Vaccinating your child (5-11)

[WeOnlyTalkAboutBruno]

My kids are in this age bracket. Both have had covid (both were mildly symptomatic) as have I. My husband and I are both fully vaxxed. Kids have had all their other childhood vaccinations so I am not an antivaxxer by any measure.

However, I am feeling very reluctant to have my kids vaccinated against covid. I’m not outright saying no yet, but must admit I’m leaning towards it. My eldest had covid when her appointment came through, so that bought us some breathing space while we think about it, but to be honest I’m finding many of their friends’ parents are similarly reluctant. Purely anecdotally, I’m not seeing many kids in that bracket that are being vaccinated.

my reasons - well I suppose it’s a new vaccine and I worry a little about long term effects - what if there is an effect that we don’t know about yet? Sure I don’t care if it’s me, I made my decision for me, I’ll live with the consequences (if there are any) but it’s different when you’re deciding for other people. Also - I don’t really feel like it is needed at this point 😕

i was just wondering if anyone else had any feelings or insight into this. Is anyone seeing the opposite to me?

im not letting my dc’s have the vaccine,I only did because I wanted normality,me and dh both had covid at Christmas,dc’s didn’t catch it.

I left the decision up to dd8, she said she wanted it so she had it and had no side effects, not even a sore arm.
I am glad now after reading about the rise in hepatitis cases in children in the uk. That's sounds really scary.

I would have said no, but then DD10 had covid and became much more ill than I expected (much worse than DH and I who are vaccinated). It was very hard to watch her feeling so poorly knowing that I was protected by a vaccine and she was not. Especially as I could not even get her temperature down with calpol.
I’ll give it a couple of months after her covid experience and then vaccinate her.

If she was five I wouldn’t though, the very young ones seem to shake it off m easily but the older ones not so much.

Definitely vaccinating our DC.

Friends’ eligible DC are all also vaccinated or being vaccinated. However, most of our friends are either doctors or have science backgrounds so never really had a doubt.

I (almost) have 2 child in this age bracket. One almost 12, and one almost 5. I'm reluctant to vaccinate either tbh. We had covid in our house a few weeks ago, brought home by my once-jabbed 14 year old, who had a slight temperature for a few hours, and the sniffles. She passed it on to my 11 year old, who only had the sniffles.

I'm triple-jabbed and didn't catch it, nor did my unvaccinated husband or unvaccinated 18, 4 and 2 year olds. I'm reluctant to get my 14 year old her second jab tbh (she was going to have it at school but covid prevented her, so now we have to go elsewhere).

I feel the same @WeOnlyTalkAboutBruno

i think as it’s so new

dd 5 has had all her injections for usual mmr etx so I’m far from antivax and dh and I have had 3 jabs

she had covid in feb. Only knew as pcr came back positive as teacher had it so all class advised. I was shocked as no symtoms asymptomatic and was fine drove me up the wall being home as wasn’t ill

None of her class who had was poorly. Which is weird as obv when covid struck it was omg so serious etx yet seems 5/6yrs not effected badly

got the letter as did all her friends and I am unsure at the moment

The rise in hepatitis cases is not caused by the Covid virus or equally not caused by the Covid vaccine.

The cause is not yet proven but thought to be caused by a lack of social mixing of children due to the Covid restrictions.

www.newscientist.com/article/2317518-hepatitis-adenovirus-is-prime-suspect-in-mystery-outbreak-in-children/amp/

@Dishh

Wellbythebloodyhell
Why would you not vaccinate against a virus that is potentially so deadly?
because in children it really isn't potentially so deadly 
It is potentially deadly to anyone they transmit the virus to.

+++

Then the person who is at deadly risk if they get Covid should definitely get the vaccine then.

Yes, it's amazing that anyone still thinks this is an opportunity for your child to take one for the good of wider society isn't going to be met with derision from many parents at this point.

@AppleandRhubarbTart

Yes, it's amazing that anyone still thinks this is an opportunity for your child to take one for the good of wider society isn't going to be met with derision from many parents at this point.

Not everyone responds to the vaccine as well as they might, particularly some of the more vulnerable in society. It isn't a question of "taking one" - that's a poor analogy. Herd immunity does require as many people as possible to be immunised against a pathogen to protect those in the herd that cannot protected by immunisation. That's simply how it works.

If that meets with derision from parents, that's a sad reflection on them.

It's a totally exact analogy. You say it isn't, and then give an example that means it actually is. Even if herd immunity against Covid 19 were a possibility, which is at best uncertain, the benefits of this are unevenly distributed amongst the population and are lowest in children.

As for a sad reflection on parents, what needs to be clear here is that your feelings about the derision your view attracts are irrelevant. The argument you are making is entirely unpersuasive to many parents and it doesn't matter in the slightest whether you think we're in the wrong. You are of course free to keep telling people how disappointed you are, but it won't change anything.

My 12 Yr old DD and 6 Yr old DS have both been vaccinated and were both fine. My DD had a sore arm for a few hours but had a headache for 24 hours. My DS was too busy pointing out all the flags in the room to notice the needle or the sting. It did make him ravenous though 🤔
Both me and their dad have been triple vaccinated and me and the kids caught covid in September - me and my DD coming off the worst in the household and both of us losing our taste and smell for months ...

No. No benefit really.

What about the implications of long covid which children can still get? How can you say the vaccination has no benefit when that's false?

I will, but more for the long term issues such as organ damage etc. My kids couldn't get vaccinated as they caught covid the week before they were due to be jabbed. I assume there are others in the same position, which will affect take up, but also would expect vax rates to be lower in this age group as initial covid symptoms seem less.

This surprises me I know approximately 100 children that have had covid.
Not one has had a long term effect, or been seriously ill.
I am not disputing that a few children will be, but the vast majority are hardly ill.

I feel the same way as you OP.

I had my 5 yo done, he has had covid already, but a couple of children from his class got it again very badly around the time of his jab letter. My DH wasn't keen, but i deal with 99% of the stuff for the kids so I decided. He didn't try to stop me or ask me not to he knew.

If my Ds being jabbed helps end the pandemic sooner then I'll all for it.

@WeOnlyTalkAboutBruno

Not read other posts as I find some of the misinformation annoying..

We had our child vaccinated as he is vulnerable and I feel a big relief from it.

At the moment the offer is non urgent and children appear to be able to fight off the virus well. However there are several things to consider.

• mRNA vaccine research has been ongoing over the last 30yrs. Covid is closely related to SARS and MERS and vaccines for these have been in development since 2002/2012 respectively providing a strong foundation which expedited Covid vaccine development (as did vast amounts of money and widespread infection rate - trials sped up). The evidence base for the vaccines is enormous and shows it is safe. There are potential adverse effects for all vaccines, research has solidly shown the risks from covid to be greater.
• long term studies into long covid will not have published results until 2024 at earliest; preliminary work (such as the CLoCk study) is showing a high incidence of long covid in kids. Potentially, you could be looking at them appearing fine but then you get enhanced risk of cardiovascular disease/dementia etc later on as adults. Never mind the short term symptoms of fatigue and so forth.
• we are still mid pandemic, covid is still evolving and there is still a 20% chance that we will be faced with a variant more deadly than that seen so far. What’s more is there is sufficient work now to suggest that the increased transmissibility of omicron can be linked not to mutations in the spike protein that facilitates cell entry, but to other proteins present that interact with the innate immune system, this is why we have seen increased infection without increased hospitalisation. If is evolving to get around the innate immune system this is important as innate immunity in children is what has kept them protected thus far.
• it takes about 14 weeks from the point of first vaccination, until a maximum immune response is produced - immunity takes time. A lot of people are thinking that they’ll wait until a new variant appears. But vaccination is not like paracetamol - it doesn’t work instantly.

Issues such as the above are what I would be thinking about when considering vaccination, in conjunction to analysing the safety profile and current threat level.

@VanillaImpulse 90% vacc is required for campaign to be successful. Thankfully we have that in the over 12s. Those who are vaccinated are less likely to contract covid, they shed the virus to the environment for a lesser period of time and at a lower level (titre for omicron comparable to delta). There would be less of an argument to vaccinate children on the basis that they generally don’t replicate virus to as high a level, but they may be more likely to transmit due to repeated exposure - ie kissing hugging mum, dad, granny repeatedly.

@bozna clinical outcome is dependent on interactions between the host, virus and environment.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7934673/

Essentially you could have a child clinically vulnerable, but they are exposed once for 20 minutes, to an infected child outside, low dose, and they are asymptomatic and recover well.

By contrast a fit and healthy child could attend a Disney on ice show (or any other show!) indoors, seated next to 5 adults, for 3 hours, all infected and shedding high titre. The child ends up hospitalised.

in fact lower intensity of exposure is one of the factors discussed that may protect children from more adverse outcomes.
adc.bmj.com/content/106/5/429

@VanillaImpulse yes viruses do attenuate. However, this has not and is not happening for Covid as yet and scientific community have warned strongly against complacency as the virus is still widespread globally and about 30% remain unvaccinated; 91% of which are in the developing world. There is still ample opportunity for this to evolve, I would suspect it is in multiple animal reservoirs as well so can expect to see reverse zoonosis variants appearing too. Total mess still.

Flu - we are still due a fresh pandemic from that one!!

The purpose of vaccination is not sterilising immunity but to reduce morbidity and mortality. The vaccines are doing their job keeping people from developing severe disease, and while not preventing all transmission it is substantially reduced. Besides hybrid immunity (vaccination/natural infection) has shown to be most long lasting and cross reactive (able to protect against multiple variants).