A Tale of Two Realities: Reporting Vs Content

Minutes of CMOs 2021 meeting to approve covid vaccines for 12-15 year olds

Vaccinating children against covid has always been opposed by elements of the right wing media, elements that also maintain a narrative that includes claims transmission wasn't an issue in schools, only a handful of “healthy” children have died from covid, long covid is rare and possibly psychological in nature, and that adults working in education were not at risk.

Some outlets, in particular the Telegraph set out to oppose child vaccination even before the MHRA finished looking at the data and approved its safety for children.

Over the months the JCVI spent considering an offer to children, (after many other countries had already started vaccinating their children), elements of the media sought to sow suspicion against vaccinating children.

This included various fear mongering such as suggesting children might be vaccinated in school without their parents knowledge, and that unvaccinated children might be segregated and put in indefinate isolation away from vaccinated children (it's worth noting that unlike the US, UK schools don't have any form of mandate for any vaccine).

As the JCVI was in the process of considering vaccination over several meetings the Telegraph headlined alarming claims regarding myocarditis from vaccination that came from a non-peer reviewed unpublished paper that had been rejected by three respectable scientific journals. The paper was coauthored by Tracy Hoeg.

The JCVI initially declined to recommend vaccination and deferred the decision to the CMOs, who then approved the recommendation of a single dose based on wider benefits mainly focused on reducing student absence from school. The JCVI did not have to defer the decision to the CMOs.

Certain sections of the UK media described this as the CMOs “overiding” the JCVI for political purposes due to the influence of Big Pharma. Over three years later they continue to portray this as a controversial decision suggesting sinister motives.

What they conveniently forget is that a few months later when more data was available the JCVI then chose to recommend a second dose for 12-15 year olds. This decision was made directly by the JCVI as was the decision to offer vaccination to 5-11 year olds.

The group leading this narrative is Us For Them who have embraced RFK Jr's nomination for the Trump administration, and now claim the vaccine roll out was not just flawed but criminal, with some going as far as to call for the likes of Chris Whitty; the UKs CMO to be imprisoned. This is nearly a cut and paste of the narrative in the US to lock up Anthony Fauci.

At the time of writing this Us For Them's founder Molly Kingsley was reposting outrage at RFK Jr being questioned by senators asking him if he agreed with his own previous statements.

Considerable time and effort has been spent developing this narrative that child vaccination was forced through despite strong opposition. The narrative is reinforced with regular revelations and one of the latest “revelations” is regarding the minutes of the CMO meetings on the vaccination of 12-15 year olds which were released to UsForThem via FOI.

Let's see how these minutes were described:

Allison Pearson who writes for the Telegraph and helped found UsForThem, “JCVI ignored”.

Toby Young who runs the Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union, “CMOs overrules the government's vaccine advisors to push through covid vaccination.”

The Daily Sceptic ran the story of these minutes, putting a particular focus on Chris Whitty.

UsForThem set out their concerns with the minutes.

Regarding the first point, over the years funding has come from pharmaceutical companies to government agencies and academic institutions. This money is declared for specific purposes such as research, conducting trials etc, and as in most sectors industries are expected to pay towards their regulation. Of course the influence of businesses on regulators does deserves scrutiny.

The ethics committee mentioned was set up prior to the pandemic to advise on an ad hoc basis, it was rarely used before being disbanded. Most of the public information regarding the ethics committee appears to come from Professor Robert Dingwall, a sociologist, who was a member of SAGE.

Some members of the ethics committee thought it should be involved in the decision to vaccinate children, but this was a clinical decision on cost effectiveness, the MHRA had already found the vaccine to be safe for children. Looking at the data the JCVI also judged covid vaccines to be safe for children. A lot has been made of the ethics committee not being involved, but it didn't play a role in any of the vaccination programme.

Dingwall consistently argued against measures and has claimed that fully opening schools without mitigations even in the midst of high infection rates has never had an impact on transmission. In the HART leaks the conspiracy theorist Michael Yeadon said that he had been in contact with Dingwall since autumn 2020 and that Dingwall would prefer to remain “working on the inside” for the cause rather than joining HART.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/01/inside-the-radicalised-anti-vaxxer-network-influencing-government-vaccine-advisory-panel/

Divergence of views?

To consider the claim of a serious divergence of views we will later look at the meeting minutes.

Us For Them continue,

What this narrative fails to mention is that a few months later with more data, the JCVI decided on its own to recommend a second dose for 12-15 years olds, and then offered the parents of 5-11 year olds the choice of vaccination.

The quoted statistics of parents’ views comes from a survey conducted by polling company JL Partners on behalf of UsForThem to coincide with the launch of Kingsley's book. The polling presented participants with misleading information regarding covid vaccines as though it were fact and found that this impacted their views on vaccines. The results were heralded as evidence covid vaccines have eroded confidence in vaccines but what it actually demonstrates is the corrosive nature of the narrative being peddled by Us For Them and their supporters in the media like Toby Young, Isabel Oakeshott and Allison Pearson.

On their website Us For Them have the full minutes available of the CMO meetings. The minutes do not support the narrative they have woven from a few cherry picked quotes.

6th September

First line of the minutes states “JCVI recommended to Ministers that CMOs were consulted”, the whole narrative that the JCVI were overided is based on a misrepresentation.

Another claim is that children were vaccinated not for their own benefit, but to protect adults, however the minutes say “CMOs will not consider issues where vaccination of children might accrue benefits or disbenefits for adults or other children.”

The minutes then cover the views of regional and local Public Health bodies, there is broad “high level of support” for vaccinating 12-15 year olds.

Concerns are raised regarding potential impact on other vacation programmes, and what would happen to public confidence if there was a high profile serious adverse reaction.

There is widespread acknowledgement of the disruption being caused to education by high rates of transmission, with the expectation that multiple waves of high transmission will continue into at least the spring of 2022.

It's noted that deprived areas have high rates and could face high rates again. This proved to be the case; the story of Covid has also been one of inequality.

There are three points not in favour of vaccination, possible disruption to other vaccination programmes and disruption to school of carrying out vaccinations. The other reason against a universal vaccination offer is a bizarre take on inequality, that the most disadvantaged were seen as the most at risk from covid, but also less likely to take up the vaccination offer, therefore vaccination shouldn't be offered to the whole cohort.

All public health representatives in attendance were in favour of vaccination, there isn't evidence of a divergence of views.

7th September meeting with Royal Colleges clinical experts.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health were in favour of vaccination, but only if part of a broader piece of work to keep children safely in school, “this could include stopping school testing completely”.

Weekly testing in schools had already ended by September 2021, isolation of close contacts had ended, there was no requirement for testing children with symptoms, so what were RCPCH after when all measures had already been removed from schools?

The RCPCH wanted to keep children safely in school but didn't recommend measures like clean air which would cut transmission, they were looking at ways to cut isolation.

There is discussion on the scale of disruption to education being caused by transmission.

The views of the Royal Colleges’ clinical experts were in favour of vaccination.

7th September CMO's meeting

Scotland's CMO is the main voice of concern with a “degree of scepticism”, also said there was a need to account for myocarditis.

Northern Ireland, Wales and England considering if to offer or recommend.

Next concerns raised are mainly operational, not impacting on vaccination of high risk groups or other vaccine programmes.

Inequality is discussed again, noting “those same towns that get the surges everytime.” This is an acknowledgement by the CMO's that repeated waves of infection was demonstrably not resulting in herd immunity. This statement has been completely ignored by those pro GBD voices who have selectively quoted these minutes to make the approval of vaccines for children to appear contentious and sinister.

The JCVI does state some uncertainty about myocarditis, this is also in relation to Covid.

The CMO's note that all expert groups they consulted with were in favour of vaccinating 12-15 year olds. The CMOs all agreed with vaccination, there does appear to be some difference of opinion between making an offer or a recommendation.

Do these minutes demonstrate a wide divergence of opinion as Us For Them has presented them?

The narrative goes beyond simply questioning covid vaccines for children as elements of the media seek to greatly exaggerate the vaccine harms.

For instance the Telegraph recently published this misleading headline that had great traction with anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

The document being quoted states that the £1.7 billion described as an “expected cost” was actually the “worst-case scenario” in the event of a commonly occurring unexpected and severe unexpected side effect emerging.

This was clearly not an expectation as the headline claims, so the question is why are elements of the mainstream media intent on distorting the truth to fortify the narrative that there is something sinister about covid vaccines?

Well…