Almost half of the UK workforce lack access to workplace health support including winter flu vaccinations and checks for cardiovascular diseases, a report has found.
The analysis, by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), looked at data from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) and found that more than 10 million UK workers lack access to services including basic health checks, vaccinations, and smoking or weight loss support, provided by their employer.
The report found that the UK’s current workplace health system could further exacerbate existing health inequalities, given that people in lower paid industries, such as hospitality and agriculture, are even less likely to have access to health protection interventions at work.
Why would anyone need health care at work when the State already provides all?
It has been so long since I looked at this, that Incannot remember what rules apply anymore.
Is it the case that if an office or factory has a certain number of employees in the building, the employer has to provide a canteen service and at least a nurse ?
I think it is ( or was ) 200 in Germany.
Q. Why would anyone need health care at work when the State already provides all?
A. Royal Society for Public Health = grifters
Winter flu vaccinations for all! A dodge invented to keep jab companies in business by broadening the definition of flu and ignoring the very marginal efficacy of such jabs
“Government should explore ways to incentivise employers, particularly SMEs, to invest
in their workforce in the short term, enabling them to reap the long term rewards of
higher productivity.”
– I think neoliberals can help, don’t tax employment, don’t make it illegal to hire people on wages between 0.01p-11.43p an hour
“I thought we had the world envied NHS?”
Watch their heads explode from the cogitative dissonance!
Then bear in mind the resulting ‘mental elf’ bill will come to us 🙁
“the very marginal efficacy of such jabs” You are too kind to the jabs. They’ve proved completely ineffective for people 55-75 in England and Wales.
I can’t give you the link because the Worstal Website has some fancy software that blocks it.
Before I retired from the Merchant Navy I had to have a Statutory Medical annually. This was done by one of a panel of GPs around the country and cost IIRC £90. The cost was re-imbursed by the employer. A nice little earner for the GP, £90 for a 20 minute check up.
Dearieme: the margins are in the younger group whose natural immunity needs no help anyway. This allows them to keep straight faces.
Thanks, Ljh. I hadn’t known that. What frauds, eh?
dearieme and ljh – Gosh and there I was looking at my SMS messages from the NHS (now blocked!) telling me that it’s time to catch up with my ‘flu jabs and book an appointment to be jabbed for last year’s strain of ‘flu (which was probably not influenze in the first place).
I’ve only ever had one flu jab, and I’ve probably had flu a couple of times.
On balance, I prefer the flu.
Traditionally, work based health care = private health insurance.
However, in these modern days of HR departments, then this means new special initiatives where we all have to attend seminars (or webinars) where a medical professional will give a presentation about eating properly, the benefits of staying hydrated and why a tea total vegan diet will improve productivity by 250%.
Too cynical?
Exactly. I was always open to receiving a winter flu jab, but then they added mRNA to the mix and started sending me automatic appointments which I didn’t ask for and have to go to the trouble of cancelling each winter.
As a young ‘un, I worked at Unilever’s Seacroft plant in Leeds programming plant controllers and weight control systems. Probably had 500 people across the various shifts and sub-plants like aerosol canning.
We also had both a staff canteen that seated 100 or so and operated from 6AM to 8PM and served breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as tea ladies that came around morning and afternoon with with tea, coffee and biscuits.
The site doctor was some retired GP / locum type that was there several days a week and effectively acted as a GP for the workforce, he helped me with a shoulder injury one time as I recall and there was a nurse on duty for each production shift.
That was all pretty standard for the time (mid 1980’s), but I couldn’t tell you whether it was a part of the TGWU negotiated contract or due to Health and Safety regulations at that time.
@Salamander Not cynical enough.
Those seminars exist, and “Expert Advisors” on the subject solidly wedged themselves into the Trough, along with Diversity, Sustainability, H&S “Consultants”.
JG
I was always open to receiving a winter flu jab, but then they added mRNA to the mix…
None of flu vaccines in the UK for 2024/5 are mRNA vaccines.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flu-vaccines-for-the-current-season/flu-vaccines-for-the-2023-to-2024-season
All laugh at Theo – he believes what the government tell him!
@ John Galt
I remember that “my” dentist when I was 10 was/had been the/a works dentist for ICI Billingham. The service was provided by ICI *in its own interest* without reference to the unions because it reduced the time off sick
Theo: « None of [the] flu vaccines in the UK for 2024/5 are mRNA vaccines. »
Well yes, Theo, quite but I think that John Galt’s point was that addding those (plus AZ’s clot shot) to the list of must-have shots rendered the whole shebang suspect.
The medical goondahs and political dacoits will doubtless soon be targetting fatties in order to treat them to lashings of ozempic by needle or by air rifle.
I’ve been laid up in bed with flu for 5 days, even getting to the bog was exhausting, and then taking 2 weeks to get back to some semblance of fitness. That was when I was in the Army and running 10 miles most days for a hobby.
I’m 68 next month and still reasonably fit, God knows what a bout like that would do to me so I’ll take my chances with the flu jab, even if they are only 30% to 50% effective and the Government is living up (down?) to the conspiracy theorists’ expectations and sneaking mRNA in to it and not telling us for some reason.
*Almost of the UK workforce half lack access to workplace ….*
I spent over twenty years working from home or on overseas assignments
When I was working in an office 5 days a week I was too young to need or get cardiovascular checks or winter flu vaccinations. I have never smoked and have always been capable of losing weight through exercise when I needed to do so. Since I got to 75 I’ve been offered winter ‘flu vaccinatons through the NHS regardless of my workplace.
So I am included in a group of so-called deprived people
There *may* be a problem for some people but it’s a small percentage not “almost half”
@Theo – Just because they ain’t there, doesn’t mean shit.
They are here.
https://www.nhstayside.scot.nhs.uk/YourHealthWellbeing/PROD_355361/index.htm
My appointment explicitly included a COVID-19 mRNA shot.
https://pubmed.ncbi.
@BiND: 30% – 50% my left foot.
nlm.nih.gov/32120383/
Note my attempt to evade Tim’s censor by splitting the link in two.
“A nice little earner for the GP, £90 for a 20 minute check up”
A bargain compared to £220 less than 10 minutes with an orthopaedic surgeon. Oh, and not forgetting £190 for 2 X-rays, taking about 3 minutes, and which (being all digital) no longer need any development before they can be be viewed. I obviously chose the wrong career…
Which isn’t saying no benefit.
My quote of 30% to 50% was at the bottom end of the claims last time I looked in to where claims as high as 80% were being made.
I’ll take my chances until someone can point to a sever problem.
John Galt,
That must be a Jockland thing because I can have either or both if I want.
“The report found that the UK’s current workplace health system could further exacerbate existing health inequalities, given that people in lower paid industries, such as hospitality and agriculture, are even less likely to have access to health protection interventions at work.”
This is framed as a complaint against the current system, that we need MORE workplace health care to reduce inequality (between low and high paid workers). But wouldn’t putting more resources into workplace health care just create an even bigger health inequality between those who do have jobs at all and those people, potentially even more vulnerable, who don’t? If health equality is the paramount aim, shouldn’t workplace health care provision be abolished entirely or at least heavily discouraged by the tax system? Of course that would put more pressure on the NHS which is why government wouldn’t do it, but everyone having to use the same shoddy system would be more “equal” if that’s what you’re really after.
Anyone else recall Reggie Perrin’s Doc Morrissey (no relation)?
Re the flu vaccine, the government Green Book is worth a read. Its view about vaccine efficacy, depending on age group and immunocompromised status, is surprisingly nuanced. And does acknowledge that the evidence base is a bit all over the place.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/influenza-the-green-book-chapter-19
I had a flu jab 3 weeks or so ago. I was able to decline the COVID jab and they didn’t even ask me why I didn’t want it this time. This is England if it makes a difference.
@BiND: it does say no benefit in the stylised English of science. Let me translate.
“The data included 170 million episodes of care and 7.6 million deaths” means this is a ginormous study. No problems with statistical power for us.
“Turning 65 was associated with a statistically and clinically significant increase in rate of seasonal influenza vaccination.” Because suddenly they were free on the NHS.
“However, no evidence indicated that vaccination reduced hospitalizations or mortality among elderly persons.” The vaccinations did no bloody good, neither on deaths nor serious illness.
“The estimates were precise enough to rule out results from many previous studies.” Our results knock the results of tuppeny-ha’penny wee trials into a cocked hat. You have previously been misled, my lovelies.
@dearieme
Did you actually read the study or just the PubMed summary? If you read the paper itself, the authors are explicit in their belief that continuing vaccination of the elderly is “appropriate”. In fact they propose vaccinating other age groups as standard, especially children, so that the elderly can benefit from herd effects – the rationale being that elderly people have weaker immune systems, so vaccination may be more effective in other groups. What complicates matters is that other studies have found much greater effectiveness in the elderly. And estimates seem to depend a lot on the methodology of the study… which this paper discusses, if you read the full thing. This is a regression discontinuity design, and it gives estimates closer to those found in difference-in-differences designs than those found by cohort and case-control studies. The paper doesn’t make a comparison to clinical trial results (their sample sizes generally being too small to look at mortality or even hospitalisation rates anyway), though it does note RCTs have found a protective effect.
The regression discontinuity design of this study is clever, and means it should be good at eliminating many common causes of bias, but it does come with limitations: the power isn’t as great as it sounds because there’s no link in the data between the vaccination records and the clinical outcomes (ie they don’t know which of the people who died were actually vaccinated, they’re just looking at how deaths varied by age and using age as a kind of proxy for vaccination status), the estimated effect is for those at or around age 65 only (since that’s where they modelled the discontinuity), and it only looks at hospitalisation and death rather than the rate or unpleasantness of less serious infections (for which they had no data at all, whereas RCTs often do). There may also be differences between the types of people getting vaccinated just below 65 and just after 65, in that the people doing so pre-65 are often doing so with some specific reason in mind. The study really tells you about those marginal people choosing to get vaccinated on age eligibility grounds alone, and whether the strategy of free vaccinations for that age group is affecting national hospitalisation and mortality figures. As the study didn’t model transmission, they acknowledge they can’t say much about benefits of vaccination due to herd effects (i.e. indirectly benefitting from people you socialise with being vaccinated) but the authors propose an even broader vaccination strategy would be better for this reason.
And none of this tells you much about whether you as an individual should choose to get vaccinated, e.g. because of your medical history, other than that if your only interest is in hospitalisation or death – you don’t care at all about milder infections that don’t require hospital treatment, and are indifferent to the possibility of infecting anyone else – then this study doesn’t show any benefit to doing so purely because you recently turned 65.
@BiND
A severe problem: It kills – though not quite as many as Covid poison jab – ~1,300 pa (ONS)
Risk 1, Reward 0
One thing’s for sure, whatever flu jabs they dished out when Covid arrived were pretty good, because that year, famously if not mysteriously, there were no flu deaths to speak of whatsoever.
Ain’t The Science and Totally Trustworthy Official Government Data grand!
All laugh at Theo – he believes what the government tell him!
All laugh at Joe Smith – he believes in evidence-free conspiracy theories!
JG
Just because they ain’t there, doesn’t mean shit.
Errr…
They are here…My appointment explicitly included a COVID-19 mRNA shot.
Then decline it, like I and my wife did. C19 vaccines are not compulsory. mRNA vaccines are in effect gene therapy and are best avoided. Flu vaccines vary in effectiveness but are standard technology; and I have lung fibrosis, so it’s a prudent choice for me.
“Did you actually read the study or just the PubMed summary? If you read the paper itself, the authors are explicit in their belief that continuing vaccination of the elderly is “appropriate”.”
Well duh, their careers aren’t going to get far if they go against the ‘scientific consensus’ which is to jab people with more and more ‘vaccines’ until they look like pin cushions, so of course they are going to recommend that flu shots should continue and indeed increase. Forget what scientists say, they have kids to feed and mortgages to pay, they’re bought and paid for. Look at the data and see what it says. And it says ‘Nah, don’t bother’.
@Theo
While Joe Smith was being a bit uncalled for, you did say that ‘None of flu vaccines in the UK for 2024/5 are mRNA vaccines’ and if what John Galt says is correct that seems not to be the case (Scotland still being in the UK).
Anyway, and luckily, from next year you will almost certainly be able to avail yourself of mRNA-based flu shots in England, too, if various ongoing trials show that they are safe and effective… and I suspect they will.
I’ve never bothered with the flu shots – initially because I am very fit and way below the riskier age for influenza, more recently for other, more conspiratorial, reasons.
The original purpose of vaccination was to prevent death. As vaccination has increased, have deaths decreased? I dunno – I’m sure I could find out but while you would think there would be a very simple NHS site giving headline figures like ‘No of shots, no of cases, no of deaths’ these is not, so far as I can establish from an admittedly cursory search.
(Whether such a page would be trustworthy is debatable, unfortunately.)
Deaths are easy enough to find – they’re up from 83 in 2012 to 1,598 in the peak year of 2018, at least on this ONS page
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsintheukbetween2012to2022
Even assuming all the data is accurate and unadulterated, I do question the bang we’re getting for whatever wheelbarrow load of bucks we’re shovelling at the same pharma companies who are regularly fined billions for lying about data when pushing drugs that have undeniably and literally killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Interested
…if what John Galt says is correct that seems not to be the case…
As TMB observes above, it is not clear what John means, and he hasn’t clarified what he means. In any event, there is zero evidence that any UK 2024/5 ‘flu vaccines contain any mRNA – and that includes Jockland and the porage wogs. And Joe Smith’s apparent notion that the UK government is secretly vaccinating us with mRNA is barking – such a conspiracy would soon leak…
As vaccination has increased, have deaths decreased?
Yes, broadly; but many factors influence death rates in a population (eg its age structure). Vaccines prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year. Since vaccines were introduced in the UK, diseases like smallpox, polio, tetanus, measles and diphtheria have reduced to a very low levels. (My mother’s infant sister died from diptheria in the 1920s.) That said, any medical intervention carries a risk, however small…which is why there’s a UK vaccine damage compensation scheme.
PS As you follow these matters more closely than I do, please could you let me know (on here or via Tim) of any connection between between auto-immune diseases and mRNA vaccines? My very healthy wife developed auto-immune pancreatitis following her C19 jabs. Now, correlation is not causation, but the consultants treating her both said that declining future C19 jab was “a reasonable decision in the circumstances “, even though she’s on immuno-supressants.
@Theophrastus
As TMB observes above, it is not clear what John means, and he hasn’t clarified what he means.
John’s statement, which superseded TMB’s, was: ‘My appointment explicitly included a COVID-19 mRNA shot.’
I don’t see what clarification is required?
(As it happens I think he may be mistaken, which is why I worded my reply as I did.)
Joe Smith’s apparent notion that the UK government is secretly vaccinating us with mRNA is barking – such a conspiracy would soon leak…
I also doubt they’re doing this, not least because they don’t need to, but I would add that leaking is irrelevant these days – leaking only matters if it gets traction, and it wouldn’t, because extraordinary things have been leaked, and they haven’t.
The media have ignored many amazing stories – I could give you many examples, but to take one: Prof Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool led a research study on the effectiveness of ivermectin, produced a draft report suggesting it was effective against C19, said he would advise his own brother to take it, and then back-tracked after his funders demanded he did so, his funders being the Bill Gates organisation… and admitted it all on video – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tess-lawrie-71b53652_dear-andy-short-film-activity-7141478257085841408-Tgea
To recap: a British university professor and his team were about to recommend a very safe, cheap, off-patent treatment for Covid and then they admitted that they were told not to by the people paying them $ millions, and no-one from the BBC to The Sun was interested.
So I doubt any of the mainstream media organs would carry such a leak, and it would almost certainly be removed forthwith from any social media bar Substack and Twitter, and right-thinking people would nod their heads and say it was all a conspiracy theory.
As vaccination has increased, have deaths decreased? Yes, broadly; but many factors influence death rates in a population (eg its age structure).
The population is ageing, but not so as to create the differences between 2012 and 2018 above. It’s likely to be some sort of artefact of recording, but it’s certainly interesting.
Vaccines prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year. Since vaccines were introduced in the UK, diseases like smallpox, polio, tetanus, measles and diphtheria have reduced to a very low levels.
In all cases, these diseases were in precipitous decline prior to vaccination.
I am still, just about, clinging on to vaccination as an actual thing – as I’ve said many times, because of my exotic life and working history, which required me to spend long periods in the Middle East and elsewhere, I’ve had more jabs than most. I trusted my superiors and didn’t want to die of yellow fever.
My kids were born not long after the Wakefield MMR scare, and I laughed at people who took Wakefield seriously; my kids had their MMR, and in the case of my two daughters the cervical cancer jabs, too.
I regret this now, but I am not your classical hippy ‘anti-vaxxer’; rather, what has happened over the last four years has forced me to rethink things.
I cannot believe that any thinking person who looks at the bizarre sequence of events re Covid and the official response to them can retain equanimity. I imagine many are frightened, and ‘in denial’.
PS As you follow these matters more closely than I do, please could you let me know (on here or via Tim) of any connection between between auto-immune diseases and mRNA vaccines? My very healthy wife developed auto-immune pancreatitis following her C19 jabs. Now, correlation is not causation, but the consultants treating her both said that declining future C19 jab was “a reasonable decision in the circumstances “, even though she’s on immuno-supressants.
Pancreatitis is a supposed side effect, but to be honest the best I can advise is that you read heterodox doctors and scientists who will at least give you a point of view other than that of Big Pharma and the world’s governments.
Start with someone like Pierre Kory, who was a very highly regarded ICU consultant and innovator/author of textbooks who made the mistake of saying ‘but this is all bollocks’.
His Substack will lead you to others – but hurry, if Kamala gets in it seems likely (based on her public vows) that the likes of Kory et al will be silenced as peddlers of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’.
Jacinda Arden: ‘We [the government] will continue to be your single source of truth… Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.’
Comical or terrifying – you decide.
“Because that year, famously if not mysteriously, there were no flu deaths to speak of whatsoever”
Funny, that. However, my experience is that the only time in the last couple of decades I can remember getting flu was the same year the quack foisted a “vaccine” on me…
I read Carl Heneghan’s Trust The Evidence substack. He’s an awkward bastard who is only interested in high-quality evidence on which he bases Cochrane reviews.
He doesn’t have much time for the whole concept of ‘influenza’, let alone vaccines for respiratory diseases. Consequently I’ve just politely declined my GP’s offer of this year’s jab. I’ll stick with the healthy diet and brisk walks, thanks.
The Establishment hates awkward bastards, which is why Heneghan (and many others like him) were roundly dismissed as “Vaccine Deniers”, purveyors of “Misinformation” and other such insults, during the Covid scam.
@Jim, “of course they are going to recommend that flu shots should continue and indeed increase”: quite so. But I don’t know why they reversed the usual sequence. Usually “they” relate comforting evasions and generalisations in their summary. They place the interesting stuff in the body of the paper or even tucked away in an annexe.
I remember my Section Head of decades ago: “that’s the sort of thing done by someone close to retirement (whether he knows it or not!).”
The original purpose of vaccination was to prevent death. As vaccination has increased, have deaths decreased?
@Interested Is correct
Across most vaccines, inc Flu, answer is No. Improved living standards decreased deaths…then vaccines appeared
Graphs showing deaths and vaccine introduction say it all
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-vaccines-and-the-mystery-of-polio/#the-exaggerated-role-of-vaccines-in-public-health
@Theo
connection between between auto-immune diseases and mRNA vaccines?
Yes, the mRNA jabs damage immune system. Pancreas damage also a common SAE
iirc Dr John Campbell (youtube) has covered this. Try searching DailySceptic, The Conservative Woman (TCW) and Dr Robert Malone too
@Norman correct on Heneghan & TTE
mRNA jabs for norovirus on the way:
https://archive.ph/0p6yv
Ha ha – look who’s involved:
Professor Saul Faust, NIHR vaccination innovation pathway co-clinical lead
Some more info
Steve Kirsch: VA data shows Covid boosters increased risk of hospitalisation and flu shots don’t work
Updated analysis of Veterans Affairs hospitalisation data shows that a person’s first shot might slightly reduce his or her risk of hospitalisation, but increases risk of infection by up to x6 and stops immunit
The second shot did nothing and the booster made things worse. Flu shots, meanwhile, did nothing
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