My DS has chosen not to be vaccinated. He and his CV dad both got Covid in August and came out the other side (my DD 14 and myself didn't catch it while living in the same small house).
Both my DH and I are now triple vaccinated - our DD was hesitant but consented and had her 1st before Xmas along with the flu vaccination.
My DS is an intelligent boy and has been on lots of sites researching vaccine types, efficacy and looking at the stats. He was happy with the JCVI's acknowledgement a few months back that
"At this time, JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks."
And he was worried by the incidences of clots and myocarditis in young males (even though he knows that the incidence of these conditions in someone who has a bad case of Covid is statistically higher and that they've stopped giving AZ to his age group to minimise the risk further)
We've had lively discussions in the house and he supports that the elderly and vulnerable should have the vaccine and is glad we are triple vaccinated. But he is getting increasingly upset and cross about the patronising ads being targeted at his age group that he concluded are basically saying, if you want any sort of social life, you need to get the vaccination.
He is 18 this month in a few weeks. The clubs are shut till after his birthday. He's getting increasingly depressed about it all. He has an overseas holiday booked for July to celebrate leaving school and is becoming resigned to getting vaccinated.
But my question is: Is it too late for him to ever be considered fully vaccinated now? If he has his first this month, he'll only be eligible for his second in April - and it seems that many people/countries now only consider 'fully vaccinated' to be having had the booster/3 doses. If that's the case, then he won't be that till July (and then for foreign travel you need to be 14 days post-your last vaccination) And there already seems to be a discussion about a 4th booster - what if by Spring you need to have had 4 vaccinations to be considered 'fully vaccinated'? Is it too late now? If he decides to reluctantly embark on this vaccine programme will he ever catch up?
And to make matters worse, his very talented music teacher (young, fit male, mid-20s)has just suffered an extreme reaction to his 2nd vaccine and has ended up in hospital with myocarditis and blood clots. Typical that my DS now has a very close and concrete example of an adverse vaccine reaction to use as 'evidence' of why he's reluctant to get it. It's also lessened my resolve when assuring him that adverse reactions are vanishingly rare. We are luckily not aware of anyone in our circle of family, school-friends, colleagues who have been made as poorly through Covid ( and I know this is just luck and that it has very badly impacted many people's lives and don't want to diminish this fact in any way).
But I am struggling with my DS and am sad for him and sympathetic. He says that being triple vaccinated doesn't seem to be diminishing the spread of the disease and when he looked at recent hospital statistics he pointed out the statistical manipulation that lumps those who are completely unvaccinated in with those that have only had 1 or 2 vaccines - this is giving a bigger demographic that can then be described as 'not fully vaccinated' and results in people being able to say that 80% of hospital admissions are unvaccinated (fully). He says, but Mum look at the near quarter of cases that ARE triple vaccinated and are in hospital - this is almost equal to the 23% of hospital admissions that are totally unvaccinated. (It doesn't help that he's hoping to do economics at Uni and is therefore interested in, and studying statistics and their analysis.)
And what about Uni? Will they insist on a 'fully vaccinated' status to be on campus? Does anyone have any experience of this?
And finally, will he be able to go abroad without being vaccinated as long as he carries out official PCR tests to prove a negative result and then continues to test during the holiday to prove a negative result every 48/72 hours? I know this would be horrendously expensive if he wants to travel for anything longer than a week which is another incentive to become that elusive thing of 'fully vaccinated'.
I'm genuinely in need of advice here. If I'm to persuade him to get the vaccine I need to be strong in my arguments.