Would you vaccinate your child?

[rolloverrosie]

Have just seen a post (in the daily Mail, sorry) suggesting that all over 12s could be offered a vaccine from September. It made mention of the AZ vaccine trials in children above 6 so I am unsure whether this vaccine is one of the ones planned for use?

This was along side the news that the az vaccine carries a 1 in 126000 chance of death.

Bearing in mind that 14 people under 20 have died of Covid.

How is this a sensible risk/benefit analysis?!

I am in my late 30s and when I did the Covid calculator my risk of dying if I caught Covid (which is obviously not a guaranteed thing) is 1 in 145000 so I am assuming the risk for a 12 year old is thousands of times less than that.

Who would vaccinate their children?

No I wouldn't. I'm whole heartedly pro vaccine for adults but it feels very unethical to vaccinate children when the risks clearly outweigh the benefits. My views may change later down the line (after significant more research and trials have been completed) but I certainly wouldn't allow it at this stage.

@feesh

The trouble is that if kids aren’t vaccinated, the virus will evolve to be more successful in kids, and that possibly will lead to further mutations which eventually beat the adult vaccines.

Who's to say the virus won't mutate to become weaker? Just like the 1918 flu virus did for example that never had a vaccine

It's funny how people haven't been bothered about community transmission of flu and getting vaccinated for that for the "greater good". Could that be because they actually have to pay for that vaccine and it doesn't affect their chance for promised freedom. No one's been bothered about protecting the grannies before but now everyone needs to be vaccinated all of a sudden regardless of whether they need it.

@choosername1234

DS was signed up for the current children's trial. Unfortunately he contracted covid 2 days before he was due to start the trial

How ill did he get, out of interest?

Just like the 1918 flu virus did for example that never had a vaccine

After it had first mutated to become stronger and much more deadly, and had worked its way through around a third of the world’s population.

Selection pressures on viruses are a very variable issue - and very different for Covid than for influenza, not least because of the big differences in the incubation periods, likely degree and period of infectiousness before symptoms, and rate of asymptomatic transmission.

Big big no from me. 2 girls aged 3 & 1. They’re up to date with all other vaccinations but I can’t justify this one, I would want more info and the risk just outweighs the benefit for them for me.

It's funny how people haven't been bothered about community transmission of flu and getting vaccinated for that for the "greater good"

People have tended to follow the prevailing public health advice, yes.

Including getting children vaccinated against influenza because there’s pretty good evidence they are significant transmitters of that infection. Plus it can be a nasty bugger, but my understanding is that children’s health is not the primary driver for the JCVI advice here.

@Wildswim

No way. It's highly unethical and historically unprecedented to vaccinate a child against a disease which poses no risk to them. It's a very troubling development.

Plus the Covid jabs are not traditional vaccines - they are experimental gene therapy. Don't contradict me - this is fact and stated in the literature of the drug companies.

Anyone prepared to vaccinate their child is putting them at risk when they don't need to be.

I'm astounded it's even been mooted.

Astrazeneca too? I always thought that it was the pfizer and moderna that were new methods.

@SophieGiroux

It's funny how people haven't been bothered about community transmission of flu and getting vaccinated for that for the "greater good". Could that be because they actually have to pay for that vaccine and it doesn't affect their chance for promised freedom. No one's been bothered about protecting the grannies before but now everyone needs to be vaccinated all of a sudden regardless of whether they need it.

I have as a vulnerable person. I'm not a granny. I've asked colleagues a billion times not to come close to me when they have the flu and they just never cared that it could put me in hospital for weeks. Too many people selfishly won't do anything to keep a vulnerable person safe.

Who's to say the virus won't mutate to become weaker? Just like the 1918 flu virus did for example that never had a vaccine
After it killed an estimated 50 million people.
Currently the world has logged 3 million deaths from covid and 2% of the world infected; of course that's an underestimate so let's say 7% infected and 10 million deaths so far. Herd immunity is thought to begin at around 70%. That means without vaccination the world faces perhaps 10 times as many deaths as we have seen in the past 18 months. In my opinion it might be nice to avoid that if possible.

The AZ vaccine is not experimental gene therapy

14 year old boy. He will have vaccine if offered one. Same as I give him every other vaccine offered.

My eldest 2 are already talking about it (16&14). Obviously at that age they will have a say just like their teen vaccinations, which they chose to have. Both are saying they wouldn’t want a Covid vaccination anytime soon. As things stand I would support them and the younger two (6&4) wouldn’t be vaccinated either. I would want to see the data on effectiveness and side effects a few years done the line first. As we were kept being told Covid poses minimum risk to children so no rush to vaccinate them.

Yep.
I don't understand most people's objections. Certain people have reasonable reasons not to, but most don't.

@Daisydoor12 "Both are saying they wouldn’t want a Covid vaccination anytime soon."
What are their reasons why not?

Absolutely not.

Yes, but I have a child with type 1.

@RedcurrantPuff

The AZ vaccine is not experimental gene therapy

Yes - and none of them are "experimental gene therapy". Can't find the original comment from @wildswim but will absolutely correct it!

Firstly, "experimental" - the vaccines are approved for use in adults. Children will only be offered vaccination once clinical trials have taken place to test the safety profile in under 16s/under 18s.

Secondly, they are not gene therapy. Moderna currently uses this classification (as it is a vaccine made of nucleic acid) due to outdated legislation - Pfizer doesn't and AZ doesn't. Pfizer and Moderna use exactly the same mechanism but are labelled differently.

Gene therapy involves changing someone's genetic material to try and ease symptoms of a genetic disease. It's risky and has a large profile of side effects, largely due to that fact that it is difficult to control where the new piece of DNA integrates into the person's DNA. If it happens to interrupt an important gene, this can lead to things like cancer. In the context of treating nasty genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, SCID or muscular dystrophy, this risk is justified, but in the case of developing a vaccine for the general population it would be insane.

An mRNA vaccine is not capable of altering your genetic material - it goes nowhere near your DNA. All it does is borrow your ribosomes (the cell organelle where proteins are made), to translate the code for spike proteins into actual spike proteins so your immune system can mount a response.

Full rationale of why an mRNA vaccine can't alter your DNA (backed up by 100s of years of research into genetics & viruses - cell, animal and human data):

1. mRNA doesn't go anywhere near the nucleus, which is where your DNA is kept
2. Even if it could, your cells aren't able to convert mRNA to DNA
3. Even if they could, your cells don't have the enzyme required to integrate new pieces of DNA into your DNA

This is an area I have a fair of background in so super happy to try and answer questions if anyone is interested or wants to know more!

And I've started adding this into all my posts - no one should have to have a vaccine if they don't want to, for whatever reason. But equally, no one should be coerced or scared into not taking it up because of scientific misinformation.

After it had first mutated to become stronger and much more deadly, and had worked its way through around a third of the world’s population

It’s not clear that a mutation was responsible for that, still quite a debate among experts as to why this happened. There’s a school of thought that poor postwar conditions were responsible for it.

I have as a vulnerable person. I'm not a granny. I've asked colleagues a billion times not to come close to me when they have the flu and they just never cared that it could put me in hospital for weeks. Too many people selfishly won't do anything to keep a vulnerable person safe

Just out of curiosity, would you consider wearing a mask during flu season to protect yourself?

It’s not clear that a mutation was responsible for that, still quite a debate among experts as to why this happened. There’s a school of thought that poor postwar conditions were responsible for it.

Given the lack of actual virus sequencing from the time it’s possible to have numerous competing theories. There is one memorable MN poster who doesn’t believe in viruses at all and thinks the Spanish flu was caused by collective trauma after the war, exacerbated by poor nutrition etc. She wasn’t quite able to explain why some Pacific islands were just as badly, or worse affected, despite their lack of any war-related trauma or shortages related to the fighting, than France, for example.

The current prevailing theory favours a mutation, particularly given the shift to a demographic W-curve for those worst affected, but always happy to see counter-arguments if you’d care to share. The end of the war and huge displacements of individuals certainly did help it to spread globally, sure - probably created a much worse pandemic than would have been otherwise - but it doesn’t really explain the W curve.

So I was probably by imprecise before I suggesting that the whole impact of the second wave was down to a mutation - and I apologise for that. But given a lot of the increased movement of people that drove later waves were already present to some degree during the first wave, I don’t think you can put excessive weight on it either.

No way. I am preparing for a battle with my ex husband about this.

And for context, he's up to date with all the routine vaccinations.

Which is reassuring oldegg but why then is it states that it’s “highly unlikely” that the mRNA vaccine can alter DNA?

Either we know it doesn’t and we can say so or we are worried it might - and this latter bit honestly terrifies me given we don’t seem
To know for sure