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?

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

And why the vaccine programme for that age group was supposed to be finished by half term and yet it has barely started.

Tbh, I really don't care about what people in power think if it's a good idea to vaccinate children or not. Just give us parents a choice like other countries. Then it's all up to us parents to decide what's good for our own children. No one is being forced, so unlikely to sue in case of adverse reaction, surely? If people think it's no point vaccinating their children, fine. But if we want to, we should get a choice.

There’s a pretty big problem with this assumption that “covid doesn’t affect kids”. How well are cases of long covid/post covid complications recorded and made available in a public space?

Speaking as a parent of a child with long term complications after covid, they’re not.

And the implications of that are exactly what we see here. Little understanding of the harm that covid infections can do. Little awareness of the signs of Mis-c/PIMS. Little awareness of how prevalent long covid can be in children.

Ds is under the care of a gp and a consultant. I asked the gp if information about his post-covid complications was passed on anywhere, she said no. Asked the consultant, and while data regarding the heart problems is “collected locally”, his other problems are not, as they’re not that specialist’s area. Zoe study? Often maligned as “self reported so they’re just making it up.”

So who knows how ill my son was, and the complications he has? Anyone in government? Anyone in the JCVI? Doubtful. Long covid clinics maybe? Great, but what if there are none near you?

How in the fuck can any policy be made when there’s been next to no (official, national) effort to actually collect and collate information about post covid complications in children?

It’s an unsurprising fucking shambles. JCVI don’t give a shit, or they would have looked at even some rudimentary studies of long covid in children and extrapolated from there. You’ll notice, as others have pointed out, there’s no serious mention of post covid complications in children, almost as if it doesn’t exist.

Can’t find what you’re not looking for 🤷🏻‍♀️

actually posting that 100 kids have died of covid is misleading

100 kids have died within 28 days of positive result

Its been estimated as many as 1 in 20 kids have covid.

Kids sadly die everyday so its quite likely a lot of that number died with covid and not from it

kids are equally admitted to hospital every day and tested on arrival. Again 1 in 20 kids having covid means many admissions will have covid

No I'm bloody well not OK with it.
We don't put children in harms way to save ourselves.
Shameful.

@Watapalava
Do you have children? Because it really sound weird, that knowing 100 kids died of/with covid makes any difference to you. Even the child who died purely because of covid is way less than 100, does that make any difference? 1 death from covid is too many, if we can avoid it.

I realise there are people keen to minimise the effects of covid at all costs, but I am a bit aghast at trying to downplay the death of children.

Genuine question - if a child isn’t vaccinated what is the alternative to natural infection? Surely unless you are willing to live in perpetual lockdown then you are going to catch covid whether or not the end result is greater herd immunity.

As well as the direct effects of Covid on children, there's also the indirect effects. If Covid comes into a household and makes a household member (vulnerable or otherwise) ill or worse, that's going to have a long term effect.

The problem is that we are looking at Covid in isolation rather than as one of many illnesses that can cause death in children. Chickenpox can cause death in perfectly healthy children whereas Covid is a problem for children with underlying health problems.
We need to stop focussing on Covid. It cannot be eradicated. We just have to live with it or lock ourselves away forever.

If covid is going to be a disease that we can suffer from multiple times across our lifespan then there is probably an argument in favour of exposure to it when young (and unlikely to suffer harm from it) in order to have better immunity when older. But I don't think we need to intentionally expose kids to covid, it'll happen regardless.

@Angrymum22

The problem is that we are looking at Covid in isolation rather than as one of many illnesses that can cause death in children. Chickenpox can cause death in perfectly healthy children whereas Covid is a problem for children with underlying health problems. We need to stop focussing on Covid. It cannot be eradicated. We just have to live with it or lock ourselves away forever.

Covid can also cause death in otherwise prefectly healthy children.

Chickenpox is also a problem for people with underlying health conditions.

The risk from both can be reduced by vaccination.

That is going to help a lot with getting on with life safely.

As will some level of mitigations, at this stage in the pandemic, thanks.

@noblegiraffe

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

And why the vaccine programme for that age group was supposed to be finished by half term and yet it has barely started.

And they must have known that the mixture of unvaccinated kids in close proximity in school, with no mitigating measures in place, including not having to isolate if a household member is positive plus the waning immunity from the vaccine of the cev and 70 plus group as they had their vaccines more than 6 months ago, would be the perfect storm.

It’s like they don’t join the dots until it’s too late!

Children have to keep on making sacrifices.
No, they are not accounting for large numbers of hospital admissions, but what about the unknowns of catching Covid in childhood, possibly more than once? Long Covid, future fertility?

Both my teens caught it at separate times in different secondaries.
This last time, I caughf it off DS (am 48, double jabbed). Covid saw me confined to bed for days and, 5 weeks on, am I only fit enough to think about going back to work.

I'm lucky. I don't have younger DCs to care for, I'm not ECV, I have sick pay, but the level of arrogance, irresponsibility and blase response I see towards children being left to catch Covid, beggars belief.

I say this as somebody with two kids taking GCSEs this year, one who had seven isolations, 10 weeks confined to the house last winter, the other four. This is a key point in their education, but the UK's attitude to children and schools is absolutely criminal.

@Waxonwaxoff0

I'm fine with it as far as my own child goes. He's had it anyway. He's not going to die or end up in hospital. I can't speak for anyone else's child.

I'd rather that than lock them away in the bloody house and force them out of school again to protect adults like we were forced to do in lockdowns.

You realise that he could die or end up in hospital next time he gets it?

@Angrymum22

The problem is that we are looking at Covid in isolation rather than as one of many illnesses that can cause death in children. Chickenpox can cause death in perfectly healthy children whereas Covid is a problem for children with underlying health problems. We need to stop focussing on Covid. It cannot be eradicated. We just have to live with it or lock ourselves away forever.

If only there were an approved vaccine like the ones they have rolled out in other comparable countries (for chickenpox and for covid).

@frazzledquaver
*You realise that he could die or end up in hospital next time he gets it?"

He could also get hit by a bus on the way to school tomorrow. Which is probably statistically more likely than a healthy child who has recovered uneventfully from covid once already dying from it next time.

They've asked us not to test children under 5 for covid in Wales. I’m really hoping it’s not to make it look better statistically

@ChilliChaos

They've asked us not to test children under 5 for covid in Wales. I’m really hoping it’s not to make it look better statistically

It's due to the excessive number of tests with negative results in this age group due to the frequency of common colds in young children and the distress caused to children through testing. Also noted in the press release is that children under 5 have been shown to be less likely to spread covid.

Well it's happening. Are you so out of touch that you don't realise 30 little people are mingling daily, in my year R class they are licking things, breathing right in my face, putting everything in their mouths. The strategy was always to let it spread amongst the young.

[quote EgonSpengler2020]@frazzledquaver
*You realise that he could die or end up in hospital next time he gets it?"

He could also get hit by a bus on the way to school tomorrow. Which is probably statistically more likely than a healthy child who has recovered uneventfully from covid once already dying from it next time.[/quote]
If we're doing RTA metaphors, my kid's probably made, what 6,000 or 7,000 trips in the car. Still wears a seat belt though. To infect millions of kids deliberately and unnecessarily is kind of the equivalent of making them all lie down on a motorway and saying that it's ok because most of them will pass between the wheels. "Natural" immunity doesn't last long in kids, so I hope for your son's sake that your bet pays off for him, if not for others.

Vaccine s don’t stop you getting covid, they reduce the likelihood of severe illness is the core message . Therefore, vaccinating kids who have little chance of getting severely ill seems pointless.
They on the whole are fighting it off well and the adult population are vaccinated

Deliberate policy of infecting children.

What an evil government we have.

@Timescale

Genuine question - if a child isn’t vaccinated what is the alternative to natural infection? Surely unless you are willing to live in perpetual lockdown then you are going to catch covid whether or not the end result is greater herd immunity.

Genuine answer:

An effective covid strategy to keep cases low so hardly anyone catches it.

A million people catching covid every month...

Thousands of children going to hospital with covid every half term...

Children dying of covid every week...

None of it's inevitable.

We know that because it's not like this everywhere.

Vaccines don’t stop you getting covid

Yes they do.