Once the vaccine came on the scene after the initial panic caused by widespread deaths in the Covid pandemic, the official policy changed to “Vax and relax!” Unfortunately, the UK has increasingly become the place where there is no access to vaccines for many people, leaving us only with relax, which seems to have become the official policy of the scientific committee which advises the government and that of the government itself. In this, the UK is an outlier as most other countries, even Trump’s US offers the vaccine to a wider range of people than here. How has this come about?

It is scientifically accepted that those over 65 are the most in danger from the results of a Covid infection, along with those who are clinically vulnerable. Because the immune system weakens with age, annual boosters are needed in order to charge up the immune system to deal with the virus, which mutates regularly.

Up until last year, those over 65 were entitled to receive the booster in autumn, although they had already reduced access to the spring booster. These decisions in themselves were based on a false premise that Covid, like flu, is a seasonal virus and therefore boosters in the spring were less important.

Covid has settled into a pattern of two main waves per year, one in the summer and the other in the winter. The one which we are currently experiencing and which is causing large numbers of people to fall sick, although as there is no real testing anymore, most victims attribute it (falsely) to flu or a bad cold or the all-encompassing “bug”, is a late summer wave which started in September and is predicted to end next month.

The latest development since last autumn is that the Covid vaccine available on the NHS is only accessible to those over 75 and even worse, from next year to those over 80. This was justified by the JCVI, the government’s scientific committee on vaccines, as due to increased immunity to infection among the population because of previous infections and vaccinations! This is scientific illiteracy.

 It can be disproved by seeing the numbers of people currently ill from Covid from the UK Health Security Agency’s own figures and the rising numbers being admitted to hospital. Most of those being admitted to hospital are in the older age groups and also among the clinically vulnerable cohorts. The JCVI had the effrontery to state in small print on their report that most people in these older age groups had the economic ability to pay for the vaccine themselves!

The other contradiction is that the JCVI has (rightly) extended access to the RSV vaccine to those over 65 with an underlying medical condition whereas previously it was confined to those over 75. Why extend access to one vaccine and reduce it to another?

Outlier

The UK is an outlier in this. Even Trump’s US, led by the anti vaxxer Health Secretary Robert Kenneddy is more generous with its access to vaccines. Children there are also entitled to vaccines whereas here they are left completely unprotected because of the false nostrums of people like Jenny Harries, former director of the UKHSA, that children couldn’t catch Covid! The definition of “clinically vulnerable” here is also extremely tight so that those with COPD and asthma, for example, are not included.

The UKHSA and the NHS are currently running a huge campaign on encouraging people to get flu vaccines but there is nothing about Covid. The flu vaccine, if you cannot access it via the NHS, is about £15 the Covid vaccine for those forced to buy it privately is £99. This immediately puts it out of range for many who are scraping to get by and with the constant barrage of disinformation about Covid from, among others, doctors on morning television programmes, many just give it a miss.

But the scientific evidence is clear, with an increased number of infections the risks of having Long Covid rise rapidly as well as the fact that the long-term effects of Covid, which is essentially a vascular disease, display themselves in the increasing numbers of young people suffering from strokes and heart attacks as well as early dementia. The danger of dementia is even higher for older people who have not received a booster. And despite flu receiving lots of publicity from public health the long-term consequences of a Covid infection are much more serious than those from flu.

Last year a virologist, Dr Stephen Griffin, addressed Covid Action and told us that the JCVI’s decisions were made purely on a cost basis which was the cost of having a patient in ICU compared with the cost of the vaccine. They didn’t consider patients hospitalised in non ICU wards or at home and the overall impact on NHS resources and public health.

The UK’s current policy (or non-policy) on the roll out of the Covid vaccine is scientifically insane and dangerous and will not only impact on the health of the community and that of older people and the clinically vulnerable in particular but will also have a huge economic impact both on healthcare costs and lower productivity. It’s a health emergency and needs to be addressed urgently