Context is important. That article is clearly framed as a “rapid response” to a live issue and as a letter to the editor: nobody is claiming it has the weight of a peer reviewed article.
Context of sharing and comments here is important too: Mandryka is using it to illustrate the fact that scientific discussion involves disagreement: one can’t expect a consensus on everything all the time, that can then be opposed to “politics” or whatever.
I shared it initially to point out that there is a debate specifically about vaccinating children and that it’s dishonest of Scully to pretend otherwise: you don’t have to assume that the JCVI is corrupt or incompetent to explain their decision, and in fact you need a very, very good reason to make the insinuation.
No problem with that at all. Even a 'rapid response' needs to be valid and this one hints/suggests/draws at a concluion that is not valid. The BMJ might see it as a valid point to raise as a discussion point, but any regulatory agency would throw that out in an instant. The data he presents has only one possible valid inference - no statistically valid difference between serious events in vaccinated vs placebo groups. If one of my (clinical research) team had written that letter iot would have been covered in red ink and sent back for re-writing.
Just to show I have checked the numbers, for the assertion to be valid, the study would have required close on 3 times the number of observations.