I have just received a very interesting MHRA reply to an FOI request about whether the Healthy Secretary delegated Covid vaccine decisions to the MHRA.
The MHRA said: “All the Covid vaccines and therapeutics authorisation decisions were taken by the Licensing Minister and were not delegated.”
What makes this so interesting is the wider context. Under the Human Medicines Regulations, the Licensing Authority is the Secretary of State for Health. He or she delegates to MHRA all the work associated with that – licensing of medicines, pharmacovigilance, inspection of manufacturers, enforcement and so on.
But for the Covid vaccines, MHRA is saying that the Secretary of State personally took all the decisions.
I read that as the blame game having started. I’ll explain why.
Back in 2020, MHRA would have known only too well that the clinical trials had been rushed (10 months compared with typical time to market of 5-10 years), had not been comprehensive (e.g. limited pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics) and wouldn’t finish until 2024. There were many warnings from experts around the world. MHRA’s line about ‘rolling review’ was, and remains, bunkum.
MHRA scientists and officials would have known about the problems (with all medicines) of scaling up production from small-scale, laboratory-based production for trials purposes to full-scale production. For example, larger quantities of ingredients can be more difficult to mix. They wouldn’t therefore have been surprised to have seen batch problems with the Covid vaccines around the world. One batch resulted in the hospitalisation of 120 children in Vietnam. One batch caused ocular injury to nurses when a vial was broken. In Japan, 1.63 million doses were recalled due to metallic contamination. Probably just the tip of the iceberg.
MHRA then saw adverse event reporting starting to reveal serious safety issues in the U.K. and around the world. First, myocarditis and blood clots, in March 2021, a few weeks after approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine (now effectively withdrawn) and later other heart issues, neurological problems and immunosuppression with Pfizer and Moderna.
MHRA knew in 2020 that the risk to younger age groups from Covid was very low and after rollout it would have seen assessments of vaccine effectiveness falling month on month. It wriggled hard against the evidence in the UKHSA weekly surveillance reports that vaccine effectiveness was even negative for younger age groups.
Since then the Covid vaccine narrative has continued to take a pounding as more clinicians around the world speak up, the research evidence about cardiac, neurological and immunosuppression problems continues to pile up, and the 1,000 per week excess deaths have still not been explained.
MHRA might have been criticised by Baroness Cumberlege for being “unresponsive and defensive”, but its staff aren’t all deaf, blind or stupid. They knew.
So my inference is that the blame game has started.
Mind you, MHRA is on a sticky wicket in any blame game. There are serious shortfalls in its own safety management:
- It doesn’t have a process for investigating individual Yellow Card reports. It says it tries to investigate individual fatal and serious Yellow Card reports but it doesn’t have a process so it doesn’t know how many it has investigated (FOI 21/1109);
- It’s never had a safety audit (FOI 22/562);
- It doesn’t actively seek out real-world data – for example, real-world population-level data such as hospitalisation for ‘adverse events of special interest’ segmented by vaccination status and age. In January 2022, MHRA did not hold such data (CSC 88243) and in August 2022, UKHSA (FOI 22/472) only held population level info on thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). Instead, it wait for signal detection from Yellow Card reports of adverse events, which are massively under-reported;
- It doesn’t (or can’t) define the quantitative level of risk which is ‘acceptable’ as the basis of “acceptably safe” (FOI 22/390);
- It lost 20% of posts in 2021 due to funding cuts and has 20% vacancies below that new baseline (FOI 22/1007);
- It doesn’t have a process for delegating the authority to approve medicines for public use (FOI 22/1002) or governance of individuals competence (qualification, experience and training) (FOI 22/1007) to MHRA officers;
- It has hidden safety data (FOI 22/1083), redacting numbers in tables on the pretext of maintaining patient confidentiality;
- It appears quietly to have dropped a key strand of its Covid vaccine surveillance: Targeted Active Monitoring. FOI 22/1083 asked for a copy of the latest report but it was 15 months old (August 2021).
But back to “All the Covid vaccines and therapeutics authorisation decisions were taken by the Licensing Minister and were not delegated.” I’m left wondering what safety advice MHRA gave to Chris Whitty and ministers about the Covid vaccines back in late 2020 and early 2021 and subsequently as the serious safety issues started to emerge. And I wonder what briefings MHRA gave to the Commission on Human Medicines Expert Working Group on Covid Vaccine Benefits and Risks and to the COVID-19 Vaccines Safety Surveillance Methodologies Expert Working Group – neither publishes minutes.
It’s high time MPs and the Covid Inquiry started to ask some searching questions.
Until Nick retired a few years ago, he was a Senior Civil Servant in a Government Department.
Stop Press: A couple of rogue reporters tried to interview the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, as he made his way into Davos. He refused to answer a single question.
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The Bank of England’s mismanagement?
Yeah right, mismanagement.
They had no idea, no idea whatsoever that announcing categorically no more bond purchases would cause a problem in the market just when Truss was announcing her budget.
Give me a break.
Presumably the Bank of England also allowed Fishy to “mismanage” his way through Lockdown to the tune of five hundred billion pounds principally via the issue of dodgy loans, ‘eat out to help out’ and a ‘sit on your arse getting paid to do FA’ scheme comically named ‘furlough.’
Yeah right.
Why have I got a nagging feeling that the B o E is being run by the WEF? No, surely not.
Mmmmm, up to a point Lord Copper. The big unfunded sum wasn’t the £2bn from the 45% to 40% tax cut but the open ended, 2 year commitment on energy costs. At the time this was being forecast to cost £100bn +. Again, a panic reaction. Sunak has largely benefited from the gas price coming down & a mild autumn.
How can a 2-year commitment be open-ended? And how come the markets did not panic when every rich world government on the planet shut down large portions of their economy and started paying people to do nothing, and the open-ended commitment to buy “vaccines” etc?
You’re right. Why was there an such a variance in response? My point is merely that it shouldn’t be portrayed as a binary choice between ILDs and mini budget. There were a whole lot of other things going on with asymmetric impacts.
Because there’s a point up to which Govt debt raises concern not panic. Take it beyond then you get panic.
“It’s extraordinary that this story hasn’t been covered by Britain’s financial journalists.”
Hardly. It’s entirely to be expected given that most/all of Britain’s mainstream journalists and their bosses, editors, owners, financial or otherwise, are fully bought into the narrative.
With the possibly honourable exception of Liam Halligan
Indeed. The only part where I disagree with the article is where he describes the market size by stating it as ‘The total value of liabilities hedged with LDI strategies was $1.8 trillion in 2021.’.
LDI, as he describes earlier, has absolutely nothing to with hedging, to the contrary. It is a pure interest rate speculation, and one that actually reduces or negates any previous and underlying asset/liability match of a pension fund engaging in it.
The whole BoE board should be fired for allowing LDI to happen and those who sold and practiced it should be prosecuted and made personally liable for its losses.
The central bank failure here also reminds me of PCR’s splendid analysis and assessment of the FED’s sole responsibility for bringing about the Great Depression.
https://www.unz.com/proberts/is-the-federal-reserve-merely-incompetent-or-is-there-a-dark-agenda/
https://www.unz.com/proberts/an-incompetent-federal-reserve-board-caused-the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-that-gave-congress-power-to-new-executive-branch-regulatory-agencies/
The one time in a century when central banks should really provide credit and liquidity amply and immediately, they deliberately always seem to fail to do so.
We’d better be off without them, as the period and system before they came into existence showed.
Best to give them all the Icahn treatment and to turn their defined benefit pensions to ‘whatever is left in the fund’ ones.
I work in the LDI industry (as in, it’s what I do 80% of my time at work), so like to think I can speak about it with some degree of confidence.
There is nothing wrong in principle with LDI, in my view. Most pension schemes would like to fund their liabilities with secure assets that pay fixed or inflation linked cashflows. Only goverment bonds fit the bill (assuming of course that the government doesn’t default) as no other assets are as secure or provide long dated cashflows (some pension scheme liabilities stretch out by more than 50 years).
The problem is that the return on gilts is too low, and most pension schemes have a funding gap that they need to fill. They do so by borrowing money, collateralised by the gilts that they hold, to invest in higher returning assets, for example equities.
What happened was that the value of gilts fell, which meant that the loans needed to be propped up by more gilts. For some pension funds they were running so short of gilts that they had to start selling them to pay down the loans with cash. This led to a fire selling spiral that eventually ended when the Bank of England stepped in to support the market.
The background to LDI is that the government and regulators have absolutely encouraged pension schemes to adopt this strategy. Largely in good faith, in my view.
For example, all pension schemes need to pay a levy to the Pension Protection Fund each year. How large this is depends on a number of factors, but one is investment risk, and the more of your pension scheme liabilities you hedge the lower your levy is.
I think the Bank of England acted ineptly and arrogantly, but I don’t necessarily feel there was a hidden agenda.
All this is aggravated by regulatory and central bank incompetence and failed interventions. The FSA/FCA are also complicit in the failures.
The next stupidity, scandal and black hole….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/news/gold-plated-public-sector-pensions-cost-taxpayers-150pc/
This is actually the real divide in our societies and the real fight, the private vs the public sector, and what will break Western democracies soon.
It’s even worse in Europe and the US, but the UK seems to be unique in having uncapped automatic indexing on DB public sector pensions.
As it was unique in having sold all its gold at the low and having issued massive amounts of long term inflation linked bonds, instead of issuing long term fixed coupon ones, during a prolonged period of artificially low interest rates.
Lunatics in charge of the asylum at the BoE and the Treasury.
Let’s not forget Carnage Carney had a spell at the B o E. I wonder what mischief he got up to during that gig?
‘“poor financial regulation…’
its always the part of the market that’s still free that’s the problem therefore… MORE REGULATION!
Two years of economic shutdown, the economy awash with valueless money, Truss promising to throw more valueless money onto the inflationary fire and the markets think ‘bad risk’ maybe even default. An energy crisis that Government policy is to make it worse.
The fire was already raging, Truss just threw more fuel on it.
Lowered tax rates are suppose to be accompanied by lower Govt spending otherwise higher spending. Lower tax rates during inflation caused by too much money chasing too few goods just adds more money to the chase.
The Bank of England should have done what exactly? It’s not the Government as the article suggests it must be.
They should have been more aggressive in raising interest rates rather than disappointing the markets with a modest rise.
The misnomer and myth that lower taxes ALWAYS bring in less revenue, perpetrated through all the usual avenues to stir up a storm is / was the chokehold many an authority and expert have used before – though in this case the dystopian elites who want to bring in their new system are showing their colours [by any means necessary it would seem] once again. But the Conservatives (so-called) bend over and take it as if it’s never been their bread and butter?
Naturally Labour (and their cheerleaders) play their predictable part too with all the usual race-to-the-bottom fearporn predictions which many unfortunately fall for, especially during times of uncertainty (though at least it’s opposition in the form we’d expect) but any semblance of bringing us back from the brink is now in full swing I guess.
I’m not an economist but I understand the basics of a genuine free market. Nothing makes sense in any of this posturing of doom and gloom other than it has to be an organised destruction of the system we have – to usher in a system we would never want (if it was genuinely explained and to the uninitiated).
As far as the B of E to play this tactic at a time like this reveals their intent, if indeed bankers were of the sort to be trusted even a morsel for their own benefit and monetary gain (at least with their desire for profit we know where we stood). Now we’ve thrown out the old with the new, the pertinent question is where are they now to get their ill-gotten gains? I guess it’s safe to look to ESGs and CBDCs for where they’re expecting.
“the pertinent question is where are they now to get their ill-gotten gains?:
The poor bloody infantry as usual.
US.
Deleted. Posted in error.
Dead right. Andrew Bailey is a WEF stooge and we know that they don’t want Western countries to have pro-growth policies. They want increased indebtedness because that gives them power via the financial markets.
I tend to the view that the intention is to utterly bankrupt the country and then sort of sell it off or mortgage us to something like the IMF.
I can call my wife in evidence to confirm I suspected the hand of the BoE in Liz Truss’s deownfall from the beginning, She should ask suitable questions in the HoC to force Ministers to confirm (doubtful) or deny and lie about this.
Yes, obvious isn’t it. WEF wanted Sunak. BoE did the dirty work to fake alarmism from MSM. I have to say though that Truss seemed too inept to understand what was happening.
Although all of this it true (the BOE and government in general setting up the rules for the LDI meltdown to happen in certain circumstances) and the moral hazard is disgraceful, it would be wrong to exonerate Truss because of it (and don’t forget that she had already pledged gajillions with an energy price cap). It was her (and Kwast’s) job to KNOW these rules and that her actions might end up triggering the meltdown. If she didn’t know, that is bad. If she DID know and proceeded anyway, that is even worse.
Her ineptitude has meant 0 debate on whether a change to lower taxes and business friendly is a better alternative to more of the same high taxes and control. We all lose because of that.
It was pretty obvious that the Bank of England (no doubt with the support of the Treasury) DELIBERATELY destabilised the Markts/currency.
They carried out a coup ….. in plain sight. And CON MPs let them do it.
Aye – Tobes is way behind on this one. Even Dan Bongino reported on it on 28th September (I don’t normally watch him, was looking for a comment on Nordstream and it was there.) 6 mins in 3 mins long.
https://rumble.com/v1lv248-who-bombed-the-pipeline-ep.-1861-the-dan-bongino-show.html