This vaccine committee also said originally they wouldn't be vaccinating kids as there was no benefit to it when weighed up with he risk of death to kids and now look at what's going to happen when the 12-15 year olds go back to school.
The cynic in me thinks big pharma companies will continue to claim boosters are needed every year so they keep the bank accounts topped up. They aren't making and releasing them for free are they? Which you think they would do in the midst of pandemic.
The JVCI said that when they didn't have any supply to do the kids (and hadn't yet done everyone older than the kids), it's prioritisation, which is fine, they had time to wait for kids, as they had zero supply to do kids.
But this then gets peddled by and abused by the tories and their media, sort of as a delaying tactic, and it's one of the reasons why we're also delaying it now. It's partially so the system doesn't come under bad press, largely to help the Tories.
So what they do is "wait on more data" (which was already visible, and has been for months, hence why it's been passed, for months), but now they can't refute the data or say it's not there (and more importantly now we have more supply), they will gradually roll it out.
The amount of vaccine we have, and have been able to use has been able to be calculated since early this year, when Scotland started publishing how many doses they were given by the UK (which is proportional to what England was give, per population), and we have known how many have been used etc. The rollout, and the peaks and thoughts were known in advance, so they easily know when we've had enough for kids (had enough pfizer). We haven't had that, but are getting there now.
It's basic politics, don't shoot down your only "win", when there's no point saying you should do something if you don't have the supplies to do it.
Wait until you have the supplies, then approve, then deliver, it's the best outcome for preserving votes. The problem is this time the rest of the EU have pretty much caught us up on vaccines, and have already started doing younger folk.
Nothing to do with "big pharma", they don't fake the antibody results, and aren't pushing 3rd does for those who don't need them, the immunologists are pushing them for those who need them, a load of who are independent.
Why would they make them for free? Would you? They've spent decades building a foundation of equipment and manpower, do they just pause all that?
They all have shareholders and are linked to the markets etc. Their entire company is based on trying to keep people alive, and then taking a cut for doing it. There are loads of companies making peoples health worse, and charging higher margins for it (fast food, fatty food, junk food, booze, supermarkets etc).
The vaccine situation with the tories is what I've been saying for about 6 months. The early part of the vaccine rollout was the Tory's "win", it's why they had their best ratings, but come autumn when the EU has caught up, the "win" fades, but we have more dead people (that doesn't fade), and then brexit becomes more visible, then their popularity slides (like it is doing).