Confused about JCVI and COVID shots

[mtbc]

Our lack of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination provision in the UK is said to stem from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation's rather limited consideration of the impact of COVID-19.

My impression of COVID-19 is that there is enough accumulated evidence of risk of life-changing long-term effects, ranging from cognitive to vascular, perhaps also immunological, and enough extra risk from reinfection, that I should be fairly concerned given that our lives don't allow us to live like hermits, and that SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to remain an ongoing issue as mutations continue.

Also, that JCVI's assessment considered rather little of the above and that's most of why they don't judge it worth handing out vaccinations rather more freely.

I wonder to what extent I am mistaken in the above. Or, if not, if there are any good summaries that lay the case out clearly and persuasively, to help me be yet another source of pressure on our elected representatives. Also, how susceptible JCVI might be to political pressure, or if a rather more limited assessment is somehow required by their remit.

And, if JCVI were to be more expansive in the evidence considered, if that would actually change the cost-benefit sufficiently.

Part of why I suspect that I may not just be catching hysteria from the swivel-eyed is that American health insurers seem to intend to continue covering such immunizations. One would expect them to excel in brutally realistic analysis of health statistics.

Comments

[dewline]

Living in Ontario, Canada (as presently known), and seeing as the provincial government is still willing to support vaccination for all where COVID and influenza are concerned, I got both of my vaccine updates a week ago tomorrow. I've asked if there's some way I might qualify for RSV vaccination as well. Current provincial "guidance" suggests that I'm still too young for it, and I am skeptical of that.