On Monday, the Sunday Times ran an article questioning the decision of Reform U.K. to propose a public inquiry into COVID-19 excess deaths and “controversially” —its words — “vaccine harms”. The article’s author, a prominent political editor, writes, “I ask Tice [then-leader of Reform] whether these pledges risk legitimising dangerous conspiracy theories at a time when Britain is experiencing a resurgence in measles.”
Both the comment, and the apparent assuredness with which it was penned, struck me as curious. Barely 10 days ago, British front pages were awash with the report of the Inquiry into the U.K.’s contaminated blood scandal. The Sunday Times admirably played a leading role not only in exposing the scandal but in campaigning for meaningful compensation for the victims. “For almost 40 years, The Sunday Times has been a leading voice for justice for the victims of the scandal” reads one editorial, from just two weeks ago.
The infected blood scandal report, authored by inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff, makes for gruelling reading. Its 2,000 plus pages chart a litany of avoidable failure after avoidable failure, and a four decade long tale of corruption and cover-up spanning almost every layer of the civil service, the U.K.’s national health service, pharmaceutical companies and senior Government figures.
Few topics seem as highly vexed as the question of the extent of injury and death resulting from mass Covid vaccination. But one would need to be wilfully blind not to spot that much of what has been detailed in the Infected Blood report — potential harms unheeded; thousands robbed of healthy life; benefits overstated and risks downplayed; unethical and unnecessary treatment of children — mirrors what are now documented failings of public health policy during the pandemic.
Sure, there is ambiguity and uncertainty over the scale of harm (a point in large part aggravated by the refusal of public health authorities to release complete and timely data, in itself an uncanny echo of the failures of the blood scandal). But the reality, inconvenient for some, is that there is by now a documented paper trail evidencing widespread and serious procedural and substantive failings in the accelerated approval of the Covid vaccines and the manner of their roll-out in the U.K.
Such evidenced failings include widespread unacknowledged adverse reactions; serial safety and efficacy mis-marketing by pharma companies and governments alike; unorthodox, unethical and unlawful statements and behaviour of key public health individuals and organisations around the world during the pandemic period; and a highly contentious and deeply unethical rollout of the vaccination programme to children (the latter in fact a topic covered by the Sunday Times).
“Adopting an attitude of denial towards the risks of treatment”, “Falsely reassuring the public and patients”, states the Infected Blood Inquiry Report, words which might equally apply to the myriad of exaggerated and unqualified statements about safety and efficacy made in relation to the Covid vaccines.
“Failure to put patient safety first”, identified as a thematic failure of the blood scandal, has been the subject of a recent campaign by a high profile group of U.K. Parliamentarians about the behaviour of the U.K.’s medical regulator, the MHRA, in relation to the Covid vaccine.
The use of generic ‘stock’ lines (in the case of the contaminated blood scandal, that patients had received the “best treatment available” and that there was “no conclusive proof that AIDS has been transmitted from American blood products”) draws extensive criticism in the report for giving “false reassurance… lack[ing] candour and by not telling the whole truth”.
“The line, which was wrong from the very outset, then became entrenched for around 20 years: a dogma became a mantra. It was enshrined. It was never questioned,” says Sir Brian in the infected blood report. How would the ubiquitous ‘safe and effective’ canon of the Covid era stand up to such critique?
“A lack of openness, transparency and candour, shown by the NHS and Government, such that the truth has been hidden for decades”, says Sir Brian’s report in relation to events of 30 years ago. In recent months U.K. Parliamentarians have forced numerous parliamentary debates on the subject of excess deaths and possible links with the Covid vaccine. Each time concerns have been met with the same familiar platitudinal responses from the U.K. Government and its agencies. “There is no evidence linking excess deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine”; “Vaccines are the best way to protect people from COVID-19”. Parliamentarians’ letters calling for transparency over data have gone largely unanswered, and parallel Freedom of Information Act requests have been subjected to extensive delays and seemingly confected obstructions.
Yet not only has press commentary about the stark similarities between suspected pandemic era failings and the findings of the infected blood report been notable through its complete absence; but public figures such as Tice, who have consistently raised reasonable questions about vaccine harms and excess deaths, find themselves accused of stoking conspiracy theories. “I was treated like I was crazy and a conspiracy theorist,” said Jason Evans, whose father was killed by the contaminated blood scandal and who had tried to voice concerns long before it became fashionable to do so.
“Where things appear to have gone wrong, and safety has been compromised, an attempt should be made to learn the lessons as quickly as possible,” cautioned Sir Brian in the Infected Blood Report, and nowhere is our moral duty to learn from our failures greater than where those failures lead to preventable injury and death. Far from being traduced as conspiracy theorists, those questioning excess deaths and vaccine harms should be platformed and amplified. An inquiry into vaccine harms would signal a determination to learn from the infected blood scandal and a resolve to avoid the same cycle of decades-long failure and cover-up.
Sir Brian Langstaff concludes his report by saying: “It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the U.K. It may also be surprising that the questions why so many deaths and infections occurred have not had answers before now.”
Well, we have our answer, do we not? When a deep societal denialism prevents us from confronting contemporaneous failures, when dissenters are shamed and censored and open debate is closed down, what hope can there be for learning?
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem. This article was first published on the UsForThem Substack page. Subscribe here.
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