The Licensed Avian Influenza Vaccines: What Did We Learn from the FOI Requests?
The square root of not a lot
Summertime is here. It seems like yesterday that we started trying to find out which avian influenza vaccines were bought, why and for how much.
It was just before Christmas when we started asking questions:
We should celebrate, as this is the 49th post on the topic. In numerology, it represents creation, progress, and spiritual awakening. Perhaps we’re onto something.
The 48 posts document the questions, answers, evasions, dodges, appeals, partial successes and so on from both the United Kingdom Scare Agency (UKHSA) and the enablers, MHRA, which played pass the parcel with our questions.
So what did we get?
26 Apr 2025: What did you buy? Answer: 1 of 4 licensed avian influenza vaccines
30 Apr 2025: How does it perform? Answer. Dunno, ask MHRA. No real answer there
13 Jan 2025: What are the indications for use? Answer: Dunno
11 Jan 2025: What are the properties? Answer: Dunno, MHRA licensed it because it was the same as AFLUNOV but it’s not the same and neither have been tested in the field.
24 Jan 2025: What’s the cost? Answer: it’s confidential
13 January 2025: What is a case of avian influenza? Answer: Dunno
Slowly, bit by bit, we uncovered the convoluted story of how the avian influenza vaccine H5N8 was licensed and purchased. However, it is not needed in Europe and certainly not in the UK, which has reported only one case of H5N1 this year. Although the UKHSA refused to elaborate, keeping the information for staff publications rather than for the taxpayer.
To sum up, no one has any real data on the actual performance of the vaccines. Licensing was by analogy with another vaccine; there are no data on pregnant women, the cost is secret, and the informed consent used in the original trials is misleading and panic-inducing. We will not tell you when the stocks need to be renewed either. But apart from all this, everything is OK.
We wrote: “Instead of taking a critical approach to save tax payers’ money, the bodies continue wrapping the issue up with inflated estimates of burden, warnings of imminent disasters and poor science, as well as the ultimate dead cat: a mass of observational data which provides no answers but tells you whatever you want”.
At the end of all this, we are left with a simple question: why do we fund the UKHSA?
Two pig-headed old geezers wrote this post.
Our National Health Service and all it's sub-branches like MHRA is the perfect example of how a state run enterprise becomes inefficient and eventually incompetent. Science and government by ideology is a sure fire recipe for disaster. Well done guys for your persistence in pursuing evidence based decision making.
We can’t know why we fund the UKHSA because it’s commercially sensitive.
Not fit for purpose? Who cares ? Don’t give a damn about taxpayers’ money? Who cares? Paying themselves big fat salaries whilst being totally inept and inefficient? Who cares …..if we could kick them out we would; if we could redact them we would… I am wringing my hands :-).. what to do, what to do?