Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has told the Covid Inquiry he was “sceptical” about making Covid vaccines mandatory for healthcare workers and the decision was “100% a political one”. The Telegraph has more.
The Chief Medical Officer for England told the Covid Inquiry the decision to implement the mandate was .
Care home workers were mandated to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from November 2021 and were among the first to be given the jabs during the original rollout.
However, this scheme, known as vaccination as a condition of deployment (VCOD), was controversial. Proposals to widen the scheme to include all healthcare workers were later abandoned and the need for care home staff to be jabbed was lifted in 2022.
Prof Whitty said such a decision was a balance between the risk of having a vulnerable person cared for by someone who may pass on an infection to them and respecting a person’s own autonomy.
“There’s a range of opinions on this and for what it’s worth – but I don’t think it’s worth very much – I’m rather more sceptical than some people that this is a good idea, but that’s a view as a citizen,” Prof Whitty told the inquiry. …
“Every drug and vaccine has side effects, and some of those may be rare, but still severe, and that has to be taken into account in the decisions that are taken about mandation,” he added.
“I was sometimes worried that people were just thinking, ‘people should just get vaccinated. What’s the problem?’
“And my view is that this is a medical procedure, and, more importantly, there will be side effects and they may well be rare around serious and that is an important part of the balance of risk.” …
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, CEO of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and a Deputy Chief Medical Officer in the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic, also had reservations about mandatory vaccination, it emerged.
In an email sent on Feb 15th 2021, Dame Jenny said she was “quite outspoken” on the mandatory vaccination policy.
“I am hugely supportive of getting care homes protected, but I have seen no evidence to suggest that this policy is going to result in more benefit than harm,” she wrote in the email, shown to the inquiry.
But the politicians brought it in anyway. Another thing we can thank the Tories for. And no, it’s not because the ‘experts’ were telling them they had to.
Notice Whitty still won’t acknowledge that the jab didn’t actually prevent transmission – he still appears to hold that there was some ‘benefit’ to others from it. The delusion and refusal to take on board unwelcome facts runs deep.
Worth reading in full.
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