[quote hopsalong]As other posters have said, yes, if it were licensed for use in children, and there were plenty of doses (not only for older and vulnerable adults here but in EVERY country) then, yes, I would let my children have it and the vaccine had been proved to reduce transmission then, yes, I would let my children have it.
But that's a lot of if it weres! In reality, I would be critical of anyone with a healthy child clamouring for a vaccine. There are many illnesses (including some common in children, like chickenpox) for which we have a safe and effective vaccine already, but these aren't part of the routine immunisation schedule.
I suspect this might end up being a situation like chickenpox where the NHS believes it's in the interest of adults to catch chickenpox as a child. www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine-questions-answers/
And in fact chickenpox for most children is more severe than Covid. I still have scars on my face from chickenpox as a child. (No long-term effects from Covid in March.) comparing like for like, when DS tested positive for covid he had no symptoms. He was poorly for ten days with chickenpox.
See here: www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine-questions-answers/[/quote]
Yes I thought that too,* @hopsalong*.
It seems that PHE accept that under 16s (excluding vulnerable children - for whom I hope a vaccine is made available ASAP..) will at some point contract the virus naturally and "shrug it off." Thus providing increasing levels of immunity in the population... In that sense it would be very similar to the approach taken with chickenpox.
My only concern with that approach is that - unlike chickenpox - SARS-Cov-2 appears to be a virus which mutates much more quickly. It is new and we still don't fully understand it. We would need to remain really confident that children are relatively unaffected by this virus... and that includes the absence of long-term issues post infection.
The virus has - it seems - already become more transmissible to/and potentially amongst children. If it becomes more virulent, as well, then children would consequently suffer increased rates of sickness. But I appreciate that's a big if - it's not possible to predict at this stage whether will happen.
Just as the chicken pox vaccine is available privately, one would hope that eventually the vaccine is trialled on children under 16 and then made available to those parents who would feel more comfortable vaccinating their children, rather than leaving them to acquire the virus as a matter of course.
We can of course argue the ethics of whether that should be before or (more likely) after the rest of the world's vulnerable population has been vaccinated.