It makes “little sense” to impose any kind of vaccine certification scheme, an expert panel of scientists has told a cross-party group of MPs, since Government data indicates that “vaccinated people over 30 years are now more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated”.
The comments were made at a hearing for an enquiry into Covid passes set up by the Pandemic Response and Recovery All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). The group, established in the autumn to scrutinise the Government’s response to the pandemic, will gather information from doctors, public health officials, business owners and parliamentary colleagues before setting out its conclusion to Government ministers.
Co-chaired by Conservative MP Esther McVey and Labour MP Graham Stringer, the APPG says it will examine the pros and cons of such a scheme and the rationale behind it, as well as global evidence of whether they work.
Esther McVey said:
We need to understand the role these passports would play and hear from Government ministers who support a potential scheme, businesses that would be affected, together with expert opinions of scientists and health experts. We need to look at how the scheme is working in Scotland and fully understand the implications introducing Covid passports could have.
Coupled with that we need a full cost analysis and scientific evidence if we are to impose such a measure on people. We also need to explore the possibility that the introduction of passports could exclude some sections of society, when its supposed intention is to support the entire U.K. population. Therefore, evidence sessions such as these are so important, it allows us to get a full picture before we make a decision and put our case to Government.
Graham Stringer added: “If the Government wishes to infringe on our freedoms, then it must have overwhelming evidence to do so. As yet that evidence does not exist and has not been produced and it should not be allowed to proceed without it.”
The APPG heard evidence from former Director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Wales) Dr Roland Salmon, Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University David Paton, and Dr David Bell, public health physician and former global coordinator of malaria diagnostics for the World Health Organisation (WHO).
All three argued against the passes, which are already in force in Scotland and Wales and reported to be potentially part of Government’s Plan B in England should reported Covid infections keep rising. The scientists argued there was insufficient scientific and clinical evidence to judge the effectiveness of such a scheme, that being vaccinated did not stop transmission, and that the policy would cause significant economic damage and further erode public confidence in public health measures.
Professor David Paton commented:
There is no obvious sign from countries that have already implemented similar certification schemes that there are any benefits in terms of reducing infections. But we know there will be huge costs to the economy; nightclubs in Scotland have reported trade levels dropping by almost half since the introduction of their vaccine passport scheme while leaked documents show that the Government itself estimates the cost of implementing Plan B in England to be between £11 billion and £18 billion.
Covid passes are a heavy-handed and invasive approach to public health. They pose an unacceptable risk to rights and individual liberties and could jeopardise trust in public health measures at a critical time.
Dr Roland Salmon said:
From a public health standpoint, it makes little sense to impose any kind of vaccine certification scheme. If the vaccine is to protect others around you, then it needs to greatly reduce transmission. Studies from Public Health England and Imperial College only show reductions in household transmission of 30-50%; not enough and even then, probably temporary. Thus, a policy of targeting vaccination to those at highest risk, allowing broader post-infection immunity to develop in the wider community to prevent spread is likely to be a much more effective approach.
Dr David Bell added:
It is unclear what vaccine passports will achieve in the U.K. We must recognise that unvaccinated people are unlikely to cause any more risk to others than the vaccinated, and perhaps less. We know that vaccinated people who become infected commonly have similar infectiousness as unvaccinated people, while Public Health England data indicates that vaccinated people over 30 years are now more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. We also know that unvaccinated people will, in general, suffer more symptoms, so are more likely to abstain from community gatherings when infected, while infected vaccinated people continue to be active, potentially increasing risk to the vulnerable.
The APPG will hear further evidence next month.
Stop Press: Prof David Paton appeared on LBC yesterday to talk to Maajid Nawaz about why vaccine passports are such a terrible idea.
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But, as we know, pro-lockdown “science” is science and anti-lockdown science is conspiracy theories. At east that’s what the Guardian told me.
“Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors.”
All scientific papers are subject to criticisms. That’s sort of the point of science.
If you don’t agree with it, write a response paper.
yes, its a funny remark
‘the paper is going through a normal review process’
Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.
It’s one of those classic British disasters. The Somme. The Scott South Polar mission. The Comet. Thalidomide. Grenfell Tower.
Arrogance. Ignorance. The class system. And a wildly misplaced sense of intellectual superiority. All conspiring to inflict the maximum amount of misery and suffering on people too gullible and otherwise invested in British cultural bullshit to know when they are about to be murdered.
“Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.”
I like this!
but its hardly a British phenomenon in this case
Leave out the Comet – that was a case of the genuine unknown, not willful malpractice. And the Scott expedition was the risk balance going tits up, rather than the reverse.
I agree with much of what you say, but think that the term ‘class system’ needs to be re-defined.
For many, the class system appears to be some sort of pyramid with aristos etc. at the top and people such as me & the family I was born into at the bottom. That’s the way I saw it as a youth.
Thanks to the good fortune of going to a grammar school, various scholarships, perhaps decisions along the way but probably – mostly – luck, I have had a life that brought me into contact with much of that hierarchy both in this country & abroad. 50+ years after leaving school I still see a class system, but it has little to do with the one I thought I saw as a schoolboy.
The modern ‘upper class’ toffs are the self-serving political establishment. In my experience, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and the like are over represented there. They exist in governments and acadaemia at all levels – look at local council behaviour over the past year. Very few of them seem to come from the traditional idea of upper class (i.e. aristos, public schools etc.), but if you look at their behaviour you see the same psychological traits. Mostly, they seem to be concerned with protecting and extending their own privileged existence. Other countries don’t have the same historical connotations of ‘class’, but they are suffering from the same mis-governance as the UK. They do, however, have the same class system and are burdened with the same consequences.
In a nutshell, Herr Dr Gauss’ distribution describes it. There are a few saints at one end, a few sinners at the other & most of us are somewhere in between. At present, however, governments around the world (not just the Westminster Windbags, but the Whitehall Wormtongues – at all levels) are skewed strongly towards the sinner tail. How to fix that? History doesn’t help, but maybe Mao Tse Tung’s ‘cultural revolution’ had some merit.
Even if lockdowns reduced covid deaths they still wouldn’t be justified
But Imperial’s model shows lockdowns increase covid deaths
Plus lockdown deaths
Should have stuck to the normal pandemic response plan – after all it was designed for something like this
Good article by Will Jones, ‘new study confirms lockdowns don’t reduce covid deaths’
The studies continue to show lockdowns don’t work from a data analysis perspective.
And as Will explains there are many solid scientific reasons to explain why they don’t work and even could make things worse, although it’s clearly multi-factorial and hard to pin down the inter-related contributions of each factor.
And that’s before you consider all the indirect deaths caused by enforced lockdowns, and the damage caused by destroying freedoms and societies.
The sad thing is that if the government and the concensus opinion of the science industry (which I take to mean conflicted ‘scientists’ failing to apply the scientific method of testing hypotheses) tell us lockdowns do work, it seems that most people will just believe the government and science industry. And the mainstream media are set up to communicate this one sided narrative only. How much evidence there is is irrelevant, if it is simply ignored.
All we can do is to try and communicate the reality through whatever means we can find. But at the moment it’s simply not enough.
I would like to think most people don’t want to live this way and that’s the only real force that will get us out of this mess.
You’ve touched on what is the key central point : Lock-ups can only be justified if there is clear, indisputable evidence of a beneficial effect that outweighs the massive costs. We’re not talking about marginal effects that are hard to discern.
In fact, there is increasing evidence that the effects of lock-up are entirely on the debit side – and that obviously increases as time goes on.
So – the case against lock-ups is clear : they have no benefit whatsoever.
Looking at the study in Nature, it seems the age of the population is not taken into account. I doubt how you can make relevant comparisons then.