School pupils vaccinated from September

[Totalbeach]

This is in lots of papers today. Such as:

www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/19274021.secondary-school-pupils-set-get-covid-jab-september/

And:

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/02/nhs-england-draws-up-plan-to-give-covid-jabs-to-children-12-and-over

What’s your reaction?

Mine is that I 100% won’t be allowing my children to be vaccinated.

In the whole pandemic so far, 12 children under 15 have died in the U.K. That increases to 32 in the under 20s. The mortality rate is vanishingly tiny. A huge percentage of kids don’t even get symptoms at all.

The government has assured us till they are blue in the face that schools are safe and that children don’t spread it so it will be interesting to see what kind of enormous gaslighting they attempt to pull off to persuade parents they now need to vaccinate their kids.

The long term effects of the vaccines are totally unknown and recent events with AZ have proved rather horribly that even after a vaccine is rolled out, serious effects can come to light. Including events that disproportionately affect certain age groups.

I’m fully vaccinated (including first Covid vaccine) as are my kids but there is no way I’d let them be vaccinated in September. With any of the vaccines.

Statistically , cv is a threat to the elderly and people with serious underlying conditions, so what do healthy people need to vaccinate from?

Statistically, my house is very unlikely to burn down. I still have homeowners insurance because if it does, the impact would be catastrophic.

One of the last patients I had code on me was a 32 year old mum with no health issues. Vaccinating is a way of reducing the risk of a severe outcome regardless.

so what do healthy people need to vaccinate from?

Healthy people get vaccinated to protect themselves and the community, of which they and their family are a part. Plenty of “healthy” people have lost their health and their lives through Covid. The ONS will release its annual mortality dataset in June 2021, which will give a detailed analysis. However, between March and June 2020 (so the “first wave”, less serious than subsequently), it appears that just under 5000 people with no identified underlying conditions died of Covid.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathswithnounderlyingconditionsoccurringinnhshospitals

You can also 'lose' your health at any time from some other cause. So it's in your interests to be protected. Because you don't know what life will throw at you next.

Even if you get a mild case (which is often jargon for 'does not require hospital' rather than 'barely ill') you can feel shit for a couple of weeks. Assuming you don't get a long form.

And of course in some people, the jab will not 'take' properly, and that is more likely with some types of underlying condition. So if the disease continues to circulate freely, there will still be a real human cost. Plus continued demand on health services.

Also, disease circulating in the party's of a community that is unimmunised sets the optimal conditions for new variants to emerge, which either become more transmissible in younger people or which escape immunity - not because the virus has the 'intenton' to do that but because any variation which drifts in that direction will be successful.

And it's least impact on everyone for rates to be low - restrictions are barely needed, and even some indoors gatherings will be starting soon. But that's on the assumption of high vax levels across the whole population to keep transmission low. If that's not the case, then I think the chance of avoiding restrictions in the autumn will vanish

I don’t care about avoiding restrictions if it means the alternative is vaccinating my healthy child with a new vaccine with unknown long term effects.

@Lucidas But the main point is that this is just a classic way in which humans miscalculate risk: we worry more about the risks of taking action than we do about the risks of inaction. So it appears “less risky” to be passive and do nothing to stop your child getting covid, than it is to actively inject them with something. Even if that calculation is patently illogical
the tendency to perceive consequences as being worse when they result from action rather than inaction (i.e., omission).

Thanks for that. Though it's clear from the responses on this thread that no-one is going to change their minmds regardless of what they read!
I'm aware that my own perception of risk is unscientific, and this is really helpful. I am having to decide on taking a drug. It's a drug to prevent a potentially life changing illness that I might not get. The drug has a small risk of a very bad side effect and I am torn. My GP likened it to wearing a seatbelt. You don't know whether the car will crash but if it does you'll be happy you wore it.

The seatbelt analogy is wrong. A seatbelt can’t harm you.

Equally it’s not ‘insurance against your house burning down’ as the insurance can’t harm you (or stop the fire).

Also, disease circulating in the party's of a community that is unimmunised sets the optimal conditions for new variants to emerge, which either become more transmissible in younger people or which escape immunity - not because the virus has the 'intenton' to do that but because any variation which drifts in that direction will be successful

Unless you plan to seal the borders for years on end, this is the reality anyways.

Unless you plan to seal the borders for years on end, this is the reality anyway

I don't.

I do however want to see the optimal conditions for that sort of drift/shift to be reduced as widely as possible.

They’d rather risk vaccinating our children than close the borders properly. People all off on their holidays this summer then an untested vaccine in our kids in autumn? No thanks.

It's not an untested vaccine.

By the time we would likely be asked to decide many countries will have already vaccinated their teens months before. We can have lots of good data and feedback to add to all the trial and real world data we already have.

The seatbelt analogy is wrong. A seatbelt can’t harm you.

Actually, they can trap you in a car after an accident. I keep a car escape tool in my car for just that reason.

I don't know how anyone can consider Pfizer/Biotech an "untested vaccine" at this point, with clinical trials complete and hundreds of millions of doses given.

It never ceases to amaze me how successfully the antivaccine movement has been able to instill a reflexive fear of vaccines in some people despite them being one of the safest medical interventions we have and the millions of lives they save.

Vaccines are 'one of the safest interventions we have,' thanks to ongoing FDA monitoring

Please don't with the seatbelts. My mother wouldn't let any of us wear one as children. For the reason Miss has said. Don't think us going through the car windscreen would have been safer

how successfully the antivaccine movement has been able to instill a reflexive fear of vaccines in some people

I was offered an MMR vaccine at the doctors this week because they couldn’t see one in on my records and measles is on the increase.

Well done antivaxxers for that

Don't think us going through the car windscreen would have been safer

Seatbelts are a pretty good analogy for vaccines. You are vastly, hugely safer in an MVA with one than without one, but there is still a small risk to using them.

I was offered an MMR vaccine at the doctors this week because they couldn’t see one in on my records and measles is on the increase.

Well done antivaxxers for that

We have a similar problem with measles here. This is the case that really demonstrates to me the damage anti-vaxxers do:

Unvaccinated Boy, 6, Spent 57 Days In The Hospital With Tetanus

He spent 47 days in the ICU. It's a miracle that he survived. His parents still wouldn't consent to the booster jab.

Sorry Miss I think misinterpreted my anecdotal sarcasm and Noblegiraffe was being sarcastic too.

We agree with you honey

They is so much antivax stuff on the board in the last couple of weeks. Disguised as helpful advice of course.

I think people are getting very blinkered to why we need to vaccinate. They truly believe that the numbers going down means we are out of the woods now. Which means they are willing to believe a random on the internet telling not to have a second dose or to delay vaccination for a few weeks etc. I really thought we had this but if mumsnet is anything to go by I despair.

I think people are getting very blinkered to why we need to vaccinate. They truly believe that the numbers going down means we are out of the woods now. Which means they are willing to believe a random on the internet telling not to have a second dose or to delay vaccination for a few weeks etc. I really thought we had this but if mumsnet is anything to go by I despair.

Right. Numbers are low in the UK because the country only recently came out of lockdown. The numbers rose again last time the UK came out of lockdown.

This time the difference is vaccination, and as yet the UK is not at herd immunity.

I'm in a US state where we have more than 50% fully vaccinated. We came out of lockdown last summer. Our hospitals are as full now as they were last year, but now they're full of unvaccinated people, and they're much younger on average.

Don't get me wrong I think are road map could work and the vaccination roll out was perfect in its timing to achieve that.

However people will cock this up if they prat about and don't get jabbed when asked too. The timeline for herd immunity and the opening up of the UK is a very fragile thing. Now we have the India variant trying to take hold too. The vaccines work well against that one. However not if you haven't got the vaccine put in your arm.

American scientists advising against vaccinating children for Covid

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/07/covid-vaccines-for-children-should-not-get-emergency-use-authorization/

They're not actually advising against vaccinating children for Covid.

They're advising against emergency use authorization of vaccines for children, and recommending that the vaccine be rolled out via the standard regulatory process.

It's not an untested vaccine.

Oh right - so tell me how many babies have been born since women got this vaccine? How many children have started or gone through puberty and normal growth since getting their vaccine? Oh yes that’s right - none. Because it’s a new vaccine and even new technology. The mess that is AZ shows us that there is plenty of scope for catastrophic events to emerge after a vaccine has been ‘tested’ and rolled out as ‘safe’. Who knows what else they don’t know about these new vaccines?

And by the way it’s lazy bullshit to write off anyone who disagrees with you as anti vax. I’ve had all my vaccines (including the MMR!) and so have my kids. I even naively got a first dose of AZ back when I trusted them that there was no link to the blood clot news that was emerging in Europe. Being horrified watching a situation emerge that the scientists had NO IDEA would happen and realising that they don’t actually fully understand the vaccine is not anti vax.

Well nine women accidentally got pregnant whilst doing a vaccine trial in Brazil last year. Apparently no problems with their pregnancies. So that is a start.

Unless one side effect turns out to be accidental pregnancy of course

That bmj article seems to be saying that the current plans for emergency use covid vaccines for children is an abuse of that system as there is no emergency for children. The cost-benefit threshold is not being reached for non-cv children and mass roll out under emergency regulations and the inevitable few cases of children becoming unwell could increase vaccine hesitancy and so is counterproductive.

You do know the BMJ is often found to be talking twaddle don't you. It is for doctors about the interests of doctors. Not scientific facts or anything. They did a lovely one about how dangerous and terrible the 12 week gap between doses would be. That the doctors should follow the the 4 week gap Pfizer recommend. That was shared around mumsnet like it was gospel. Well we all know how wrong they turned out to be don't we