September 20, 2021 - 9:36am
After seven hours of evidence-sharing and discussion last Friday, acting chair of the American FDA Advisory Committee on Vaccines Dr Arnold Monto finally put the main question to a vote. Does the available safety and effectiveness data support a third booster dose of the Pfizer-Biotech vaccine being offered to all individuals aged 16 and over?
Within two minutes, the results were in: of 18 votes, all from senior doctors with a specialism in vaccines, only 2 were in favour and 16 were against. The committee had resoundingly rejected the plan. In doing so, it was in line with the views of the UK’s Professor Sarah Gilbert and in fact the WHO.
I’ve listened to chunks of the session — it is, as you would expect, extremely technical, and includes hundreds of slides balancing the risks and potential upsides; the committee then proposes an alternative scheme in which booster shots can be offered to specific populations such as the elderly and immunocompromised, and this idea is unanimously voted through. It is the sort of sober-minded discussion that you’d hope to find behind decisions about medical and delicate matters like vaccination programmes.
Within the hour the Financial Times had sent a news alert announcing the decision, saying it “deals a serious blow to the Biden administration”; the Guardian also described it as a “significant blow” to the President. Pfizer shares slumped.
It might strike you as odd that a technical decision about vaccine booster shots would be a “blow” to a government, and frankly it is odd. But that is where we now are: politicians are forming their own strong views about vaccines, quite apart from their expert committees. They have a clear bias towards showing taking action and moving fast, especially since they stand accused of doing neither at the start of the pandemic; they also watch opinion polls, which in this case showed a 76% majority of people in favour of booster shots.
Such was the enthusiasm this time that the Biden administration had already gone ahead and announced that it would be proceeding with “booster shots for all Americans beginning the week of 20 September” — subject to FDA approval. Two scientists on the FDA even quit in protest at the policy, publishing a scathing piece in the Lancet that outlined the dangers of proceeding too hastily with the booster shots.
Then yesterday Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President, responded to the FDA ruling, and noticeably kept open the possibility that booster shots might go ahead in any case. “I think people need to understand that this is not the end of the story,” he told Sky News. Technically, neither the FDA nor the CDC need to follow the advice of their advisory committees. It seems likely that a way around the FDA’s verdict may will be found in time.
Back in the UK, the Government has already shown how to bypass awkward medical rulings, on the question of vaccinating 12-15 year olds. Like in the US, the Government had announced its intention to go ahead in advance of the decision by the JCVI, the committee that has had responsibility for vaccine decisions since 1963. Cabinet ministers had been sent onto the airwaves to apply pressure and express, with a hint of menace, the Government’s “frustration with their scientific advisors.”
The message got through: even though the committee rejected the idea of vaccinating teens on purely medical grounds, it left open a path for the Government to consider a “broader perspective” and proceed anyway — and they made full use of it. Within the week, the Chief Medical Officers of the four nations had waved through vaccinations for teenagers.
The trouble, of course, is that there is a significant minority of the population in both the US and the UK that fundamentally distrust the vaccination programme. Objections to it are wide-ranging, and many are downright outlandish. But bypassing expert medical committees to extend the programme and speed it up will only feed the distrust and entrench the sense that decisions are being made for political reasons. At the anti-vaccine passport march in London this past weekend, many protesters referred to the decision to vaccinate 12-15 year olds; one sign maker told UnHerd that her most popular signs all related that decision. “Hands off our children” was the first to sell out.
Politicians are oddly blind to their own part in fuelling this movement. They go on about “vaccine hesitancy” as if it were an inexplicable madness that must be suppressed, but then take precisely the steps you would choose in order to maximise mistrust.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeI think Freddie missed something important: there is no discussion of what is really going on here–wokeness. The “main question” really was: Should we in the West, privileged white people, give a booster shot to relatively healthy people while those in the Global South (black and brown) have yet to receive even a single dose of the vaccine? A: No.
As an occasional commentator on the BBC, I have listened over and over to so-called “scientists” substitute their moral/political values over the science. Sometimes, while posing as immunologists or physicians, they become sociologists and tell the world on the BBC that this is “immoral.” Sometimes they try to conflate the data, and try to twist things beyond all recognition by saying that there is no evidence (Israel?) that the vaccine effectiveness wanes over time. One can, figuratively, see them contorting themselves to square the circle. These are exactly the same people who tried to popularize the lie “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” a logical fallacy and a ridiculous statement. If everyone in Sweden is vaccinated and no one in Burkina Faso is vaccinated, does it logically follow that no one is safe in Sweden? Or perhaps the vaccines don’t work?
Some background: I am double jabbed. I will get the booster when it is due, based on my own research. I am completely against vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, as wrong, ineffective, and perhaps evil, though clearly I am not an anti-vaxxer. I believe in choice, in freedom (ugh, sorry, American), and believe that the govt. should not impose its will at every level.
Also, and perhaps this is more relevant to Freddie’s points: I trust almost nothing that the US government says. The USA is a low trust country, and perhaps I am at the extreme end of this. But clearly, people like Fauci will simply say anything depending on which way the political winds are blowing–and he admitted as much, talking about how he “moved the goalposts” with his scientific advice because Fauci, in his wisdom, decided to mislead the American people because, to paraphrase a great movie line “they can’t handle the truth.”
As I sometimes said on the BBC “Trust the science, not the scientists.” It didn’t gain much traction, and the BBC may have cancelled me. But it’s true….
Could it possibly be that the ultimate goal really is digital biometric information passports for all? Has this virus, that in truth poses no great threat to the vast majority, been harnessed in order to achieve that end? It would be appear to be a goal shared by many so-called western liberal democracies as they seem to work in concert with each other. Governments choose to listen to ‘the science’ when it accords with their desires and ignore it when it doesn’t. The flagrant censorship and gaslighting of alternative views from some extremely eminent, highly qualified scientists that have had the courage to stand against the preferred political narrative and propose alternative viewpoints also discourages trust in the path, cleared by MSN censorship and cheerleading, that populations are being harried along by governments and their propaganda machine. Furthermore, it has become painfully clear that, despite obvious manipulation of statistics born from a desperation to prove otherwise, the jabs do not provide real immunity and do not prevent the jabbed from spreading the virus. The vaccines should have remained a choice for the over 60s and not been coerced onto the greater population. Now they are othering those who do not wish to take the jab and attempting to enforce a mandate on carers that will surely be extended throughout other workforces.
For those who remember the swine flu scandal of 2009 – see Channel 4 exposes swine flu scandal on you tube – and the calls for an investigation as to how big pharmaceutical corporations came to exert so much influence on governments and the WHO, it is clear that the only people to learn from that were the pharma corps themselves. Next time they made sure they had the media on side.
There are a few possibilities. Can’t call them conspiracies these days as 6 months is the difference between a conspiracy and a fact! One thing is a certainty this is NOT about a virus. The emphasis is on getting everybody vaccinated which begs the question what’s the point if it is not about the virus. You are left with the following listed from the hopeful to the nightmare :
A). Government is inept, they screwed up in their handling from day 1 and cannot see how to get out of the problem and save face unless everybody is vaccinated and then they rollback the mask-lockdown insanity, stop the passports etc. Trouble is there is far too much parallel digital activity on the go (fiat currency is dying!) and this scenario does not explain parallel actions around the world.
B). It’s a money making scam, part of the Great Reset. Get everyone or as many as possible, to be dependant on vaccines. The vaccines do two things, kill off innate immunity and so only adaptive is “on” but the anti bodies need a boost every 3-6 months….FOR LIFE. We are seeing evidence of this ! We do not know if in the long term peoples innate recover. I would guess many, younger folks will. Older folks won’t.
C). The Eugenicists plan is in full flow. The vaccines are intended to kill off the innate immune system, the vaccine itself (actually mRNA gene therapy) invokes the WRONG long term anti bodies as has every single Coronavirus vaccine ever developed (all animals died!). This is the ADE that we may also be witnessing. The vaccine boosters stimulate the short term anti bodies that don’t provoke ADE but requires massive availability and compliance both of which will fall as people tire and money dries up. End result, populations shrink massively over several years.
or D) global governments working on their respective local levels are each pushing as hard as they can to see how far they can control their populations before they push us all off the land into their “green urban centers”, control all aspects of natural life; health (Covid passes), our food supply, education, living, energy… and track and surveil us. Individual liberties slowly being stripped in favor of the community. Small businesses pushed out over big business with ties to the governments.
Yes, this scenario has been years in the making:
https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20170111/fauci-no-doubt-trump-will-face-surprise-infectious-disease-outbreak
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-2020279585-A1
The fact-checkers, of course, have provided their own preferred narratives to these article.
This pandemic has been an excuse to usher in an era of controlled movement and limited freedoms. It’s becoming so blatant that even The Guardian and other left-wing media are starting to ask questions.
The scary thing is how those who went along with all this are so quick to change their attitudes depending on the narrative. Mere months ago those who were clapping for health workers are now cheerfully condemning them to loss of livelihood should they refuse to get vaccinated. It reminds me of 1984 where the masses cheer at the news regardless of when it outright backtracks and contradicts itself.
My wife and I will probably not take up the booster option. We had AstraZeneca and Sarah Gilbert who conceived its idea said a booster is not necessary. I see today many scientists are saying they will refuse too as it is unethical to give another vaccine to the vaccinated when people in poor countries have not even had their first.
As others are expressing here, my confidence in the UK Government is at its nadir. They are trampling over the trust we have developed in science since the Enlightenment for the political end of ‘optics’. They have deliberately employed fear as a weapon to engender obedience to their wishes. They keep rolling out ‘scientists’ whose predictions have largely proved incorrect. They mutter platitudes about the NHS being the envy of the world when it isn’t; and so don’t have the courage to face the need to recreate a 21st century workable health system. I hate moaning, but can’t see any way forward with politics so in hock to media and opinion poll views.
Perhaps the biggest frustration is asking, “Is anyone listening?”
I simply do not understand your first ¶ above except as virtue signaling. It seems that Sarah Gilbert is opposed on moral grounds, and her opposition is based on “equity” and all the usual woke propaganda; it is exceedingly slim on data and science. In this instance, it seems that SG is substituting her moral view for the science, and it seems that as more data comes in, and it seems clear (but let’s “trust the science,” [not the scientists, see my previous comment]) that the efficacy of the vaccine will wane over time. Isn’t that part of the reason why we get a new flu shot each year? Would it be fair to call these annual flu shots “boosters” against new variants?
How does ¶ 2 logically follow ¶1? You don’t trust the government, but you trust SG, the sociologist, the equity warrior? I don’t trust either, though I, too, had the AZ jab.
With respect, can you kindly explain what you mean? I strongly disagree with your first point, strongly agree with your second point (I think), and don’t understand your plaintive call. Listening to what?
Hello James. No, I don’t do ‘virtue signalling’; it’s just something we are considering. I understand Sarah is opposed on epidemiological grounds as she is the Professor who conceived how to make the AZ virus over a weekend in January 2020. She’s not a politician and is not going to make money from the AZ given at cost. I believe we are being offered the Pfizer as a booster. I would choose to believe her over a politician.
Yes, I upticked your ‘science not the scientists’ point. But unless one is epidemiologically trained there is no point reading the science so we rely on scientists to translate it for us. So now we have to find scientists we trust. Previously science was a dispassionate arena with results based on the scientific method. Now we are being presented with information determined by a particular outcome (fear, finance, fame, credibility, votes!) rather than the conclusions of crafted, reviewed studies.
Flu vaccines change each year as the producers try to guess which flu viruses are likely to be a problem. It’s guess work and they include protection for 3 or 4 types. The booster for Covid is not one which has been adapted for variants. Immuno-suppressed people should definitely have it; it is suggested that it is of limited value for those already double vaccinated.
Listening to the multitudes who are livid at how we are being patronised because we are not being treated as capable of making informed choices when presented with authentic data. For instance, are masks really preventing spread especially when you see they are not being used as recommended by the manufacturers. Do we need to keep using sanitiser on our hands as the evidence that surface fomites are a problem is not at all clear. What is the recommended social distance: 2m. 1.5m 1m ?? Why are masks mandated in the open air? On top of that is the way the data presented is loaded to create fear. For instance, it was said over the summer that the percentage of cases in young people had gone up drastically. But the net numbers of cases were exactly the same as in January. The percentage had gone up because cases in people now vaccinated (before young people) had gone down. They are playing us for fools!
I am fascinated and agree with most of your response, but I still don’t understand your first point.
With respect, some thoughts: first, read something in The Guardian and it seems that SG is on the record not only for the AZ jab but for some woke positions which I believe result in her view that “we in the West” should not take the booster jab. Not science. Second, I have read and believe (sort of common sense, mate) that the drug companies are working on modifying the existing shot so that it protects against Delta and other variants. Isn’t that exactly like the flu jab? Perhaps there will be a different jab each year for some time, based on this guess work. Isn’t that like the flu jab?
I think I have an answer to some of (most of?) the questions raised in your second ¶, and the answer is that the govt. really, really loves telling us what to do, having power over us, the more extreme the better. In some cases, we must literally rely on the leave of the ruling class to even leave the home. Italy, NZ, France, many other places. As I first heard on UnHerd (with Freddie), “the inconceivable has become the inevitable.” When these boffins looked to Asia in the early days of Corona, they saw that Asia locked down really hard–China sent in the Army to Wuhan, Vietnam locked down hard, etc. and they said, “Damn, we like that. Telling the people what they can and can’t do about very basic things. Wish we could do that here.” And then one of the boffins said “Well….maybe we can.” Presto….
I HATE these boffins and believe that “we” have a duty to resist….
I wouldn’t trust the Guardian, James!
This is what Sarah said:
“We need to get vaccines to countries where few of the population have been vaccinated so far. We have to do better in this regard. The first dose has the most impact.
“As the virus spreads between people, it mutates and adapts and evolves, like the delta variant. With these outbreaks, we want to stop that as quickly as possible. We will look at each situation; the immuno-compromised and elderly will receive boosters. But I don’t think we need to boost everybody. Immunity is lasting well in the majority of people.”
I only read The Guardian on a “know your enemy” theory. But I don’t understand how SG can say that the immunity is lasting well before 6 months, 8 months, 12 months, etc. In other words, the jury is still out. Maybe Israel is a bit ahead of the curve and their data suggests a booster works, and especially so if it is modified to some extent to address variants.
According to Whitty/Vallance at govt press conf. (https://youtu.be/vWAF2XqXrmA?t=2123 – which have always been far better to watch than just read others ex-post accounts of in my view):
To me, boosters for all is probably a bit too much, boosters for none may be a waste of stocks that will expire anyway and boosters for over 50s is probably a sensible middle ground.
But none of these options are going to make a great deal of difference by themselves. Not worth spending too much time discussing. On to the next thing!
The older I get, the more I lean towards the view that the Victorians were right — politicians should not receive pay, they should be in politics as a public service. The “professionalisation” of politics only became possible once they stated receiving a salary. When you have the entire political class made up of people who came into it as a career, the same way you would medicine or law, then you’ve completely paralysed the entire reason for politics in the first place — making decisions. If your income and prospects are entirely dependent on you being in Parliament for the next thirty years come what may, you’re never going to make a decision you might be responsible for. That, in turn, opens the door for the likes of Fauci to rule through you because you’re never going to challenge or overrule him. I hate to admit it, but there’s a lot to be said for having Parliament/Congress etc peopled by a disinterested ruling class whose outside income is so large that they can afford to lose their seats if they make wrong decisions and who, accordingly, are not afraid to make hard calls against the equally professionalised “advice castes”, like Fauci.
Sounds like Curtis Yarvin.
I’d never heard of him until you posted. On a quick inventory, though, I’d have to disagree. He seems to be an admirer of authoritarianism. To me, that’s not the same as making a hard decision and living with the consequences. My philosophy, such as it is, is essentially that of pre-conciliar Catholicism and adherence to the assumptions of natural law. Yarvin appears to be another “systems man”, someone who has a vision of a human-built system of government which will solve all problems. A bit like communism claims. It won’t work.
I’m very new to Curtis Yarvin–almost my only exposure is a YouTube video, though I intend to take a deeper dive. Like the book SAPIENS, I think Curtis Yarvin defies quick and easy summaries. Some of what I’ve seen I tend to agree with, at least from a US perspective, but likely this extends to many countries in the world: democracies don’t work, there is no free press (at least 90% of “journalism” in USA is woke propaganda, and the BBC is also almost completely woke propaganda–don’t pay the license fee!). Yarvin calls what I’ve heard referred to as the Deep State the Cathedral. Semantics. But he has a point. One provocative question he raised: If The New York Times, NPR, and much of the rest of the mainstream media were suddenly made government employees and put in the Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Information, if you like, would anything change? He also has a theory called RAGE–Retire All Government Employees. As someone who is second to none in my hatred for almost all US govt. employees–state, federal, local, his theory is pay them, have them stay home where they can do less harm. He cites examples of the DDR (East Germany) and even surviving WWII German soldiers, who still get pensions. He (Yarvin) is worthy of further study.
Back to your point, I would suggest that we in the USA already have “authoritarianism,” under the guise of executive orders but applicable to other things as well. An example: whatever you think of the so-called “dreamers,” Obama went around the country trying to drum up support for them. He said it had to be done through an act of Congress, pass a law, that he could not change their plight as he was a president not a king. The so-called dreamers had a vote: they won in the house, lost in the Senate. No amnesty. What did Obama then do? He issued a blatantly illegal executive order doing exactly what he–a supposed “Constitutional scholar–” said he could not do.
Authoritarian?
“disinterested ruling class”? Surely parliament needs to represent the views of all citizens, not just those who need no salary
It strikes me that certain medical advisers such as Fauci and Collins (both of whom have a major conflict of interest given that the Moderna mRNA vaccine was developed in part in cooperation with the NIH, at least so the NIH claims!) as well as the US and UK Governments are putting the cart before the horse.
When the vaccines first came out in November 2020 everybody was super-enthusiastic and the results of the initial (albeit rather short) trials was certainly very encouraging with 90-95% efficacy for the mRNA vaccines and only a little less for the Oxford/AZ vaccine. (Note that given that all the vaccines are producing spike protein either directly from mRNA or indirectly from DNA that first has to be transcribed to RNA, it is not obvious why there should be any difference between any of the vaccines other than dosage, and possible variations in the amounts of spike produced). However, it is now apparent clear from the data in Israel, Iceland and the UK that the efficacy of the vaccines begins to fade after about 6 months, and at 8 months drops dramatically.
So what to do. The powers that be believe that more is better and have decided to beat a dead horse rather than carry out a serious trial of the efficacy of a booster and the duration of additional protection that it may or may not provide. This strikes me as pure insanity and a tremendous leap of faith, one that may have very dire consequences given that a mistake of judgement will affect millions and millions of people.
It is also clear that booster shots cannot be given indefinitely, at least for the mRNA vaccines employing a liposome nanoparticle carrier, given that Moderna had to call of their mRNA anti-cancer vaccine program owing to major side effects encountered upon repeated injection.
Moreover, the powers that be both in the US and UK keep repeating how safe the vaccine is. But that’s a total lie and completely dishonest. The vaccines are reasonably safe but they sure are not as safe as childhood vaccines judging from the major side effects that have bene observed. For example, while purely anecdotal, everybody I know who has had the Moderna vaccine and is under the age of 65 has had very significant side effects following the 2nd dose (including the worst headache of their lives, being unable to get out of bed or up from the couch for a couple of days, etc….). It is self-evident that if such side effects are common, than major, life-altering side effects are also going to occur and indeed have occurred at a frequency that is higher than all other vaccines combined over the last 10-20 years (including death, myocarditis, pericarditis, clotting with thombocytopenia which is extremely difficult to treat, etc…). Under such circumstances, it would seem to me that any government mandates forcing people to be vaccinated is not just highly unethical but is tantamount to either murder or severe bodily harm with intent. That might seem strong but it really isn’t. If you know that a certain percentage of people taking the vaccine are either going to die as a result or suffer major complications, then forcing people to take the vaccines is nothing short of criminal. That’s different from having people take the vaccine on their own free will having been fully explained all the potential side effects and their frequencies, including major ones.
For myself, I was doubly vaccinated with the Pfizer shot in Feb/March of 2021 but I have absolutely no intention to rush and get a booster until a lot more real world data on boosters are available.
What is also so extraordinary is that the likes of Fauci, Collins and Whitty are all gung-ho about vaccine mandates and boosters with no evidence and certainly no trials, yet they actively have prevented doctors from prescribing medications such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine that have been administered to literally billions of people with no untoward effects. i.e. while neither medication may have any significant impact on COVID outcomes, they are a hell of a lot safer than the vaccines. Yet any trial that isn’t a randomized control trial (generally designed to fail in this case) is dismissed out of hand, and any doctor trying to prescribe these medications (medications that are available OTC in many countries throughout the world except of course in teh Anglosphere) is threatened with sanction and removal of their license to practice.
We sure live in a crazy upside-down world where the insane are running the asylum!
And as an addendum I would add that before vaccinating anybody or giving them a booster shot, the public health authorities would be well to assess their immune status vis a vis SARS-CoV2 both in terms of antibodies and T cell immunity. This would be a sensible approach as it would avoid vaccinating or boosting those who don’t need it. (Incidentally, as aside I was planning to do some work involving Vaccinia virus in the lab around 2000 had had to get a smallpox shot – before giving me the shot they tested my co-worker and I as to whether we already had immunity, given that we had both been vaccinated as children; my co-worker was no longer immune and therefore had the smallpox shot; I was still fully immune 30 years later and so they didn’t give me a smallpox booster).
Makes sense to me. I believe it was always the case, until now, that you did not vaccinate on top of naturally acquired immunity/antibodies?
Meanwhile in Melbourne the obnoxious bullyboy Dan Andrews has already made it clear that your putative health pass without which you will be ‘locked out’ of society will become invalid even if ‘double jabbed’ should boosters be required at any time in the future. Nothing to worry about there then…
Defense contractors, Wall Street, and Pharma are all driven by quarter to quarter profits. It is a problem that has been going on for decades.
The difference now is the Main Street doctor has looked the other way. There are a few who speak out, but until I see the “Medical Professionals” having REAL conversations about Big Food, diet, exercise, Anthony “Fraud” Fauci… – I will do my own research.
Hiked 7 miles yesterday with my son with Autism, now having my celery juice in the AM to start the day here is the good old USA…
It is indeed an issue: the problem is that it is much more convenient for the medical establishment to follow the pharma industry: the industry offers ‘ready made solutions, and support and backup in case of problems’.
A lifestyle issue you say? No no don’t worry there’s a pill for that.
Again, I ask, are there more total death numbers from all causes in 2020 than there were in year 2019 and 2018 and 2017, etc.?
Second question, what happened to the seasonal flu cases, did we all of sudden just up and discover a cure for the seasonal flu? Or, why have the seasonal flu case numbers flattened?
One idea is that the border closures did it in.
I hope you get a reply as these are excellent questions. I follow Micheal Levitt on Twitter who since the beginning focuses on this data almost exclusively, along with a few other data researchers.
But WHY did the majority of the FDA advisory committee vote against the roll out of boosters.
The whole meeting from 8:30 – 4:45 was recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M
It’s really, really long, and some of it is hard to understand.
One of the people who made a presentation reported on some of what he said. (He posted this before he made his presentation). It’s easier to understand. But his presentation had some things not mentioned in this article.
https://trialsitenews.com/the-smoking-syringe-was-evidence-withheld-from-acip-when-they-recommended-the-pfizer-vaccine/
We need an antidote to unscientific pro-vaccine bias.
Why wait to prescribe an an antidote, just create a vaccine against it 🙂