Thread by @hicksyalex

The Health Protection (Vaccination) Regulations 2009) place the following requirement on the Health Secretary with relation to 💉
"The Secretary of State must make arrangements to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the recommendation of the JCVI is implemented."

Is there any reason to believe this advice is not "reasonably practicable?
Does the buck passing statement on the 3rd September JCVI statement make the decision lawful?
"JCVI is constituted with expertise to allow consideration of the health benefits and risks of vaccination

and it is not within its remit to incorporate in-depth considerations on wider societal impacts, including educational benefits.

The government may wish to seek further views on the wider societal and educational impacts from the chief medical officers of the 4 nations, with representation from JCVI in these subsequent discussions."

So perhaps this decision is legal? Hopefully some lawyers will urgently probe. Whatever happens it is clearly unethical as JCVI established that it is not sufficiently beneficial on health grounds.

'Overall, the committee is of the opinion that the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms (tables 1 to 4) but acknowledges that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms.

The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time.

As longer-term data on potential adverse reactions accrue, greater certainty may allow for a reconsideration of the benefits and harms"
The CMOs have argued that 💉 will reduce disruption to education but they made no mention of the adverse reaction reactions on school attendence

JCVI considered this in their statement Delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education in the short term, particularly if school premises are used for vaccination and

there is potential for a COVID-19 vaccine programme to impact on the efficiency of roll-out of the influenza programme. Adverse reactions to vaccination (such as fevers) may also lead to time away from education for some individuals.

The big question is why has the gvt dropped all standard protocol for approval of 💉, potentially risked a legal challenge & gone into the murky ethical territory of approving for either adults protection or to reduce the impact of their own non pharmaceutical interventions?

The CMOs recommendations were far from clear to me and echoed of the JCVI press conference on 4th August when Wei Shen Lim struggled to explain the justification for 💉 of 16 year olds.

We now have a situation where there is no clear risk benefit analysis for parents to advise their children & children will be expected to have these vaccines in a school environment where peer pressure will ride over any parental advice given prior to the event.

Hopefully the recent evidence on myocarditis is wrong & no further serious long term adverse effects come to light otherwise we could be simply following other countries lead into a future time bomb for our children.

We need to remember that the last time there was a 💉 emergency authorisation in the UK was due to an over reaction to Swine Flu, which resulted in hundreds of children suffering from Narcolepsy. This was only 12 years ago, what has changed since in the approvals process?

Warning signs were identified at the beginning and were ignored, it was only when the compensation claims started that the government took note. Narcolepsy affected 1/50k children & the 💉 was pulled, myocarditis is estimated to be 1/6k but we are still rolling out.

Let's hope for our children's sake JCVI were wrong and the CMOs were right.
Links
legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/38/m…
gov.uk/government/pub…
bmj.com/content/362/bm…

@threadreaderapp unroll

Time to remove this government who think nothing of risking our children for their political gain
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5964…