What is the point of the 12-15 vaccinations?

[loveandroses]

I am 100% pro vaccination and we should all get double vaccinated as soon as possible if we haven't already. But there is something about the 12-15 vaccination programme that is confusing me.

The UK scientific view as I understand it is that there is marginals health benefit (any benefit is good) but that the larger benefit will be to stop educational disruption. From a scientific point of view, how does this make sense?

I thought (please correct me if I am wrong) that with the delta variant and one dose there was very little decrease in infection but more (although not that much) decrease in illness. If the children are infected they can't go to school even if they are not ill so how does this help?

I don’t understand your point here. Morally superior? Catching COVID is not about morality?

It’s a dig at the poster who made a snarky comment that people might be “in denial” about being obese. I’ll annotate clearly next time to avoid confusion.

@UsedUpUsername

While obesity does increase your risk, being skinny and having no underlying conditions didn’t protect my son from covid, Mis-c, heart problems

Risk is not spread evenly among the population, as you know. An elderly, obese man is at magnitudes more risk than a young boy. Yet, we’ve read news reports of people 100+ years old that survived COViD with no issues. They are outliers.

It’s not a clear cut virus that only affects certain groups, as much as that would make you feel safer/morally superior

I don’t understand your point here. Morally superior? Catching COVID is not about morality?

It’s a fact that obesity is a primary risk factor. People should know that so they can make a better decision for themselves.

It's also a fact that the advice from the country's leading doctors is to get vaccinated.

Also that the benefits outweigh the risks, including for age 12-15.

People should know so that they can make a better decision for themselves.

[quote BewareTheLibrarians]@bumbleymummy I must be imagining the flu vaccination programmes in schools, for the elderly, for people who work in healthcare, and private companies who provide access to flu vaccination for employees? You’d think I’d daydream about far more important things than that.

Anyway. This thread is about vaccinating children. Who also receive the flu vaccine at school. Which is strongly recommended, for the reasons I outlined in my last post.

The adverse reactions after the vaccine are rarer than adverse effects after covid. Again, see the links in my previous post.

It doesn’t make any sense to me to be so scared of a rare side effect after a vaccine (remembering that cases of myocarditis after the vaccine tend to be mild and resolve without medical intervention) but so blasé about an illness known to cause organ/vascular damage even after mild cases.

And yet again, on this thread, we see the damage of the lack of clarity around the JCVI’s message.[/quote]
Perhaps you misread the original comment and my reply? It was that we all need to be vaccinated against coronavirus. So again, we don’t say that we all need to be vaccinated against flu.

Not ‘scared’ about the vaccine at all. I’m just not scared about the virus either based on on the studies I’ve read and the data I’ve seen.

@gamerchick no, not obsessed. Why are you so sensitive to comments about people’s weight putting them at risk?

@BewareTheLibrarians

I don’t understand your point here. Morally superior? Catching COVID is not about morality?

It’s a dig at the poster who made a snarky comment that people might be “in denial” about being obese. I’ll annotate clearly next time to avoid confusion.

It wasn’t actually a snarky comment. Many people don’t realise (or accept) that they are overweight or obese.

My dd1 (nearly 13) got her 1st dose Pfizer jab a few days ago at school. She was told she would have to have a 2nd dose at a later stage and I think I read somewhere online that it would be no earlier than next spring - so in about 6 months. Her school have the flu nasal spray booked in for December which is later than usual, as it's normally in November!

Dd2's school are having the flu nasal spray in November and my primary school had it yesterday, so just goes to show how spread out the dates can be!

@herecomesthsun the benefits did not outweigh the risks enough for the JCVI to recommend it for 12-15 year olds given that ‘substantial uncertainty remains regarding the health risks associated with these adverse events.’

@bumbleymummy but if you don’t care about the health risks (including long term) associated with covid, why do you care about the health risks associated with the vaccine?

I wonder if some people feel that if their kids catch covid it wasn’t their (the parents) fault, but if they have an adverse effect after the vaccine that they’ve decided their children should take, they feel it’s more their “fault”? I mean, they shouldn’t feel like that but it’s understandable. Otherwise there’s some massive cognitive dissonance going on.

Also no, I didn’t miss your comment that “all” should have the flu vaccine. Do we currently have over 100 deaths a day due to influenza, despite it being off season for respiratory diseases? Becomes I imagine if we did, the government/NHS would be pushing for everyone to be vaccinated. As with covid.

Christ’s sake. Not a hundred deaths a day, over a hundred deaths a week. Maths is not my strong point and apparently neither are words

[quote bumbleymummy]@herecomesthsun the benefits did not outweigh the risks enough for the JCVI to recommend it for 12-15 year olds given that ‘substantial uncertainty remains regarding the health risks associated with these adverse events.’[/quote]
But they DID outweigh the risks (even for the JCVI) and benefits (including that of less disruption in education) CLEARLY outweighed the risks as far as the Chief Medical Officers were concerned.

And I agree with them.

[quote bumbleymummy]@gamerchick no, not obsessed. Why are you so sensitive to comments about people’s weight putting them at risk?[/quote]
Not sensitive. It's not the only thing you bang on about on these threads (every one). I'm starting to think that you have a copy/paste sheet somewhere to save you time.

Why are you so sensitive that you have to repeat yourself over and over saying the same stuff? Are you like this IRL?

[quote BewareTheLibrarians]@bumbleymummy but if you don’t care about the health risks (including long term) associated with covid, why do you care about the health risks associated with the vaccine?

I wonder if some people feel that if their kids catch covid it wasn’t their (the parents) fault, but if they have an adverse effect after the vaccine that they’ve decided their children should take, they feel it’s more their “fault”? I mean, they shouldn’t feel like that but it’s understandable. Otherwise there’s some massive cognitive dissonance going on.

Also no, I didn’t miss your comment that “all” should have the flu vaccine. Do we currently have over 100 deaths a day due to influenza, despite it being off season for respiratory diseases? Becomes I imagine if we did, the government/NHS would be pushing for everyone to be vaccinated. As with covid.[/quote]
I didn’t say I ‘didn’t care’ I said I wasn’t scared (of the vaccine or the virus).

Yes, in a bad flu year we do. We still don’t say that we ‘all need to be vaccinated against flu’ and actually we’ve only really started rolling it out to older children this year.

If you didn’t misread my comment then I don’t understand why you replied the way you did tbh.

@herecomesthsun

“ Overall, the committee is of the opinion that the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms (tables 1 to 4) but acknowledges that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms. The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time.”

@loveandroses

I am 100% pro vaccination and we should all get double vaccinated as soon as possible if we haven't already. But there is something about the 12-15 vaccination programme that is confusing me.

The UK scientific view as I understand it is that there is marginals health benefit (any benefit is good) but that the larger benefit will be to stop educational disruption. From a scientific point of view, how does this make sense?

I thought (please correct me if I am wrong) that with the delta variant and one dose there was very little decrease in infection but more (although not that much) decrease in illness. If the children are infected they can't go to school even if they are not ill so how does this help?

It is so the government can say they are doing something.

@gamerchick no, it really isn’t. I started a thread about it around the start of the year iirc and I think I mentioned it again a few weeks ago (and maybe on another thread over the summer?) hardly ‘banging on’. Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else?

[quote bumbleymummy]@herecomesthsun

“ Overall, the committee is of the opinion that the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms (tables 1 to 4) but acknowledges that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms. The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time.”[/quote]
Reported 22 September in the Guardian

Whitty and Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, appeared before the Commons education committee over the decision to offer Covid vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds...

Van-Tam told MPs that “lower [risk] does not mean anything close to zero” for children in the age group because of the Delta variants higher infectiousness.

“.. it is really quite inevitable that they will be [infected] at some point.

“The point of infection, if left to happen, is not of their choosing, and may be at a point in their educational careers, thinking particularly of GCSEs and A-levels when it is extremely inconvenient to be laid low, albeit for a short number of days, with cough, fever, and respiratory symptoms,” Van-Tam said.

Whitty told MPs said any time in school missed through being inoculated should be balanced against the longer period lost to those who were infected. “You’re not comparing a child being vaccinated against nothing happening, you’re comparing a child being vaccinated against a near-certainty that child will get Covid,” Whitty said.

and www.itv.com/news/2021-09-13/covid-vaccines-for-teenagers-expected-to-be-approved-by-chief-medical-officers

"Professor Whitty also warned the pandemic is not over and said: "Anybody who believes the big risk of Covid is all in the past has not understood where we are going to head as [we] go into autumn and winter,...

He said vaccination “will reduce education disruption” ...

“We think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption,” he said.

They also said that the degree of benefit described by the JCVI was better than no benefit, and I would add that this is especially so for those children who go on to develop long term symptoms and also sadly in the small but growing number of cases where children have lost their lives.

Yes, except the majority of young people have been infected already so they will not have their education disrupted.

Thanks for all the really interesting comments. Having thought about them I now see why DC should be vaccinated and will put them forward for it.

I have no idea...a tenet of the NHS vaccination programme is that 1. the vaccine is effective - one dose of Pfizer is 30% effective at stopping you getting covid, but 90% of preventing hospitalisation 2. Benefits out way risks.

So maybe they do for my large 15 year old, who is overweight and will be able to have his second dose when he soon turns 16 (and can therefore travel), but not for my skinny little 13 year old who has basically no risk of hospitalisation in the first place.

When they can have two - DS will have his.

[quote bumbleymummy]@gamerchick no, it really isn’t. I started a thread about it around the start of the year iirc and I think I mentioned it again a few weeks ago (and maybe on another thread over the summer?) hardly ‘banging on’. Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else?[/quote]
Really not, don't you get tired of telling people there's no point in vaccinating their younglings?

Please don't @ me.

Haven’t said that. Actually said a few post up that I think it makes sense if they are immunocompromised or live with someone immunocompromised.

Don’t see the point of taking an unknown risk if they’re already immune though .

@loveandroses

Thanks for all the really interesting comments. Having thought about them I now see why DC should be vaccinated and will put them forward for it.

I’m glad it’s been helpful, although it’s probably been quite stressful to read! If it’s any help, Ds had his vaccination last week, and had a sore arm for a day or so but says he feels fine now. I am considering yellow carding “excessive backchat” as a side effect though

@bumbleymummy

Yes, except the majority of young people have been infected already so they will not have their education disrupted.

How do the approximately 90,000 -100,000 young people who are testing positive every week at the moment fit into the idea that the majority of young people have been infected already and so their education won't be disrupted?

They must be part of the 30-50% that were estimated to have not been infected yet at the start of term. Obviously much lower now.

You mean the 50%, according to Chris Whitty?