Plan B, Vaccines & Vaccine Certification

Dear Miss Davies,

I write in regards to the announcements in the last 24 hours with the Government executing “Plan B” and my concerns with the additional measures being put in place. As your constituent, I’m following very carefully the direction in which you and other Members of Parliament are supporting the recent changes, and this will heavily influence where I place my vote at the next available opportunity. In my opinion, the Government’s response to Omicron appears to be hugely disproportionate to the actual risks that have been presented, especially with reports of milder symptoms compared to other variants. High infection rate does not translate to unmanageable strain on the NHS. Additionally, the suggestion that mandatory vaccinations requires a “national debate” is simply unimaginable and unethical.

I read your website comments regarding Vaccines & Vaccine certification with interest (https://www.mimsdavies.org.uk/news/my-thoughts-covid-19-vaccines-and-vaccine-certification). Perhaps you could provide some additional support and comments to the below:

“evidence suggests that certification can be a valuable tool in helping to manage the spread of Covid-19”

• Please can you provide your “evidence”?

“The risk of basically dealing with people who are unvaccinated, is that if they have the virus, they’re more likely to be shedding large amounts of it than those people that are vaccinated, so that’s the reality.”

• Please can you provide your sources?
• Those that are unvaccinated could also have natural immunity as a result of having actually had the virus, why has this not been considered?
• The following study concludes that viral load is not impacted by vaccination status.
  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext

“This is why I support the JCVI’s recommendation to offer the vaccines to children over the age of 12, following conclusive approval of their safety.”

• It is worth noting that the JCVI did not (and still do not) recommend vaccinating healthy children between the ages of 12 -15. It was the Government that took the decision to ignore the science on this occasion. (Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advice-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15). The JCVI state “Of the very few children aged 12 to 15 years who require hospitalisation, the majority have underlying health conditions.” Perhaps rather than pushing to vaccinate the majority of healthy children, the government should look to better support the minority with underlying health conditions. I would guess it would be far cheaper too.

“Furthermore, in figures released by the Office for National Statistics covering the period from January to September 2021: they showed that, adjusted for age, the mortality rate for the unvaccinated with Covid-19 was 849.7 per 100,000, compared with 26.2 per 100,000 for those who were ‘fully vaccinated’”.

• This is incredibly clever selection of information. For context and balance, I would suggest that it would be worth adding the information published further down in the statistical analysis if you are trying to highlight vaccine effectiveness?

“While the ASMRs provide evidence that vaccinated individuals have a lower risk of dying of coronavirus (COVID-19) than unvaccinated individuals, they cannot be used to determine vaccine effectiveness. This is because the populations in each vaccine status group are likely to differ in ways other than population size and age because of the selective roll out of the vaccination programme and differences in vaccine uptake. Care should be taken in interpreting trends in the ASMRs as these cannot be causally linked to vaccinations. Differences between the groups and over time, such as health status, can have a particularly large effect on the ASMRs, especially when the population becomes unrepresentative of the age group in general. This can happen if people with particular characteristics, such as poor health, remain in a particular vaccination status group.”
(Source, here)

“As we are seeing in Austria and Germany, where vaccination rates are far lower, cases are increasing exponentially, resulting in them returning to crippling lockdown restrictions – something we all want to avoid.”

• Austria cases are coming down significantly, not “increasing exponentially”.

• In fact, Austrian vaccination rates are not far lower as you suggest (presuming that you are comparing to the UK), with only 1% difference in the fully vaccinated. Perhaps there is some confusion in absolute terms as the Austrian population is only 13% of the UK?

• Germany infection rate has remained consistent in pattern over the last 30 days and again shows no signs of exponential increase, currently on a downward trend for the last 7 day average. And similar to Austria, their vaccination % is in line with the UK for 1st and 2nd doses.

 

“the Government’s Winter Plan sets out the ‘Plan B’ to be enacted if the data shows the NHS is likely to come under unsustainable pressure”

• What evidence suggests that this is “likely”?

“You know nothing is taken lightly, so please be assured about that, but we have got to use what we know is in our armoury to get life back more to normal, and that is vaccinations – that’s been the case before countless times, from polio to flu, to HPV. They work, and they won’t always work on every single virus, variant or flu – we know that – but for the majority of the population they are exactly what we need to do as a population, not just to keep our own families safe, but to keep everyone else safe and we have that responsibility and that’s the reality around the children vaccinations.”

• In the history of the vaccinations/viruses that you reference, since when has one persons vaccination status ever improved the efficacy of someone else’s immunisation? It’s already been demonstrated that the vaccine does not prevent you from catching or spreading the virus. The only argument I see for the vaccine is that it will help reduce the likelihood of the vulnerable from being hospitalised. The vulnerable have been vaccinated, so why do we need to continue with more vaccinations in the healthy? As with my previous comment, immunity can also be gained from infection, and therefore also supporting the goal for herd immunity. When will this be recognised?

“we need to make sure that people understand that if you are unvaccinated, you will more than likely be shedding more droplets in the air, as you are more likely to have stronger symptoms of the virus if you haven’t been vaccinated”

• Please provide your source. We also need to make sure that people understand that you can be unvaccinated and still have high level of antibodies as a result of having had the virus.

“If you’re infecting people with this virus unknowingly, this could affect more vulnerable members in society and then, as we’re seeing at the moment, we’ve got very significant amounts of people often impacted through the NHS.”

• Vaccinated or not, you can still spread the virus unknowingly. “If you have received one or more doses of COVID-19 vaccine and have symptoms of COVID-19 or have received a positive test result, you should still follow this guidance. This is because it is still possible to get COVID-19 and spread it to others even if you are vaccinated.” (Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-households-with-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection)

“On Care Home staff, I do think if you want to work with the very most vulnerable people and you will be with them, day in, day out – my neighbours are very, very vulnerable and very poorly., have been for several years and they’re very worried about it. They want to know that the people that are looking after them have taken every single precaution possible to keep their health safe, and I think that’s fair enough. If you’re choosing to work in those settings, your priority should be the people that you’re looking after and if not, there are opportunities to go and take your skills and abilities elsewhere, and that’s fine as well, because that again comes back to freedom of choice.”

• Carehome or NHS staff, I think you’ll find the attached an interesting read where evidence has been deemed insufficient to mandate vaccinations. (https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2957). Mandating vaccinations to care home staff is far from freedom of choice. We all know that the virus can be spread regardless of vaccination status, and viral load is the same. It should be down to the individual, worker or resident, to make their own informed choice as to whether a medical procedure is right for them.

“We don’t want to tell people how to live, what to put in their bodies, but what we want to do is get us out of this pandemic”

• That is exactly what you are doing without the thoughtful consideration for personal choice, natural immunity and encouragment of general good health.

Please note that this is not a copy and paste email and significant time has been spent reviewing your comments, which I’m sure many others will take at face value.

I look forward to your reply.