Also acknowledges “the vaccines were not designed to end transmission.”
The UK’s former Vaccine Taskforce chief has slammed the government for focusing resources on giving booster jabs to healthy young people over caring for a huge backlog of older people suffering from serious diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
The British government has embarked on an ambitious campaign to deliver offer booster jabs to the entire adult population by the end of January to stave off the threat posed by Omicron, despite widespread evidence that the variant only causes “mild” illness.
This entails a huge devotion of NHS resources to deliver a million jabs a day, something that will inevitably mean seriously sick people will miss out on cancer screenings and other treatments.
As we previously highlighted, people avoiding hospitals or being unable to obtain healthcare due to lockdown prevented as many as 740,000 urgent cancer care referrals in the UK.
Former Vaccine Taskforce Chief Clive Dix asserts that it’s ludicrous to neglect those in dire need of treatment simply so a large number of healthy twenty-somethings can be given a third dose of the vaccine.
“Given that young and healthy people not only have a very low chance of suffering severe Covid in the first place, but also already have substantial immunity from severe disease thanks to the first two jabs, I cannot see how boosting them is more valuable for public health than doubling our focus on the most vulnerable and cracking down on the backlog of chronically sick patients, such as those with hypertension, diabetes or even cancer,” wrote Dix.
In a rather telling admission, Dix also acknowledged that, “The vaccines will not stop the spread of the virus in the short or medium term” and weren’t designed to.
“I am afraid that the vaccines will not stop the spread of the virus in the short or medium term – but that is not a disaster,” wrote Dix. “Indeed the vaccines were not designed to end transmission. It was evident to me at the time I helped with the procurement of doses, as interim chair of the Vaccine Taskforce, that the intention was to stop people from getting severely ill or dying.”
