The haste of the MHRA’s Pfizer vaccine approval is a cause for concern, but bear in mind that the verification clock was started well before the trial was complete: the SOPs and statistical methods for prospective Covid vaccines were submitted for inspection at the beginning. The MHRA governs Good Clinical Practice training for clinical trials, and (at least with regard to the Oxford/AstraZeneca studies) they were monitoring the protocols from the outset.
It’s now standard practice to make the research datasets available for public inspection, but make allowances for the fact that it takes a lot longer to anonymise the data (and to verify the anonymity independently) than it does to publish the statistical results.
The study will no doubt be scrutinised carefully by critics both internal and external. Indeed, a lengthy summary of technical grounds for scepticism of the Pfizer vaccine approval was submitted as a petition to the FDA and the EMA on 1 December. It was co-authored by Dr Mike Yeadon (the scientific genius who assured us a few months ago that the pandemic was virtually over and there would be no second wave because the huge increase in detected “cases” was an illusion due to the prevalence of false positives in mass PCR testing; presumably, the subsequent increase in covid-related deaths is an illusion too.)
The 43-page petition for regulatory action is hosted at Health Impact News as a PDF document. The full text is available in HTML format at a dedicated website: StopPfizer.com.
At first glance the petition seems quite impressive, as it’s packed with scientific jargon and cited text. However, a skim read suggests that it features a number of typical anti-vaxxer tropes and covid-cynic memes: e.g. that the vaccine will render people infertile, that the PCR test is unreliable and nearly all positive results are false, and that facemasks don’t protect against contamination.
I think it’s wise to get familiar with that petition because it’s inevitably going to be widely circulated over the next few days by covid cynics. It’s likely that much of it will be debunked by fact checkers in due course, but there might be some valid wheat amongst the chaff.