Health experts have warned that the U.S. decision to roll out new Covid boosters without clinical testing on humans risks denting public trust and increasing hesitancy about vaccines. The Financial Times has more.
The Joe Biden administration is using the bivalent boosters, which contain the original Covid strain and the genetic code of the Omicron sub-variants BA4 and BA5, to vaccinate more Americans against the virus.
It has bought 171 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna boosters for $5 billion and fast-tracked their authorisation before human trials are complete, hoping that they provide better protection against the dominant variants than existing Covid vaccines.
As doses began arriving at pharmacists for distribution this week US officials said the rollout marked an “important milestone”. In the future people would probably only require annual boosters just as they take a yearly influenza jab, they said.
But several health experts note that the boosters have yielded only limited data from a small number of tests on mice. They say there is no evidence that they provide better protection against infection or severe disease than existing jabs.
“Without the data and getting a human response in at least a limited number of people you just set it up for the anti-vaxxers, anti-science [people],” said Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
“There are already groups calling it the mouse vaccine… We already have a trust problem in this country and we don’t need to make it worse,” he said.
The U.S. approach diverges with that of the EU, where regulators have said they want clinical data before authorising the latest generation of bivalent boosters.
Last month the UK became the first country to approve a bivalent booster. But it waited for clinical data to greenlight a shot targeting the original Covid strain and the BA1 sub-variant, which has since been superseded by BA4/BA5.
Experts say vaccine hesitancy is just one of several challenges facing the U.S. booster campaign and have urged caution in prematurely declaring victory over the virus.
Worth reading in full.
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It’s not worth paying the FT to read the obvious, but I wonder if they’ve spotted an increase in “hesitancy” and why? Anything to do with the way it’s being promoted, rather than conventional methods of developing new products?
I remember sometime last summer a guy commenting here on what was then still Lockdown Sceptics. At that time I was still only a lurker.
It was someone who said (if I remember correctly) that he worked for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases and was part of some vaccine acceptance group. He gave his name and seemed to be genuine, but was given short shrift here. I do remember him saying he wasn’t in favour of the pressure and coercion because it would turn people against vaccines.. They knew last year that the tactics they used would backfire, even if the sludge had not been such a failure or so toxic.
If some vaccines are actually worth having and people do not get them or their children do not get them, any avoidable injury may be laid squarely at the feet of Fraudci and his pharma buddies – so geil to get their mrna into people they didn’t care the costs or consequences.
“… risks denting public trust and increasing hesitancy about vaccines” – that ship has well and truly sailed. Calling people anti-vaxx because they won’t take a chemical concoction which the producers themselves admit has barely been tested, combined with the increasing information coming out about the adverse effects is not going to convince anyone with just one functioning brain cell to become ‘pro-vaxx’.
Nor are all the ‘I was so happy when I heard CNN say the covid vaccine was 95% effective’ – head CDC bimbo Rochelle Walensky, ‘we hoped the vaccine would work’ – scarf lady Deborah Birx, ‘the mrna is removed from you body in a couple of days, it is estimated that the spike protein leaves you body in a couple of weeks – oops, turns out that’s not true, let’s just disappear these statements’ – CDC, going to persuade us ‘anti-science’ people (a monkeypox upon us for wanting that old-fashioned nonsense like ‘data’, proper trials, full disclosure of AEs – oh wait, the monkeypox thing didn’t work out either) going to convince people that this garbage they produce is supposed to be ‘science’. What a flaming cheek – Topol says himself that there is NO science to back up their claims, then blames sceptical people as being anti-science – you can’t be anti something that isn’t there to begin with, mate.
However, if I want to find out about immunity from liability for producing and distributing toxic sludge, raking in cash beyond any company’s wildest dreams, getting people to pay to be subjects in ongoing medical trials, and how to get a couple of percent of all that lovely jubbly by mandating all this carp and as a thank you getting a few backhanders from the companies raking in the dosh, I doff my hat – they truly are experts beyond compare.
Perhaps “The Fauci Administration” should be the headline?
The aim is to bypass testing of vaccines, and probably other medicines too, as a way of maximising return on investment. The gullible members of the public will believe all the “safe and effective” cant and will obediently go along to get a shot of the latest fast-tracked garbage. “Safe and effective” should be interpreted as meaning safe from liability for big pharma and effective at generating huge profits for them. We are entering an era where all protocols around medicine safety are being discarded. The trail of death and injury is ignored and covered up by regulatory authorities. Humans are now regarded lower than lab rats. At least the fate of lab rats gets recorded and scrutinised. EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation) is now the norm. This can do little other than destroy trust in medical regulators and practitioners.
Indeed. Right down to the manipulation of the definition of the term “vaccine” so as to avoid the complexity and development of any novel pharmaceutical product, perhaps. Maybe they should be required to add a few words to the posters, either printed or online, so that it says:
“Safe and Effective for the supplier’s balance sheet”. They could probably use a smaller font for the last 6 words to stay within the law.
The pharma companies have indemnity from prosecution and the governments who are allowing it are prepared to pick up the bill. Follow the money would be very interesting
Horse paste is a lot more effective than the mouse vaccine.
Pre Covid, I USED to be vaccine-hesitant; the precautionary principle applied.
Now I’m firmly anti-vax. I don’t believe a word either the Health Bureaucrats or Big Phama say.
Well done folks.
A very dangerous Micky Mouse experimental injection would be a suitable description.