‘It will restore trust in medicine’ Medics call for end of Covid vaccine mandates
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They believe mandates – compelling people to get jabbed or face work or travel bans – hand propaganda to anti-vaccination activism and reduce compliance with other public health measures. They also fear it will lead to a slump in future voluntary vaccine programmes, like flu or measles, mumps and rubella.
Their call comes as Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic – who said he would rather miss out on future tennis tournaments than be forced to get a Covid jab – has been cleared to play at the US Open on August 29 after American health chiefs relaxed guidance for unvaccinated players.
Double-jabbed consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra said ending all mandates globally and accessing raw trial data was essential in restoring trust in medicine.
His call has the backing of globally-respected oncologist and Daily Express columnist Professor Karol Sikora and Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.
In a letter to US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and writing in European Scientist <
“As newer and thankfully less lethal, mutated strains became dominant, any protection against infection at the very least became less effective and likely completely ineffective, even if there is some significant (as yet to be fully determined in absolute individual terms) protection against serious illness and death.”
In the UK 8 million people have refused a Covid booster, despite record infection rates and medics are now witnessing worrying reduced uptake of the MMR vaccine for children for the first time in 10 years.
The most controversial mandate was Covid passports, showing proof of a jab before travel or border entry.
Britain – the first country in the world to introduce a vaccine programme – has high levels of adherence but the Government sparked controversy when amendments to the Health and Social Care Act 2008 made vaccinations mandatory for healthcare workers. Unless exempt care home workers were required to have two doses of an approved Covid vaccine from November, with the option to redeploy unvaccinated workers into non-frontline roles or put them on unpaid leave until they have both doses. This move was scrapped in March.
It was set to be extended to frontline health and social care workers, including those in jobs who might have contact with patients, like porters and receptionists, from April. This was also scrapped.
Earlier this year 21-time Grand Slam winner Djokovic, 35, who lifted his seventh Wimbledon crown last month, was thrown out of the Australian Open after the government cancelled his visa in a row over his vaccine status. He stressed he is not an antivaxer, but supported an individual’s right to choose whether or not they should receive a jab.
Immigration minister Alex Hawke personally cancelled his visa, saying if Djokovic played it could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment. But Djokovic said: “I was never against vaccination but I’ve always supported the freedom to choose what you put in your body.”
Accessing data from the Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada websites, and combining results from journal articles that published the Pfizer and Moderna trials, Dr Malhotra claimed the absolute risk of a serious adverse event (a rate of 1 in 800) was greater than being hospitalised with Covid.
He added: “Global mandates for Covid must stop until we have the full data on efficacy of all available vaccines. Legislation that ensures access to the raw data for Pfizer’s mRNA jab for full independent analysis, combined with reliable real world pharmacovigilance evidence will allow a more precise and better understanding of the true absolute benefits and harms for different age and risk groups.
“It would empower doctors to engage in more informed decision making with patients using transparent communication of benefit and risk in absolute terms ahead of the booster roll out in the autumn. This would also help restore trust in the reliability of clinical decision making in relation to all drugs, not just the Covid vaccinations.”
Mandatory vaccination for healthcare workers has been law in France since October 2021, while New Zealand introduced a requirement for various public sector workers. In the US federal employees have had to be vaccinated, unless exempt, since November 2021, while a mandatory vaccination programme for over-60 has been introduced in Greece.
Professor Sikora said: “Trust and transparency are the keys to public health. Everything we do in medicine carries a risk of harm. Balancing that risk with benefit is not only up to health professionals but also their patients.
“Transparency with the data is an absolute necessity. The good, the bad and the ugly all need to be reported. And at over £20 a shot there’s a lot of conflict of interest between pharma, governments and health insurers whether public or private.
“With Covid many countries, including Britain, adopted a Big Brother approach with no freedom of choice. Some are still doing it. The totally ridiculous U-turn by the politicians on NHS staff vaccination clearly demonstrates the necessity of individual choice. The alternative would have been a mass resignation and collapse of the service.”
Prof Bhattacharya said: “Covid vaccine mandates passports were instituted on the false thought that vaccines stop transmission of disease and that Covid recovered people somehow do not possess as strong immunity and protection as vaccinated people. It is particularly malign that public health officials and politicians have encouraged the morally problematic idea that unvaccinated individuals are somehow unclean, which has stigmatised people for private medical choices. Travel bans on the unvaccinated add an embrace of xenophobia to the sins of public health.”
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