is not present i.e the third person singular. In every other situation the pronouns are gender neutral.
So just use a gender neutral pronoun for the third person singular, such as “it” or “one”? Problem solved.
Pronoun usage is totally contrived nonsense. I attend meetings regularly and I cannot remember a single occasion when I referred to any of my colleagues present as “he” or “she”. You would always use their names and say things like “Paul suggested that…”
The only time when come across some gender ambiguity is when I talk about customers whose gender I don’t know. But now, just out of defiance I always use “he”.
The whole thing is just designed to impose on people compelled speech, and, it is effectively nothing more than compliance training.
I don’t think there is a “problem” that requires solving, except that some people are under the mistaken impression that offence is given, not taken.
If people find it easier to use a pronoun that is not sex-specific, that’s great for them. If it comes naturally to me to use one that IS specific, because I know the person being referred to is a man or a woman, I will do that. Sometimes I am not sure because I have not met the person and/or their name is foreign and ambiguous (to me) and I may use he/she or it. But telling me what pronoun to use or else I get sacked or (in Canada) imprisoned is compelled speech and once we have compelled speech we are lost.
How about “git”?
If it wasn’t for Toby Young, the FSU and a few brave individuals, we’d all be slaves.
I remember the surgeon who refused to be vaccinated during the Covid crisis even though he was threatened with dismissal. It’s people like him that save all of us from totalitarianism. A brave man.
I seem to remember watching a psychologist on YouTube who said that it only takes 3 to 5% of the population to dissent and totalitarian measures become unenforceable.
The tragedy of countries like Stalinist Russia, 1930’s Germany, North Korea must then be that there is not even the 3 to 5% to resist.
I hope Britain will never follow that path.
There’s always the 5% and more that will resist, but it’s the historic failure to resist in unison.
Resisting alone in those countries aforementioned simply meant one disappeared.
If Ketts would have made the decision to march on London, gaining numbers enroute in 1549, we may not be in the predicament we are in today…….
Britain’s been on that path for a long time, MM, and it works for the obsessives just as well for the opposition. The Russians were well aware of the importance of the ‘useful idiots’ in getting unpopular policies accepted by the general sheeple. Here’s just one example, one of the lesser publicised current ambitions of our totalitarian leaders, and a perfect precursor of how Covid policies were made so widely acceptable:-
“Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin referred to the compliant professional authority figure as the polezniy idiot (the useful idiot), a prime asset whose value lies in his or her perceived social respectability and not his scientific or medical credentials. Such people generally form the upper echelons of the professional “in-group, by whom both government and the public is most easily persuaded.
[I]n cohesive social groupings the majority opinion can be switched quickly by a comparatively small but consistently inflexible minority of randomly distributed committed agents. Like religious fundamentalists, they are immune to influence, tirelessly recruiting converts from opposing opinion groups. The tipping point seems to be when these comprise around 10% of the group. Once the group’s consensual opinion flips, its members adopt the self-protective “groupthink” mentality, . . . if necessary engaging in extreme measures in order to protect their new belief.”
The “ten percent” factor: How many “useful idiots” does it take to fluoridate a water supply?
Dr Steve James. A real hero of our times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOlEYcd1nyI
All designed to create further clear space between the elite metros and those ghastly plebs who smoke, swear and behave awfully.
don’t forget the and pay their wages
“Our objective is to ensure monetary and financial stability for the UK.” Seem to be failing on all counts then.
This may count as micro aggression towards BoE
My pronouns are He / Haw
Hehe!
Bank of England Morally Bankrupt
Not to mention incompetent at doing its job, especially Bailey. His job was only saved because of the ruckus in the markets had he been fired for taking too long to raise interest rates, raising them too high and then being slow to reduce them.
“while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”,
No, Doing a good job managing UK currency and it’s stability and only in the interests of the UK – That is the only objective. An employees personal interests including what their sexual preferences and leanings are nothing to do with the employer but private matters of the employee. People that are good at their job will find inclusion, which used to be called employment.
By what pronoun do the directors of the Bank of England want the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street to be referred to?
But surely the Bank of England is starting at the wrong point here. From the point of conception every person starts along the female line of development. Then a change occurs in some to turn them male. Hence men have residual nipples.
Confused. If we want to adopt gender neutral language then surely we should stop focusing gender specific pronouns as well.
So what happens if an employee refuses to play this game?
And if one employee refuses, will more employees follow?
It will stop when enough employees say it has to stop.
Furthermore, you could argue that your ‘gender identity’ is very much your private business and not something you need to divulge in a workplace environment.