No vaccines for healthy 12-15 Yr olds

[Wellbythebloodyhell]

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccines-will-not-be-recommended-for-healthy-children-aged-12-to-15-government-advisers-say-12398444

Is anyone else glad this potential decision has been taken away? I was very much undecided about vaccinating my older dc and now feel a bit of a weight has been lifted now its not something I need to consider.

If they do, will they do it in schools, like the flu?

Yes, the plans have been drawn up, the govt was just waiting (increasingly impatiently) for the JCVI to report to kick it all off.

Ermmm... I think you'll find I do!! That does not mean that it is not (when medically deemed mild) treatable with OTC drugs.

The medical profession loves the word mild. Well aware that the public don't think mild means what the medical professions thinks.

My main point is that the risk of myocarditis is 450 per million for 12-17 year old males as a result of covid. Want to avoid it : the vaccine is a better bet than covid.

@noblegiraffe

If they do, will they do it in schools, like the flu?

Yes, the plans have been drawn up, the govt was just waiting (increasingly impatiently) for the JCVI to report to kick it all off.

My team have been told to prepare, but the local centre has also been told they’re doing 12-15’s, so no one seems to know ! It will be very disruptive to us if we do as we’ll have to delay flu.

@Plumbear2 12 year olds shouldn't be able to make that choice for themselves. There's obviously a reason why they've said no to vaccinating children and I don't think a 12 year old knows better than them. All the way through everyone has said listen to the experts, now the experts have said something they don't agree with it's listen to the children. 12-15 year olds can't make that decision because the information is too complicated for them to decide.

I agree with beware that comparing this number with the number that end up in ICU with covid is a bit disingenuous. Why not compare with the number of hospitalisations??

It has also been pointed out that the JCVI haven’t compared deaths from covid in healthy kids (some) with death from vaccine (none).

Their analysis is very sparse. They must have known it was contentious yet have knocked out a handful of tables, left out some fairly obvious stuff but not explained why leaving it open to speculation (lc) then handed the actual decision over to Chris Whitty.

I also didn't see mentioned anything yesterday about only offering one dose, as per 16 and 17 year olds.

@CoopsMalloops,

By default, you want to give your child a ‘medical’ intervention.

You can just choose between injecting a novel (but well tested) vaccine or an infection with a fairly novel zoonotic virus.

Me, my children will take the vaccine ASAP.

I suspect we are not aware of true infection rates at the moment, due to school holidays having meant no routine testing. I work in the community and meet lots of families who are now dismissing symptoms as bad colds (which they might be of course) and aren't bothering to test. Lots have had enough of it all, and the ignoring symptoms is part of " life being back to normal" feeling. My fingers are crossed, but I think there will be huge disruption in secondary schools again if they resume testing. I am aware of a residential home near me that is in the middle of significant outbreak too, and have had to go back into a lockdown, despite staff and residents being double jabbed and regularly tested, and visitors testing too. I can understand people being worried about their children having vaccines that have not been subjected to studies over a long period of time. It's very different to deciding the risk is worth it for yourself. Will vaccines be able to keep up with variants? How often are people prepared to have brand new vaccines if needed to keep up? I'm not confident we can control this virus. I worry about future variants becoming more dangerous for children. My personal decision is to follow government advice, regarding protecting society as a whole, and try to live life as normally as possible within those boundaries. Things are too muddled and uncertain to try to balance risks myself - that way madness lies, as there are obvious holes in every theory and approach.

If a scientists are advising against it then I'd rather listen to them than the government any day!

The vaccine is voluntary. Even if approved for 12-16 they are not going to be forced to have it.

I don’t understand why some people are so upset about a voluntary vaccine. Let those who want it have it and those who don’t want it can choose not to have it.

They aren't advising against it though, are they; they aren't' advising for it, and have recommended further advice be taken. That's rather different.

Personnaly I would like my dd 14 to be vaccinated but in lets say 6 months, not now as she has just covid. I want the anti-bodies to do their work !

@walksen

I'm just not sure why you you are comparing obesity to pregnancy then?

At the start of the pandemic it was noted that admissions were disproportionately old, male, obese, bame etc.
I.e the proportion in Icu was higher than that of the general population indicating that those groups were at higher risk from the virus. You could look up what this proportion is I suppose

So 20% of women in ICU being pregnant compared to 5% at the start of the pandemic strongly suggests they are also at slightly higher risk currently than women who are not pregnant. Midwives etc are advising pregnant mothers to get jabbed.

You said “You know patients on ICU wards in the uk are disproportionately pregnant women with delta variant right?”

Which makes it sound like pregnant women are making up a large proportion of those in critical care - such as those who were old/male/obese etc. But it doesn’t really look like it from those tables/charts. 169 pregnant critical care patients from sept-April 2021 and 166 from May until now.

I just wondered why you’d specifically said that critical care wards are disproportionately pregnant women rather than disproportionately .

The pregnant women being admitted could also have comorbidities or be obese. That preprint article based on the UKOSS cohort from the summer which looked at maternal infection and perinatal outcomes during the wildtype, alpha and delta periods found that “Across all three periods, the majority of women were overweight or obese.”

I don’t understand why some people are so upset about a voluntary vaccine. Let those who want it have it and those who don’t want it can choose not to have it

The parents who are ‘upset’ about it haven’t actually had any say though, they’re not on the JCVI. The JCVI are responsible for making a recommendation, which they have done. I am sure the government will ignore it anyway.

The flu vaccine is offered to an increasing number of children each year - the programme expanded to the whole of the primary age group quite a while ago, and then started on the secondary age groups. It has been public policy for years to extend the flu vaccination regime right up through the age groups in schools. Its primary aim has never been to protect the actual children - its motivation is to stop spread to the elderly, and it is openly admitted it is because children are seen as spreaders more than being in serious need of protection. So, is flu, which a far smaller proportion of 12-15 year olds are likely to catch this year than pandemic covid, likely to cause more hospitalisations, deaths and long term complications in that age group than pandemic covid unless they are vaccinated?

@walksen

I'm very pro vaccines by the way, and I know they're excellent at preventing hospitalisation and death.

PHE Technical Briefing 22 released yesterday shows the death rate among unvaccinated covid cases is 24 per 10,000 whereas the death rate among double vaccinated covid cases is 96 per 10,000.
Since 1st Feb, of the 1798 total deaths 1091 were double jabbed and only 536 unvaccinated. The rest were single jabbed

So how are you interpreting these statistics?

Well, the death rate is still highest in older groups (PHE) and they are quite likely double vaccinated. Younger people are still less likely than older people to die from covid, even if they are unvaccinated.

Not all scientists are advising against it though, it's just that the health benefits are smaller, but vaccination would still be beneficial, just not to the extent that it is for vulnerable adults. It should still be offered imo.

@FfrothiCoffi

I don’t understand why some people are so upset about a voluntary vaccine. Let those who want it have it and those who don’t want it can choose not to have it

The parents who are ‘upset’ about it haven’t actually had any say though, they’re not on the JCVI. The JCVI are responsible for making a recommendation, which they have done. I am sure the government will ignore it anyway.

I still don’t understand what the problem is. Is anyone going to be forced to have a vaccine against their wishes?

Am I missing something? Genuine question. Not being a GF

The flu vaccine IS given to children to prevent flu in them, as well as flu in the elderly and those who can’t have the vaccine.

I can only think those against it are looking across to France and thinking there will come a time here where vaccinated and unvaccinated children are treated differently.

@Nancydrawn

Yes, it's hard to realize just how different this feels than it did before.

I'm less worried for the northern states, which have high adult vaccination rates and mandatory school masking.

In the south, there's often low vaccination rates and a ban on school masking.

Georgia's an interesting blend: slightly higher vaccination rates than Alabama and Mississippi; no ban on masks like Florida. Each district makes its own call; about a third have a mask requirement.

And these are the pictures of the numbers, taken from their covid dashboard. Schools started in early August. It's bloody terrifying.

Why is it terrifying? The us are a few weeks behind us with delta. If you look at the ons data you can see a sharp rise in cases in young people at the start of the summer. It didn’t translate to a huge number of young people in hospital.

Yes goodnight, just as a covid vaccine would be??

Surely rubella (and HPV for boys) are a better examples of altruistic vaccines?

suspect we are not aware of true infection rates at the moment, due to school holidays having meant no routine testing. I work in the community and meet lots of families who are now dismissing symptoms as bad colds (which they might be of course) and aren't bothering to test. Lots have had enough of it all, and the ignoring symptoms is part of " life being back to normal" feeling.

I think this is what we're seeing. I doubt there was much incentive to test for many people when there wasn't the risk of missing school without proof of a negative.

@GoodnightGrandma

The flu vaccine IS given to children to prevent flu in them, as well as flu in the elderly and those who can’t have the vaccine.

It isn’t given to prevent flu, it is given to reduce the chances of getting it or getting it severely - a bit like covid vaccines. So, how much more serious, generally, is flu in a 12-15 year old than covid? Personally, I would quite like my children to have some protection from a virus it is a near certainty they will be exposed to in the very near future.

Mild cases of myocarditis can be treated with ibuprofen.

Mild cases of coronavirus (which is what the vast majority of young people will have) don’t require any treatment at all.