Guilt Free Railing 18

[WouldBeGood]

Will it ever end?

Hope the storms don't cause the same amount of chaos in the central belt that the previous ones have up here!

Im glad we are a few years off making the decision on young children being vaccinated. We probably will as we travel a fair bit and I can only see it getting more of a requirement but to me it's only for others to get such a young child vaccinated if they have no medical risk

yes @Y0uCann0tBeSer10us the one in that bracket has caught it twice, recently and the tail end of 2020 - both times she seemed a little bit tired for a day and that was it. Given that we therefore have 2 samples on how she responds to covid across 2 variants and the prevention of transmission is weak, the case is closed in my mind for now.

The wind is crazy...I'm railing against it even though its no-one's fault. I'm all for fault-free guilt free railing.

DH has been picketing this morning (UCU are striking again ) Nice weather for it. He's just come home for lunch and left a puddle in the hall.

I'm mithering on the vaccine thing. Probably will get 10yo done to be honest, but I really would like to see the actual JCVI recommendation first. As I said on the other thread, it may well say that it's perfectly safe and beneficial for that age, and to go ahead - but I have my doubts its as clear cut as that (previous advice hasn't been). And I'd rather not take it on the SGs say so, really.

Sorry to hear of more sufferers Hope you all start feeling better soon.

Rail against the elements @Lidlfix!

The crazy weather doesn’t help. I feel so bad for the young ones like your DD 🥲

Hope all those afflicted start to feel better.

DS says he has a sore head and sore throat…

DS (8) won't be vaccinated until there is much more clarity about requirements moving forward, and much more data. I'm not convinced by the self-reported data - I filled in a study recently and there really was no option to clarify or expand on your answers, so it was very misleading in terms of the answers I gave.

The difference between the Covid vaccine and flu (in my head at least) is that the flu vaccine has been around for 20-30 years - it was just limited in the past to the most vulnerable. Also flu has a defined season, usually infections between Dec and Feb/March. Covid seems to be around all the time and frankly I am not prepared to vaccinate every year / twice a year or whatever, especially when DS has had Covid and it was like every other virus he's had

We escaped Scotland for the half term, find ourselves indoors today thanks to storm Dudley. Ten pin bowling, cinema and restaurants, small mortgage required for this kind of day, but free of masks all day and kids/families playing happily together. I’m finding the opportunity to rail against the vaccine for my under 12yo. Nope. He had the flu spray back in Nov, thank you very much. I’d like to donate the offer a vaccine for him back to someone elsewhere who needs it.

Railing about the fact that vaccinations for under 12s are being recommended even though

However, it estimates vaccinating one million children would prevent:
98 hospitalisations if the next wave was more severe like previous variants
17 hospitalisations if the next wave was relatively mild, like Omicron

This seems like a politically motivated decision rather than a purely scientific one IMO - perhaps to shut up EIS and to sway to public opinion

I’m also thinking the next thing from Nicola will be along the lines of:
We need 90% of the 5-10 vaccinated before we can consider any freedoms.

Just like we had once the elderly and vulnerable are done, then it was the next age group, then double vaccinated then booster…

It better bloody not I tell you.

I agree it's political, although it would seem that all UK nations are doing it. The response of the UK government is most interesting - it'll be available on a non-urgent basis from April to protect the very small number of children who may become ill in future waves, but they stress that primary age children are very low risk and don't anticipate a vaccination campaign to support this. They're also very clear that it absolutely mustn't displace other programmes like the routine childhood ones or the adult COVID programme (so the more useful ones then). By April we'll probably be out of this wave as seasonality kicks in and will probably have dropped all restrictions, isolations and maybe even testing. So that would argue against this being a condition of release (at least in England). They obviously don't see it as a priority on any medical grounds, and aren't exactly making a strong argument for getting young children jagged, and to be fair the science doesn't really support a mass roll out. There are suggestions it's a political move to pander to those who are making a lot of noise about primary aged children being 'unprotected' (even though they don't really need protection from this) and to reassure all those parents who have been convinced by certain quarters that healthy children are at significant risk from COVID. I suspect there's probably truth in that, although it does set a very disturbing precedent for future vaccinations and could undermine confidence in the programme as a whole if things are being recommended on not-strictly-medical grounds (actually, we already know this is the case from the discussions around teenagers).

JCVI statement has now been released. They stress throughout the high level of uncertainty and the educational benefits are thought to be 'indeterminate' and more influenced by isolation policy rather than illness duration. Mandatory 'just in case' isolation is likely to have been dropped by the time this is rolled out (although with the SG you never can tell...) I'm not totally clear on how the predicted hospitalisation prevention figures come about (98/million children in a severe future wave and 17/million children in a mild omicron level future wave), but it looks as though it's modelled based on data from wave 2. I think this is the alpha wave at the end of 2020/start of 2021, when significantly fewer children would have natural immunity, so I'm not sure how valid these assumptions are. As they note themselves 'the high level of prior infection in this age group of children can be expected to contribute towards their natural immunity against reinfection. There are some data to suggest that natural immunity may last longer than vaccine-induced immunity against non-severe infection.' They also state elsewhere that average hospitalisation duration was 1-2 days and 'a proportion' of these are precautionary, and I'm not clear on whether the 'severity' of hospitalisation (for want of a better word) has been taken into account. Overall, I'm not at all convinced it's worth it for healthy children, particularly if they have already got natural immunity (85% expected to have by now).

@Y0uCann0tBeSer10us - problem is once Wales said they would offer the vaccine, no other nation could really say we are not offering because they would be accused of 'not caring' or 'not protecting the children / teachers / vulnerable / frail/ CEV' (delete as appropriate). I think it is an appalling precedent to set but then pretty much everything about covid decision-making has been appalling.

I'm not convinced by primary kids having it either, especially since it's seems to be a bit like flu and going to need to be repeated annually.

I do worry that its going to become a requirement for international travel.

I really think it's more important to get adults in 3rd world countries done before we do children.

The hopeful thing on the travel front seems to be that various counties are actually dropping all entry restrictions. A couple of days ago it was Norway, today Switzerland.

Lots of domestic passes being dropped as well or dates set for them going.

I would definitely hold off on getting a small child done if the motivation is purely for travel.

I’m assuming it’s still a requirement to wear masks on planes regardless of other travel restrictions being dropped for other countries?

I think masks could be a thing on planes for a long time.
Interesting that countries are starting to drop entry requirements.

Damn. Don’t know what I’m going to do about my holiday as there isn’t a hope on hell I could last with a mask on a plane for that length of time.

For those who have taken a flight recently how strict are they with it?
Could I basically sit with food and drink and slowly eat the whole flight to avoid wearing for example?

Also on Good morning Britain they have just been discussing the kids being vaccinated.
The doctor said it would limit the time kids were missing school if they were vaccinated. Am I missing something because I thought you had to isolate regardless of whether you were vaccinated or not?

That's right, you have to isolate regardless. So my dd might not have been sick for one day either time? Underwhelmed. Assuming in this situation she doesn't have dh's 2 weeks of severe headaches and trip to the hospital for blood clot post jab.

I’m going to drive to Europe on holiday @runningpink.

It’s ridiculous to say that about missing school as a justification for vaccinating kids, as it’s the rules that cause that, not the virus.

The doctor said it would limit the time kids were missing school

If that doctor was Hilary Jones I would disregard every word out of his mouth. Dreadful man.

He’s the one who said not to wash your car in lockdown 🤣

Yeah I'm not vaccinating mine. There are enough places we can travel without it so that's where we will go.

Youngest had her pre school jags yesterday. Horrific experience no compassion at all where as also had the dentist (she's never really been due to all this) dentist was brilliant and made it a nice experience.

The fall out from this will last for so many years I think.

Yes it was Hilary. I may have misunderstood what he said but I think I heard him correctly

The more I watched the angrier I became. Think he kept saying a small proportion would become very ill/long covid but surely that’s minimal and no more than loads of other illnesses where a small proportion ends up more unwell

OMG really. What was the justification of that?

I missed the don't wash the car in lockdown - what else where folk ment to do with their time?

But there's little justification for vaccinating little kids. It's not even like vaccinating them will stop the spread.
Then they'll be the who-ha over the next variant. Is it/ is it not providing protection.

Might stop NS wanting to cut the doors 🚪 thought.

It was not essential- except the windscreen for safety. He’s a fool.

That's actually funny or have I got a warped sense of humour? You weren't allowed to drive it so you might as well have fun and take pride in keeping it shiny.