All three vaccines are safe

@SW-User 👊

@gol979 🐑 🐑 🐑 lol 😆

@SW-User with respect it isn't actually that.

In UK the MHRA are an independent body they are not dictated to by the government. They can only approve drugs/vaccines presented by companies for licensing, in the case of Pfizer all that development was private funded no government input at all.

So far no overt government control other than the regulatory environment we're working in.

So MHRA grants a licence. In the UK you now have other hurdles. First JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation) an independent expert body that advises on immunisation strategy. Again deliberately set up independent of government control / influence. Also NICE has to agree to any NHS prescription policy. NICE is again an independent body.

When you look at it other than providing the regulatory environment, budgets etc the government has very little direct control

@OldBrit who funds the mhra?

@gol979 budgets are set by government and cons from treasury but they don't report in anywhere. Same as Bank of England for example they don't report to the treasury at all in an organisational sense

@OldBrit I’m not anti it but I want a choice, I wouldn’t get the flu jab, I feel we are being judged and backed into a corner with all the passport crap, the vaccine was produced to stop you getting sicker and dying.
It shouldn’t affect where you can go or fly to, that doesn’t make sense to me.

@OldBrit the biggest funder to the mhra is the bill and Melinda gates foundation who have a financial interest in the profits from injections. It's a vipers nest of conflicts of interest. They aren't even hiding it

@SW-User ah. That's a completely different argument. That's about the commercialisation of health care.

The counter argument is cost. You get your vaccination free. If you want choice should you not pay?

But then you may say "But I'm paying already!" so we defund the NHS and adopt a private insurance system a la America.

Wait 10 years... It's coming

@gol979 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Takes deep breath
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@OldBrit I just don’t want it, my choice.

@OldBrit what's so funny? You think that's incorrect?

@SW-User which I thought you can exercise in this country. There is no legal compulsion.

I'd heavily argue you should to provide you with the best protection against a potentially serious of not life threatening illness

@gol979 my quick research shows mhra in 2017 got under £1m to support some outreach work to poor countries.

That's not their major funding is it. That's a small project isn't it the sort of thing they'd get me out of retirement to run on 2 days a week.

I've been in MHRA meetings that cost more than a million to put on. The MHRA in their core function of regulating the UK medical market are entirely funded by the UK government.

@OldBrit I still don’t want it, family members have had it with no symptoms, the chances are slim, I’ll take that risk.

@OldBrit the thing that gets me is the control and the passports to go places. That shouldn’t be the case.

Control!

@SW-User I hope your decision is vindicated.

Personally purely on maths of probability I'm happily fully vaccinated

@SW-User to me that's a completely different conversation about whether vaccines are good for you or the population.

Policticians hate not being in control. They can't control the virus obviously like trying to turn the tide back. So they control what they can. Frankly to little effect given how easily and quickly delta came in. Often I thought if Cnut at the breifings.

@OldBrit
People die from the flu every year, I can get a flu jab but I choose not to.
I wouldn’t ever get one unless I’m elderly and at risk.

@SW-User with respect I believe the risk calculation is substantially different with covid. You get max 25,000 deaths a bad year with flu. We're 130,000 and rising. You don't get 100 deaths a day in the summer from flu. The risk factors of covid are much higher

@OldBrit it’s a risk I’m willing to take, however there’s many deaths put down as Covid, when They have actually died from a heart attack, cancer etc. So are the figures really correct.

@SW-User Yes - if you look at the ONS data that is the best. The daily figure will include young Fred who tested positive 2 weeks ago but was fine until he rode his bike under a lorry. Now however when the death certificate is written he won't be a covid death since clearly the covid has played no part in his death.

In this country to register a death means a doctor puts his professional reputation on the line. He states in his professional opinion what led to the death. Often multiple things will be put down, pneumonia being a great example along with influenza or Covid or some other infection. Now in a case where someone in hospital dies of a heart attack - as my friend did - but he has been hospitalised because he has covid - positive test - then both go on the death certificate if the doctor believes the strain put on his heart by his poor functioning lungs was largely or in part due to Covid. As happened to my friend. Did Covid kill him? Maybe not - Did he die because he had Covid? Most likely the inevitable was speeded up

There is this belief that all the doctors in the UK walk around making up reasons for death. At any point an autopsy may be called and that doctor have to defend at an inquest what they wrote. They don't make it up.

@OldBrit I mean they had Covid at the time of dying from a heart attack or cancer that would have killed them anyway.