Vaccine for 5+

[NotTheBaby]

It’s on sky news now. Leaked document stating 5 year olds and above to be vaccinated from spring. I’m so hesitant to get my children done, when I couldn’t wait for mine. Why is this so much harder than it should be? Or am I just overthinking it?

Well plenty of parents let their kids have ‘trial’ drugs. As someone whose child has been in an intensive care unit on a ventilator I know there is plenty of experimental drugs that are given (for good reason). I am personally satisfied by the science behind the COVID vaccine and the trial data as is my physician/epidemiologist other half.

Telling people that they have an agenda and are engulfing us with swathes of misinformation is fairly aggressive. Maybe it's passive aggressive. That's not much better.

Sigh.

I have not accused anyone specifically of engulfing MN with swathes of misinformation.

I have pointed out why it's bad and why it doesn't help anyone, whatever your view is on vaccination/coronavirus. All anyone wants to do is make the right decison for their child. And they can't do that unless they're working from facts, rather than misinformation which has broadly been disseminated from anti-vaccine groups and filtered down to forums like this.

And it can't be debated that these kinds of posts (presumably not all from well-meaning women who are genuine users of the forum) are increasing.

@LuchiMangsho

Well plenty of parents let their kids have ‘trial’ drugs. As someone whose child has been in an intensive care unit on a ventilator I know there is plenty of experimental drugs that are given (for good reason). I am personally satisfied by the science behind the COVID vaccine and the trial data as is my physician/epidemiologist other half.

Parents let their kids have trial drugs when their children are in a critical condition and their lives need saving, of course.

But we are talking about children who are not at risk of anything. You say you are from the US. Not sure what you've been told over there, but here we've been told time and time again that children are not at any risk from Covid.

Eric Topol, whoever he maybe, is quite probably highly respected. There are many highly respected scientists and doctors all of whom have differing opinions on this.

I would not call this tweet that you have posted 'robust evidence'. Sorry. I doubt @ollyollyoxenfree will worry about that though.

I am aware that kids are not as high risk as adults but the risk from the vaccine is still lower than the actual risk from COVID. Low risk is not no risk. And as I said I am personally satisfied with the trial data as is my double boarded MD/PhD husband so we are going to vaccinate our kids.

@TotoShetland

3 million US kids including my 9 year old has now been vaccinated without a single incidence of myocarditis

This is health misinformation - but I suspect you won't pick up the poster on this, will you @ollyollyoxenfree? Where's the robust evidence for this?

Give me a chance @TotoShetland?

I'm not sure what you're trying to accuse me of but I don't have a bias towards any kind of post. There just tends to be a lot more exaggerating the risk of vaccination than there are compared to those exaggerating the benefits.

I spent a great deal of time replying about why the scary "COVID causes brain damage" paper had been badly misreported by the media.

@ollyollyoxenfree

Telling people that they have an agenda and are engulfing us with swathes of misinformation is fairly aggressive. Maybe it's passive aggressive. That's not much better.

Sigh.

I have not accused anyone specifically of engulfing MN with swathes of misinformation.

I have pointed out why it's bad and why it doesn't help anyone, whatever your view is on vaccination/coronavirus. All anyone wants to do is make the right decison for their child. And they can't do that unless they're working from facts, rather than misinformation which has broadly been disseminated from anti-vaccine groups and filtered down to forums like this.

And it can't be debated that these kinds of posts (presumably not all from well-meaning women who are genuine users of the forum) are increasing.

Sigh

You are patronising.

they can't do that unless they're working from facts, rather than misinformation

Again - why are you the authority on what are facts and what is misinformation? I keep asking this and you have not answered so far.

@TotoShetland

3 million US kids including my 9 year old has now been vaccinated without a single incidence of myocarditis

This is health misinformation - but I suspect you won't pick up the poster on this, will you @ollyollyoxenfree? Where's the robust evidence for this?

The 3 million seems feasible based on Wednesday’s numbers.

I haven’t seen up to date reporting on myocarditis incidence in the under-12 rollout, can you link to the source you’re using? Thanks

Given time to onset though, and assumed reporting lags, it’s probably too soon to be able to make that claim about the full 3m (or even most of them.)

Again - why are you the authority on what are facts and what is misinformation? I keep asking this and you have not answered so far.

I fear this is just going round in circles, but as I said before, I did not say I'm an authority or that I somehow get to decide what is misinformation.

Misinformation is something not backed by robust evidence, like for example claims that coronavirus causes widespread brain damage, or that vaccines lead to a long term worse immune response. Those are both big statements with big ramifications, and therefore need some kind of robust evidence to be backed up. If you don't have it, then say you're speculating..

Fair point. And no second dose yet. Although the 12-15 year olds are now mostly double vaccinated and I haven’t heard of a wave of myocarditis cases.

According to the CDC there have been 472 cases of myocarditis after the vaccines in the 0 - 15 year age group, 23 deaths and 73,000 adverse events reported.

New study out.
"We conclude that the mRNA vaccines dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination."

www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.10712

@LuchiMangsho

From the highly highly respected Eric Topol.

What a bold statement to make by the "highly highly" respected Eric Topol! The CDC doesn't quite report the same. Also, let's not forget that they're less likely to pick up on these symptoms so easily in this cohort due to their young ages.

That’s NOT from the CDC. It’s from Steven Gundry whose reputation is dubious at best. I would love to see these CDC figures.

Thanks @Nousernamesleftatall - do they break down by age brackets? Sorry to ask but I can’t find the primary data,if you’d prefer to just pop over a link.

@LuchiMangsho you might have been happy with the trail data but would you have put your 10 year old forward for a trail after knowing that myocarditis has been recorded in so many teenagers? It's easy to study the data afterwards but putting your child forward for a drug trail is different, especially when the data has shown covid isn't that serious in children as in adults. You can mention your husbands credentials as many times as you want, you've said you are happy for your child to receive it having studied the data they took from experimenting on other children. So basically you waited until you knew what the outcome was which is very different to putting your child to be part of the data people like you will be studying. Im sure Pfizer just popped over to a third world country and found some children to test it on. Wouldn't be the first time they've done that after all but we don't like to talk about the way these drugs have been made and tested because it makes people feel uncomfortable.

That’s an abstract from a journal and it is not clear if that article is peer reviewed. As I said Steven Gundry quit medicine to pursue a career in plant based diet products.
Where is this CDC data please?

The misinformation thing is such an interesting one in terms of what qualifies and I’ll admit to tying myself in knots on occasion on the state of the evidence base.

The main one I see is the ‘vaccines have no impact on transmission’ one - you can clearly chart the evolution of that one from ‘the vaccines don’t stop all transmission and it’s still possible to catch and spread Covid’ to ‘the vaccines do nothing to stop infection or transmission.’

This is an area where we have a really good evidence base on the impact on transmission (and change over time) when it comes to infections. The picture on secondary transmission is much murkier, and I’ve tried to be really open about this including pointing out that alongside the ‘good’ recent figures are also some that suggest no impact. There is a lot of misunderstanding about secondary transmission, and particularly secondary household transmission.

But then you do get weird threads like yesterday’s when a poster shared a link saying ‘Pfizer did x’, and the link posted was really clear it wasn’t Pfizer, it was the FDA, and it was following a policy they’d had since before Covid.

No I believe Pfizer ran at least part of the trial in the US. And yes, would have happily volunteered him for the trial and he volunteered himself but he didn’t get picked.

Incidentally, @JassyRadlett is probably the politest person on the coronavirus board, she deserves a medal.

Thanks @ollyollyoxenfree - but I’ll own up that I haven’t necessarily been very polite always and particularly to the repeated Holocaust minimisers and the antisemites.

That I’ve spent so long arguing about it on these threads is an enduring mystery to me.

How does 'my gut feeling tells me something is very off, Pfizer is doing the trial itself (Is that what you said Luchi?). How does that work? It's all getting too confusing now and pressured. Why are we being so pressured and forced? Why do children need this thing? They were meant to be completely unaffected by it only a while ago.'

And the list goes on and on and on. The muddle and fear that's been created. Do I have to prove evidence for any of that? Am I wrong in feeling any of this?

I don't want my 6 year old to be vaccinated. I don't see how it's going to help her or anyone.

How is it going to help? Why are we being asked to do this?

Interesting to see Steven Gundry produce a figure for increased risk over 5 years when the vaccine hasn't existed for 5 years.

@Russianmax Of course Pfizer is doing the trial itself. AZ did their own trial. Moderna did their own trial. I don’t fully understand the question.
Children are not completely unaffected by it. See the screenshot of the Nature Med paper. Which makes the good point that children are at much lower risk of severe disease than adults. But lower risk is not no risk. And the risk of the vaccine based on the available evidence is lower than the risk of getting COVID.

My gut feeling on this is that young children aged 5-10 have an incredibly low risk from Covid. If a 5 year old was one of the few who had a reaction to the vaccine how could I tell them when they were older I gave them the vaccine for them when the risk of Covid is so small?

I'd also be massively concerned my youngest may not be able to explain how they felt unwell/where etc if they did have a reaction.

Yes adults but I don't think really young need it for them

All this talk of misinformation and robust evidence.

I think this is a red herring.

I'm here reading this not because I have younger children. I'm still wavering over what to do with my older children. But my gut feeling is still making me waver and question. As a mother I think that gut feeling is very very important.

Of course we take in as much information (we hope it's not misinformation but how can we ever know for sure? How do we know what's truly bona fide? None of us do) as we can. We balance it all up. We look at our individual circumstances and our particular children and we go on our gut feeling.

I think this pressure that you talk about @Russianmax is making so many of us panic because it's stopping us from listening to our own instinct.

We come on here and want to talk about that instinct and then get shouted at by people who think they know it all and insist on robust evidence.

This is Mumsnet. We are, most of us, mothers who want to do the best for our children. We want to talk about that with other mothers. Not get shouted down and told to shut up because we're not clever enough. So what if we don't have a science background? This is not scientistnet. This is mumsnet. Please give us some credit for being mums who want to do the best for our children.

This is from the CDC www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e1.htm

"Mild local and systemic reactions are common among adolescents following Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and serious adverse events are rare. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices conducted a risk-benefit assessment and continues to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for all persons aged ≥12 years."

"No reports of death to VAERS were determined to be the result of myocarditis."

The JCVI gives a very clear comparison of risk of vaccine v risk of covid in healthy children for over 12s. I was actually quite surprised as the hospitalisation and ITU rate were much higher than I thought (and much larger than the vaccine side effects). As the US has already licensed it there should be some pretty robust figures for comparison by next year