Infecting children to protect adults - yay or nay?

[PrincessNutNuts]

"There is an argument for allowing the virus to circulate amongst children
which could provide broader immunity to the children and boost immunity in
adults.”

From the JCVI minutes.

What about you?

Are you in favour of a policy of infecting children to protect adults?

Ok with children suffering illness, going to hospital and dying to protect adults?

Yay or nay?

@theemperorhasnoclothes

Though I seem to remember them saying at a recent Indie Sage that the number of hospitalisations of children was higher than at any other point in the pandemic. Almost like they removed all the things that they could do in school to prevent transmission which worked to protect children before....

What the hell are children thinking? Before they were told they had to isolate / bubble etc to protect everyone including themselves. Now the adults have been vaccinated and a large number are abandoning masks etc - so many must feel utterly abandoned by adults.

And if they look abroad so many countries with ventilation (e.g. NYC where you can check the ventilation status of your child's classrooms), air filtration, masks etc and doctors discussing how to protect kids. Vaccinations being rolled out as fast as possible. One day they'll read these minutes.

Yep. Can you imagine the mental health impact on kids who basically have been told that they are collateral damage for saving the adults? What kind of a society do we live in where we sacrifice the long term health of kids for the sake of the adults? Appalling.

if you hate your kids then sure

I love mine so whichever cunt came up with that can get fucked

I stand corrected on chicken pox.
I made the comparison because it's commonly accepted that it's fairly harmless in children but can be dangerous in adults, especially pregnant women or immunosuppressed. It's also endemic and this country doesn't vaccinate.
So when mine were little it was quite a relief to get it over with. Some people used to actively try to get their DC infected. Chicken pox parties.
Given the option of a vaccination I'd have jumped at it.
One of mine was quite poorly (not seriously ill just v uncomfortable) and the other got it just before we were due to go on holiday. Cancelled holidays due to virus aren't just covid.
I did not know that it could cause hospitalisation.

@Mosky

It's not chicken pox which as far as I know has no lasting effects on anyone who gets it as a child. Covid can cause serious complications in a minority of children.

One word: shingles

well, no, because children getting covid could then pass it on to vulnerable adults. Vaccinating as many people as possible would be more effective if you want to reduce hospitalisations etc.

Same is true of chicken pox. Also, contact with COVID increases the effectiveness of the vaccine- it's like a booster. Keeps the antigens relevant to the immune system.

@RachC2021

Deliberately infecting them, or trying to, by encouraging them to spend time with someone known to have Covid — no.

Giving them the vaccine, if eligible, and child is able to consent (or is too young to consent) — yes.

If the child is eligible and old enough to choose not to have it — then let them catch it. I’d do all I could to persuade them to have the vaccine first though.

The children not eligible for a vaccine I would encourage to be “reasonably careful”. In other words: don’t let them mix with a known Covid-19 infection, encourage washing hands, coughing into elbow etc, play outside as much as possible. The basic stuff that should be done anyway.

But they're mixing with infectious people in school. This is school policy. People living with covid positive people in close quarters - in school all the time at the moment.

Parents who are covid positive or where another child are told to send their negative children (who more often than not then test positive a few days later) in. No masks, no bubbles, singing, whole school assemblies.

There is NO WAY any child can go to secondary school and avoid covid. None.

Your choice is stay at home and miss out on education, or go to school and be knowingly and deliberately exposed to covid.

Saying 'be careful' is not fair on children. It's not possible if you also want to go to school.

@noblegiraffe

It seems odd that when they were deciding whether or not to offer the vaccine to 12-15 year olds there was so much emphasis on the fact that it had to be about whether it was of benefit to them, and not to adults around them (so protecting grandma wasn't allowed to be considered as a reason to vaccinate) and yet here they are merrily discussing infecting children with covid in order to protect adults.

It seems to me like they knew what they wanted the decision to be and worked backwards from that.

I completely agree with you.

It seems this has been policy all along anyway and they did it by the back door because admitting it would have looked bad.

If they were serious about properly vaccinating the 12-15’s they would have done it over the summer before they started back, not faffed around indecisively.

My preference would have been fully vaccinating over 12’s. (2 doses)

And I know many, many families who caught covid (all of them, many double vaxxed adults very ill) this last half term. They were not given the choice of a vaccine for their kids, which all of them would have taken up, over the summer. It's too late for them now. Now their kids have to wait 48 days after their symptoms have subsided.

And some of the kids have been very ill with lingering illness too. Meaning they miss more education.

They didn't have the choice of vaccination.

@Mosky

I stand corrected on chicken pox. I made the comparison because it's commonly accepted that it's fairly harmless in children but can be dangerous in adults, especially pregnant women or immunosuppressed. It's also endemic and this country doesn't vaccinate. So when mine were little it was quite a relief to get it over with. Some people used to actively try to get their DC infected. Chicken pox parties. Given the option of a vaccination I'd have jumped at it. One of mine was quite poorly (not seriously ill just v uncomfortable) and the other got it just before we were due to go on holiday. Cancelled holidays due to virus aren't just covid. I did not know that it could cause hospitalisation.

There is this idea in the UK re chickenpox parties.

Other countries.eg the States vaccinate.

Chickenpox can be fatal for a few.

@DockOTheBay

Thanks for those figures. The reality is that while covid deaths in kids are awful, the absolutely overwhelming majority of under-18s do not have any serious complications, or risk dying, from covid.

From a public health perspective, therefore, treating covid as an endemic disease that kids will build up immunity to pretty quickly makes sense. I think we are likely to see lots of covid cases in that age range this year, with rates dropping significantly in the next few school years. Additionally, the JCVI says:

'The available evidence indicates that the individual health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination are small in those aged 12 to 15 years who do not have underlying health conditions which put them at risk of severe COVID-19. The potential risks from vaccination are also small, with reports of post-vaccination myocarditis being very rare, but potentially serious and still in the process of being described. Given the rarity of these events and the limited follow-up time of children and young people with post-vaccination myocarditis, substantial uncertainty remains regarding the health risks associated with these adverse events.'

But hey, who are we to listen to the scientists, yeah? Yeah?

You can pay for the Chicken Pox vaccine abroad, presumably this option is available here too.

I've just discovered that we in the UK don't routinely vaccinate children against Chicken Pox because exposing previously adults to children with Chicken Pox reduces the chance of shingle and is therefore less costly to the health system. So, like covid, we chuck 20 kids a year under the bus to save the elderly.

I've seldom been more revolted.

patient.info/news-and-features/should-your-child-have-the-chickenpox-vaccine

Small point but it’s 28 days after testing positive that you can have the vax, not 48….

My DS14 has made it to school 3 days of the last month of term because of a Covid infection in late September. He’s not really ill but fatigued, nauseous, shivery, sometimes complains breathing feels funny.

[quote PicsInRed]You can pay for the Chicken Pox vaccine abroad, presumably this option is available here too.

I've just discovered that we in the UK don't routinely vaccinate children against Chicken Pox because exposing previously adults to children with Chicken Pox reduces the chance of shingle and is therefore less costly to the health system. So, like covid, we chuck 20 kids a year under the bus to save the elderly.

I've seldom been more revolted.

patient.info/news-and-features/should-your-child-have-the-chickenpox-vaccine[/quote]
Yes, you can get it here. £140ish. I'm going to get DS vaccinated against it if he makes it to 2 without contracting it (the vaccine increases the risk of toddler shingles in the under twos, but thereafter the risk is lower).

The potential risks from vaccination are also small, with reports of post-vaccination myocarditis being very rare, but potentially serious and still in the process of being described.

What concerns me is that the JCVI seemed, in their vaccine decision statement, very dismissive of the risks of covid in children, the prevalence of myocarditis caused by covid and the uncertainty around conditions like Long Covid, while talking up the risks of the vaccine. It did not seem like an impartial, scientific analysis.

And the minutes do not alleviate these concerns.

[quote NearlyAlwaysInsane]@DockOTheBay

Thanks for those figures. The reality is that while covid deaths in kids are awful, the absolutely overwhelming majority of under-18s do not have any serious complications, or risk dying, from covid.

From a public health perspective, therefore, treating covid as an endemic disease that kids will build up immunity to pretty quickly makes sense. I think we are likely to see lots of covid cases in that age range this year, with rates dropping significantly in the next few school years. Additionally, the JCVI says:

'The available evidence indicates that the individual health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination are small in those aged 12 to 15 years who do not have underlying health conditions which put them at risk of severe COVID-19. The potential risks from vaccination are also small, with reports of post-vaccination myocarditis being very rare, but potentially serious and still in the process of being described. Given the rarity of these events and the limited follow-up time of children and young people with post-vaccination myocarditis, substantial uncertainty remains regarding the health risks associated with these adverse events.'

But hey, who are we to listen to the scientists, yeah? Yeah?[/quote]
We have had a reversal of plan within a relatively short time; the CMO, Health Secretary et al advising us to vaccinate our 12-15s.

So we have listened to the JCVI, we are considering their minutes, and we are having an intelligent discussion about them

I would note that the scientists in many other countries in Europe, and also in the US, managed to approve vaccines for ages 12-15 without discussing whether they should forego vaccines and just leave the kids to get infected in school . It is also reasonable to ask why the UK was an outlier in this respect.

@Sean2001

According to this, 24% of people may not develop immunity from natural infection.
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26479-2#Sec2

@NearlyAlwaysInsane

I think we are likely to see lots of covid cases in that age range this year, with rates dropping significantly in the next few school years.

I think we've already seen lots of cases, with Cambridge Uni research indicating
that 78% of 5-14 year olds have had it.

But they don’t necessarily have antibodies www.tes.com/news/covid-1-3-pupils-infected-virus-hot-spots

I do find it mind boggling that anyone feels ok for children to get infected with illness we really don't know about, especially as a person/people who in the position of influencing whole country.
We, as parents, didn't have any choice to get our children vaccinated like other countries did. And the reasoning behind is to ultimately protect adults, I feel sick. Children are our future. They may not contribute to economy etc now, but if they use our children who have many years ahead of them without thinking about implication to their future, they should be held accountable.

@PokemonGoGoGo

I'd be interested to see the context for his remarks given he has also recently said "“I’m reasonably optimistic that in two to eight weeks, we’ll find a new way of living with COVID, with enough immunity to stop it continuing to rise.”

If children genuinely get it every six weeks or so, then either we simply have to accept that, or we forever curtail and repress childhoods forever.

[quote noblegiraffe]But they don’t necessarily have antibodies www.tes.com/news/covid-1-3-pupils-infected-virus-hot-spots[/quote]
Children who haven't developed antibodies generally fought off Covid so easily their bodies didn't generate an antibody response. It's not a cause for concern. It's a sign that children, generally, are very good at fighting off Covid.

Children who haven't developed antibodies generally fought off Covid so easily their bodies didn't generate an antibody response. It's not a cause for concern.

It is if you're trying to argue that catching covid gives these kids lasting immunity.

Well, I have never heard talk of partial immunity being expected for such a short period before, although there was an early case study that showed re-infection was possible after about 6 weeks.

However, vaccination remains a good alternative doesn't it? Why not vaccinate children, given that schools clearly environments where a lot of transmission is likely to occur?

(and questions do remain to be asked about why we delayed doing this for so many months)

I mean if the alternatives are

• kids getting covid every 6 weeks, a new disease that we still don't fully understand

• curtail and repress their childhoods forever, to broadly paraphrase a previous poster

• a jab with very few side effects

then vaccination seems a bit of a no-brainer, surely?