A group of 30 MPs, peers, doctors and scientists – including MPs Miriam Cates, Graham Stringer and Sir Desmond Swayne and scientists Professor Allyson Pollock, Professor David Livermore and Professor Anthony Brookes – have written again to the JCVI calling for the Covid vaccination programme in healthy under-16s to be paused pending further studies, arguing that the evidence the benefits outweigh the risks is lacking.
The group first wrote to the Government vaccine advisory committee in early January to raise their concerns and received a reply on January 20th from Professor Wei Shen Lim, COVID-19 Chair of the JCVI. He disputed the relevance of the recent study showing that myocarditis risk following vaccination in young males is higher than previously thought, and argued the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of Omicron as a milder and vaccine-evading variant are not necessarily decisive as further variants may emerge. He also stated that the JCVI’s advice regarding the primary course of vaccination did not predetermine its advice regarding further ‘booster’ doses – apparently not being concerned about logical coherence, in that recommending boosters when a primary course is not recommended would defy sense.
The authors found this response very inadequate and have now set out in a reply why the JCVI must take seriously the evidence on risk and lack of benefit for this age group. Their letter is published in full below, beneath the letter from Prof. Lim to which they are replying.
Response to Professor Wei Shen Lim
February 2022
Dear Professor Wei Shen Lim,
Thank you for your response to our letter of January 7th. We are concerned that you still appear to be supporting the COVID-19 vaccine rollout for healthy children, who are most unlikely to suffer any significant illness from the virus, without reassessing benefits and harms in light of new evidence.
The child vaccination programme seems to be ineffective in reducing infection and transmission and, among other as-yet-unknown possible adverse effects, is associated with a risk of myocarditis – a serious condition, known in other cases to have a significant impact on lifelong morbidity and mortality.
Regarding comments concerning variants
Risk-benefit analyses are usually considered in the present, as this is where the decision is made. What is known of Omicron is that it is highly contagious but clinically milder. Therefore, post-infection or natural immunity will be acquired far faster across the population, further reducing the clinical usefulness of the vaccines in preventing infection and transmission. Indeed, it is known from a number of studies (two examples here and here) that natural immunity appears to be more robust than vaccine-induced immunity. A high number, perhaps the majority, of U.K. children are likely to have had COVID-19, so are well protected by natural immunity, and this is a number that is likely to be increasing all the time. This again begs the question as to why the JCVI has not reassessed the benefit-to-risk ratio of the child vaccination programme in light of the Omicron variant. Present understanding of respiratory viruses tells us that subsequent variants are highly likely to be milder rather than more severe in their clinical manifestation. We have no reason to suspect that SARS-CoV-2 will defy this evolutionary principle. Children will also almost certainly have broader immunity against future variants from Omicron infection, compared to vaccine-induced immunity from current vaccines, which were developed to an earlier variant spike protein no longer in common circulation. When all that is now known is considered within the previous JCVI criteria, the benefit of the vaccine reduces further. The risks, however, remain unchanged or are increasing as new adverse events following vaccination are recognised.
Regarding comments concerning myocarditis
We refer here to data from Hong Kong and Israel. In Hong Kong, the myocarditis rate was one in 2,680 using the Comirnarty (Pfizer) vaccine (not Moderna) in male 12-17 year-olds.
In Israel, rates were one in 6,637 in 16-19 year-old males after the Pfizer vaccine.
This issue is therefore highly relevant to the U.K. situation, with mid-late teenage males at higher risk of myocarditis. Of note, a U.S. study indicated a high rate of gadolinium enhancement in mRNA vaccine-associated myocarditis, consistent with myocardial scarring and long-term damage.
The lower reporting rate in the U.K. may reflect the lack of a formal study of this age group, and the suggestion that a longer interval between first and second doses could reduce the risk is speculative. In view of the concerns raised in the original JCVI review, it is remarkable that a formal study, with serial troponin monitoring, as well as serial cardiac assessments, in post-vaccinated males in this age group, with an appropriate control group, is not yet available.
Myocarditis is only one of the now proven adverse effects of these vaccines. Does the JCVI not agree that when adding in the unknown long-term harms (especially relevant for the young, with many years of healthy life expectancy ahead of them) the risk of the vaccine now exceeds the risk of the virus for the majority of children?
Regarding primary course and boosters
The sole purpose of vaccinating children ‘not in a clinical risk group’ would appear to be to reduce community transmission. Current data from the U.K. Health Security Agency (HSA) and Public Health Scotland are highly inconsistent with reduced transmission through vaccination overall, with a trend of relative increase in the ratio of vaccinated infection versus unvaccinated infection over time. This trend, and data elsewhere showing rapidly waning vaccine efficacy against infection with the Omicron (and Delta) variants over time, raise a very strong probability that vaccine efficacy will follow a similar pattern in teenagers. The UKHSA trend over time has been consistent with waning efficacy in higher age groups, corresponding to the prior time of vaccination of those age groups. This would remove all theoretical benefits of vaccinating healthy children.
Conclusion
In view of the above, the concerns raised in the original letter have not been addressed. Further, we find it genuinely remarkable that, given the prior JCVI concerns, formal studies have not been put in place during the rollout in these age groups with acknowledged limited benefit and significant knowledge gaps regarding safety.
The further data on myocarditis, the clear evidence of far lower risk and high rate of mild infection with the Omicron variant, and the evidence of waning vaccine efficacy in older age groups must all push the risk-benefit ratio previously discussed by the JCVI strongly in the direction of further risk and lesser benefit to children. Does the JCVI agree that the benefit-to-risk ratio is now reduced further, compared to when it previously advised against recommending the mass vaccination of healthy 12-15 year-olds?
What is the urgency to vaccinate healthy children at this time? Pausing the current vaccine programme in children would allow time to undertake the necessary research which would resolve the difficulties affecting the current decision making. The JCVI is tasked with the responsibility of considering vaccine safety and efficacy and as such every effort should be made to assess both safety and efficacy of a new vaccine in the early stages of its deployment, especially for children and young people.
Yours sincerely,
Miriam Cates MP
Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester
Richard Drax MP
Baroness Foster of Oxton
Baroness Fox
Marcus Fysh MP
Paul Girvan MP
Chris Green MP
Mark Jenkinson MP
Pauline Latham MP
Karl McCartney MP
Lord Moonie
Baroness Morrissey
Greg Smith MP
Graham Stringer MP
Sir Desmond Swayne MP
Sammy Wilson MP
Dr David Bell, Public Health Physician, formerly working on infectious diseases for the WHO
Professor Anthony Brookes, Genomics and Health Data Scientist, University of Leicester
Professor Norman Fenton, Risk Information Management, Queen Mary University of London
Dr Iona Heath CBE, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (2009 to 2012)
Professor Marilyn James, Health Economics, University of Nottingham
Dr John Lee, Retired Professor of Pathology
Professor David Livermore, Medical Microbiology, University of East Anglia
Dr Aseem Malhotra, Consultant Cardiologist
Professor David Paton, Industrial Economics, University of Nottingham
Professor Allyson Pollock, Clinical Professor of Public Health, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University
Dr Gerry Quinn, Biomedical Sciences, University of Ulster
Dr Roland Salmon, MRCGP, FFPH, former Director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Wales)
Professor Brent Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Community Child Health, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
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It’s going to be a rerun of COVID.
Make up a global catastrophe. Force people to do all manner of insane things to avoid the “catastrophe”.
When catastrophe is averted, claim it was all the action taken that saved us.
Everybody will have been so comoletely indoctrinated and so invested in the supposed solutions that it will be impossible to convince them they’ve been duped.
That btw is pretty much the story of most government action.
This is a linear forecast of events. Reality is far more chaotic though.
I think it was Basil Fawlty who said “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth”.
May have been someone else.
Judging by the smug visage of the accompanying photo, she looks like she needed more hugs as a child.
Usually attributed to Goebbels, and cited as such over half a million times on the Internet. But in fact there’s no evidence he ever said it, which kind of proves the point.
Goebbels, in fact, accused the English of stupidity in “telling a big lie and sticking to it.” “Vaccines are safe and effective.” “Russia has run out of ammunition.” “Britain is getting hotter year by year.” “Diversity is a traditional British value.” It seems he was right, doesn’t it?
I’d more or less heard the same, though it is April 1st!
And more bugs. Yum.
The ‘big lie’ quote is usually attributed to Joseph Goebbels!
Co2? Causes weather, seasons and climate?
There is 0 correlation between Co2 and climate. It is plant food. Necessary to make oxygen. I would like more of it please.
After sitting through 5 months of a shitty UK winter I would like some warmtarding too please.
Doesn’t Gaia emit 95% of the 0.04% Co2 trace chemical? Isn’t THE SCIENCE ™ suggesting we kill her to save her?
I don’t believe in the man-made catastrophic climate change narrative, but I think we should acknowledge that man does have some impact on the climate, mainly through the greenhouse effect. My understanding is that any contribution man has made through the greenhouse effect is pretty much at saturation point i.e. increases in atmospheric CO2 above the current level of around 410 parts per million will have negligible impact (see the attached diagram, which indicates a rise in CO2 from 400 ppm to 800 ppm increases temp by 0.4C and 400 to 1600 ppm results in 1C).
I also think it is disingenuous of us to talk of man’s share of CO2 emissions, since Gaia both emits (land, volcanoes, oceans) and absorbs (vegetation, oceans) CO2. So, while man’s share of emissions may be less than 5%, it will be a much higher % of net emissions (see attached diagram).
What bullshit.
98% of Co2 is reused.
Are you telling me that man’s Co2 ‘forces’ only a positive feedback loop and Gaia’s does not.
Greenhouse is horseshit.
There is no glass ceiling.
No need to be discourteous since MichaelM didn’t actually say that.
I think the big hitters on our side of the argument (ie those not buying the climate catastrophe narrative), such as Richard Lindzen and William Happer, do acknowledge the greenhouse effect and that the burning of fossil fuels has had a significant impact on the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 410 ppm over the last 150-200 years.
I do agree with you that there is no glass ceiling round the Earth.
If you want to generate a halting problem in someone claiming that a large percentage of species have gone extinct due to climate change, ask them to name one.
The BBC are CLIMATE ACTIVISTS. They claim to be reporting on science. But in science you question everything, otherwise it is isn’t science you are dealing in. So by questioning NOTHING all the BBC reveal is that they are not reporting on science at all, they are reporting on “Official Science”. You can switch on TV News almost every day and hear of extreme weather, more floods, more droughts, more storms etc etc and most people busy with work and family life will just accept that as truth because they assume they are listening to investigative journalism. But in the real world there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. ———— How can it be that our National Broadcaster is reporting the opposite of what is true and getting away with it? SKY NEWS with their “Climate Show” do something similar but we are not all forced to pay for SKY. ————-The mainstream media talk of the “Climate Emergency” and the “Climate Crisis”, but this is not the language of science, it is the language of politics. For many of the unsuspecting public it is difficult to grasp why misinformation on this industrial scale would be taking place. They think the issue is all about science, but don’t realise the issue is highly politicised and that there is a political agenda behind it all. That political agenda is the United Nations Sustainable Development, and if there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event then that whole political agenda collapses. So the idea that extreme weather is getting worse MUST be kept in the public’s eye. They must at all times be under the impression that floods and storms will kill millions and sea level rise will drown coastal cities. This is the biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated and I am thoroughly embarrassed that the British Broadcasting Company is part of it.
We’re all doomed
But this time! It’s real, honest!
We can trace the decision to the infamous Jan-2006 seminar organised by Harrabin himself – the actual Harrabin, not an ancestor – entitled ‘Climate Change: The Challenge to Broadcasting.’
For several years the BBC stonewalled all enquiry on who the seminar’s attendees had been, though it was known that the Heads TV and Radio News and many senior executives were there. An internet archive search revealed in 2009 that only 3 scientists, none of them ‘climate’, were there, the rest of the attendees being emissaries of WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the earth, etc.
The only journalist, Richard D North, described the BBC people present as ignorant, having done no background reading or research, and bent on whipping up the most hysterically alarmist picture possible.
The keynote speaker was the Australian ecologist Lord May. He was president of the Royal Society 2000-05 and had transformed it into a relentless evangeliser for global warming. The gist of his speech was that dissenters were so few and marginal they could be safely classed with flat-earthers and perpetual-motionists, and the BBC Charter obligation of impartiality could therefore be set aside.
No criterion has ever been set or even debated for restoring it, despite the fact that many eminent atmospheric physicists – profs Lindzen, Christy, Spencer – have denied that there is any climate crisis.
Wasn’t Lord May played by Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man? Hotspots in the Summer Isles.
Might I suggest some family connection to Dame June?
Don’t the Big Black Cock corporation realise how out of touch they are with the licence payers? Or, maybe they aren’t?
” I’d gladly pay twice the price for my television licence ”
happily stupid from Milton Keynes.
“Brainwashing, corrupt, biased” are some of the more moderate adjectives applied to the BBC by readers of Andrew Montford’s excellent 57 page pamphlet ‘The Propaganda Bureau.’
It should be compulsory reading for all, with lefties compelled to learn it by rote.
I’ve just been offered 450 quid and an apology by the BBC for harassment over the TV licence and subsequently lying to me.
It was beautiful, they thought they were being cute, but every email or letter they sent contained lies.
For example, they said I had no visits from am enforcement officer in 2020….I said I never said 2020. They then realised I’d had 3 visits but said it was “the other department’s fault” for withholding the information…and so on.
They could not put pen to paper or finger to keyboard without lying and it was the carelessness of their lies which was as galling as the harassment. Could have been written by Kirtsy Wark.
Result! But I suspect very few get a modest jackpot but are continually harassed in a Kafka-esque manner.
Maybe 1 in 800? Where have I heard that stat before?
What shocks me is the number of people that genuinely believe all this catastrophising nonsense. Extreme gullibility and an inability to question the validity of outlandish claims make the general population vulnerable to manipulation. When will they turn bbc off?
The people outside of Islington don’t even watch the British Bias Corporation, never mind paying the laughable licence fee. The access to objectivity and the truth from the Internet broadcasting news network has killed it.
Is it true or did you hear it on the BBC?
The BBC is now the Globalist and Government slut, used to control the official narrative with Ofcom, and the Trusted News Initiative (what a joke). Taxpayers are not just funding via the licenses but also through Government spending on advertising. Billy Boy has kindly given them over £12million. Other channels like Sky are similar.
The once proud bastion of truth and integrity across the globe is one of our worst enemies, working with Government and corporations to cause tremendous harm to our society.
Humanity-caused climate change advocates remind me of this –
In the past, in some civilizations, sacrifices were offered so that the sun would rise the next day.
Sacrifices were offered.
Sure enough the sun rose the next day.
Therefore proof that the sacrifices worked to cause the sun to rise.
The media increases readership and viewership by giving constant attention to a ‘crisis’.
It’s in their interest to hype every conspiracy theory about catastrophe and crisis.
Gets people attention and they want to read or view the news stories.
Why has this paper now been retracted?