With the national campaign to vaccinate all human life in the UK against Covid-19 in full swing, and with no properly approved Covid-19 vaccine in sight until around 2023 when the first vaccine manufacturer’s trials are due to be completed, we might pause to ask ourselves some pertinent questions:

  • In view of the critical importance of safety in these vaccination programmes, why are these vaccine trials being run by the manufacturers who have an overwhelming financial and (arguably) reputational interest in obtaining a positive outcome?
  • Why were the manufacturers given an absolute indemnity from prosecution for damage caused by their vaccines?
  • On what evidential basis did the MHRA give emergency approval for the vaccine roll-out?
  • Given that six months have elapsed since commencing the roll-out, what steps has the MHRA taken to investigate the Yellow Card reports of vaccine adverse events, in order to learn from experience in the field and to adopt appropriate measures to limit and mitigate such events in the future?
  • Why has the MHRA maintained radio silence on the results both from its investigations of the Yellow Card reports, and from any other investigations which it has conducted?
  • What evidential criteria did the MHRA consider when deciding that the risks to young people of death and injury from taking the vaccine(s) would be less than the risk of death and injury from catching Covid-19?
  • Have any of these questions been pursued in Parliament? If so, with what result?
  • Why does our Government consider that any of these matters are satisfactory from the point of view of anyone without connections to the pharmaceutical industry?

With the above unanswered questions in mind and in the absence of any discernible intention to provide answers, it’s time to look elsewhere.

This article in Left Foot Forward by Professor Prem Sikka provides a pertinent summary of governmental failure to tackle what many perceive as corruption in high places. It sets a backcloth to the more specific debate about how the government has been handling the Covid crisis (explored in more depth by the Good Law Project).

This article by the Bernician explores the role of the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) and some legal constraints that may compel the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to implement their advice. It covers their role in supporting all the usual childhood vaccinations.

On 4th June 2021 the MHRA concluded a positive safety profile for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in 12-to-15-year-olds:

“Over 2000 children aged 12-15 years were studied as part of the randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials. There were no cases of COVID-19 from 7 days after the second dose in the vaccinated group, compared with 16 cases in the placebo group. In addition, data on neutralising antibodies showed the vaccine working at the same level as seen in adults aged 16-25 years. These are extremely positive results”.

Well, let’s see – since 2000 children in this age group were split into two groups (placebo and vaccine) then we may reasonably assume that only 1000 children of this age group in the entire trial were given the vaccine. Lets us further assume that there were zero severe adverse reactions / deaths (however defined) in this group.

Some elementary statistics show that:

  • If the underlying incidence of adverse events per 1000 is 4.5, then the chance that this trial would return no events is close to 1%
  • If the underlying incidence of adverse events per 1000 is 1, then the chance that this trial would return no events is close to 36%
  • If the underlying incidence of adverse events per 1000 is 0.5, then the chance that this trial would return no events is close to 60% (assuming a Poisson distribution of the random occurrence of rare events in a given time-frame – or in this case per 1000 vaccinations, which is a sufficient approximation given how little detail we know)

So from this data we may deduce with very high confidence that the underlying rate of adverse events per 1000 lies in the range 0 to 5, with expected value somewhere around 0.7 per 1000.

Statistically speaking, this trial per se cannot be relied upon to determine that vaccinating the entire population of children in this age group is ‘safe’ in a way that would be understood by any reasonable parent, whilst the chance of their offspring suffering an equivalent event from falling ill with the disease is estimated to be at least an order of magnitude below 1 in 1000.

The trial simply did not have a sufficient number of participants to demonstrate safety as compared with not vaccinating.

For comparison we show below the Public Health England week 24 hospital Covid-19 admissions graph by age group:

Can you find the lines for 5-14 and 15-24 years old?

Still want validation? This article in the Telegraph sums it up. It’s behind a paywall, but the title says it all.

If matters are so dire, where are the whistle-blowers? Well, here actually, as reported by Conservative Woman. And you can download the whistle-blower’s comprehensive legal response to Sir Simon Stevens here.

I suggest keeping it handy as a compendium of all matters Covid-19 inoculation for future reference.

 

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