[Oldmanmatt]

Personally, I’d pin all four of mine down and jab them myself.

They’re nasty little plague rats, as it is.

[andy popp]

Parent here. We put our 14 year old on a plane to the US on Thursday. The purpose was to see friends and family but we made sure she got a shot first thing Friday morning (Pfizer, it's what was available. Would have got J&J as she's not there long enough to get a second shot, but beggars can't be choosers. Though far from perfect I figure one shot is better than none). We had no hesitation in doing this. She's had zero side effects so far.

I got my second Pfizer first thing this morning - felt wiped out for a few hours this afternoon but steadily improving now.

A couple of months ago, as the the vaccination campaign there really took off, we were suffering a lot from US friends and family asking why we weren't vaccinated yet (I hate to complain but it got really bad at times). Denmark passed the US on the percentage to have received at least one dose several days ago. We still lag on the percentage fully vaccinated, but I doubt that will last very long.

[sdm]

Yeah, I agree with all of that. For clarity, I am not Andrew Wakefield in disguise re vaccinating kids! I think there is a very strong case for vaccinating teenagers quite soon in particular.

Can also see how the engagement with TTI might drop once everyone has had their two jabs. Should probably switch to a daily test which, if negative, means you can go around as normal. Can't see it being as widely adhered to if people are asymptomatic, passing negative tests, double jabbed... Yet also have to spend 10 days inside.

It’s strange, because if I frame the question as “do I want them to be vaccinated” then the answer is probably not, since it offers them little benefit, but if I reframe it as “would I prefer they get a potentially unknown viral load infection from nursery, versus a measured and more controlled equivalent” then it’s far less clear cut. I guess it’s the same as the AZ vaccine risk trade off, in that the answer may depend on whether you view them getting it as an inevitability or not.

If we continue to open things up, which I think is guaranteed (barring a new disastrous variant), then it is safe to assume that approximately 100% of unvaccinated people will get covid.

The greatest unknown for any risk calculations (for adults and children) is long covid and other long term complications from it. I'm surprised at how little data there is on the issue and how low a priority it seems to be. I'm far more concerned by the potential long term effects of catching covid than I am of my chances of severe acute infection. Given that the risks of long covid in adults do not appear to be correlated to age or health conditions in the same way that the acute disease is,  I would have expected it to be a high priority to study any potential for long covid among children. I hope it's a case of "no news is good news" but I suspect it is more a case of nobody is even asking the question.

My gut feel from a selfish UK-centric viewpoint is that the benefit of vaccinating children would far outweigh the risk. From a global viewpoint, those extra doses could almost certainly be used more effectively in other countries.

[chris j]

Personally, I’d pin all four of mine down and jab them myself.

They’re nasty little plague rats, as it is.

+1 on both counts for both of ours.

Though with the ease with which the Delta variant seems to spread (the Sydney outbreak suggests some contacts were just from walking past each other in shopping malls) it will probably have been through the schools before the end of the summer term...

[Davo]

Totally happy for my son to be vaccinated. I view it in the same way as the flu vaccine each year.

Dave

[slab_happy]

c) personally, I'm not happy about kids getting vaccinated at this stage of their development (9 & 11 1/2).

What's concerning you?

(Aside from the fact that they're under the approved age anyway -- I think 12 is the youngest the mRNA vaccines have been approved for anywhere at the moment, but there are now trials going on with younger age groups.)

[spidermonkey09]

Speak of the devil:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jun/28/ministers-set-to-end-automatic-isolation-for-pupils-in-england

This feels like a reasonable solution to me.

[SA Chris]

c) personally, I'm not happy about kids getting vaccinated at this stage of their development (9 & 11 1/2).

What's concerning you?

(Aside from the fact that they're under the approved age anyway -- I think 12 is the youngest the mRNA vaccines have been approved for anywhere at the moment, but there are now trials going on with younger age groups.)

Lack of trials mostly and unknown long term effects. Do people actually volunteer their children to trials?

[slab_happy]

Do people actually volunteer their children to trials?

Yeah, including a bunch of scientists -- loitering around epidemiology and immunology Twitter, I've seen various folks mention they signed their own kids up a.s.a.p..

I don't have kids myself but I have nieces and a nephew a bit younger than yours, and I wouldn't blink if their parents volunteered them (and would obviously trust my sisters not to do it unless it's something the kids would find non-stressful and interesting -- which they might, they're very into Doing Science).

Lack of trials mostly and unknown long term effects.

Re: lack of trials -- they won't be approved for an age group unless trials have been run on that age group. So you'd be able to check out the data yourself before vaccines would be available for your kids.

Re: long term effects -- as I understand it, the deal with vaccines is that you see any side-effects (like AZ's blood clotting issue or the possible myocarditis with the mRNA vaccines) within two months max. They don't stay knocking around your body and then suddenly do something weird ten years down the line; that's just not how they work.

Also, although these are the first mRNA vaccines licensed, the research establishing the technology has been going on for some time; apparently the first mRNA vaccine trials on humans were in 2006. So there are people around who got injected with mRNA vaccines 17 years ago.

[SA Chris]

Guess I'm more paranoid about my children's health than most. Prerogative of being an older parent.

[andy popp]

I guess our willingness is informed by the fact that every teen we know in the US has been vaccinated without problems. Sure, that is still highly anecdotal data, but observing your peer group can by psychologically very persuasive.

Also, I'm obviously talking about slightly older children, which does make a difference.

[AJM]

Guess I'm more paranoid about my children's health than most. Prerogative of being an older parent.

Out of interest (and this is genuine curiousity rather than a hidden challenge or criticism), how do you feel about them getting covid itself, and are you considering taking action to try to reduce their catching it? (I.e. home schooling, restricting them going to higher risk environments eg crowded indoor spaces, various other things along a risk reduction spectrum)

As has been discussed above, the end state looks to be that that they'll either have caught covid or been vaccinated by the end of the summer. The long term impacts of covid are unknown - it's not been around long enough - but quite clearly "long covid" can be a real and debilitating condition, and it doesn't (I think) seem to occur with vaccination. And I thought that the clotting etc was a problem with real covid as well as vaccines, although less sure on that.

[mrjonathanr]

When a vaccine for my daughter becomes available she is getting it (11, soon to be 12). I want to protect her from possible consequences of Covid. Risks from an approved vaccine I would regard as negligible. Risks from a virus with a range of possible nasty outcomes I would place much higher.

[sdm]

When a vaccine for my daughter becomes available she is getting it (11, soon to be 12). I want to protect her from possible consequences of Covid. Risks from an approved vaccine I would regard as negligible. Risks from a virus with a range of possible nasty outcomes I would place much higher.

Completely agree. The best estimate we have for the long term effects of covid is probably the data on long term effects of SARS. Which are awful.

30% of SARS patients hadn't returned to work 2 years after infection. 5 years on, 30% were still displaying 20-30% loss in lung capacity. After 15 years, this had reduced to 5% but at great cost: the long term effects of steroids used to treat the lung damage made femoral head necrosis and arthritis common.

There are certainly differences between long covid and SARS: long term SARS effects correlate strongly with the severity of initial symptoms but long covid doesn't seem to (which I think should urge further caution when it comes to children and younger people getting exposed to covid). We don't know yet whether long covid will be better or worse than SARS, I suspect it won't be as severe, but all of the above leads me to be very cautious when it comes to long covid and I think this caution ought to extend to our children.

If long term covid damage is in the same ballpark as long term SARS damage, it could be terminal for someone's ability to improve as a climber.

One note for optimism: the much greater numbers of people suffering with long covid are likely to lead to better treatments which may improve the long term outlook.

[spidermonkey09]

We don't know yet whether long covid will be better or worse than SARS, I suspect it won't be as severe, but all of the above leads me to be very cautious when it comes to long covid and I think this caution ought to extend to our children.

Interesting post. I guess the key point is what being very cautious about LC means in practice, both for kids and adults. My personal instinct is that the public would take some serious convincing that the risk of LC is bad/common enough to justify many restrictions beyond, say, masks in shopping centres or similar. That said I don't know any LC sufferers so perhaps ignorance is bliss. Other than jabbing everyone, I don't think there is a lot you can do to prevent LC beyond investing in research and treatments, without suppressing baseline cases, which would require quite strong restrictions. 

[sdm]

We don't know yet whether long covid will be better or worse than SARS, I suspect it won't be as severe, but all of the above leads me to be very cautious when it comes to long covid and I think this caution ought to extend to our children.

Interesting post. I guess the key point is what being very cautious about LC means in practice, both for kids and adults. My personal instinct is that the public would take some serious convincing that the risk of LC is bad/common enough to justify many restrictions beyond, say, masks in shopping centres or similar. That said I don't know any LC sufferers so perhaps ignorance is bliss. Other than jabbing everyone, I don't think there is a lot you can do to prevent LC beyond investing in research and treatments, without suppressing baseline cases, which would require quite strong restrictions. 

I think you're right, once everyone has been double jabbed, there isn't likely to be any significant treatment/prevention improvements arriving in the short term. So I think that's the stage where maintaining most restrictions is likely to do more harm than good.

If we do end up jabbing older children, I expect restrictions (including the ending of classroom bubbles and isolation) will have already ended before they have much protection.

[mrjonathanr]

If we end bubbles as touted, I expect most schoolchildren will get Covid. I can’t see on site LFT testing preventing its spread.

[spidermonkey09]

If we end bubbles as touted, I expect most schoolchildren will get Covid. I can’t see on site LFT testing preventing its spread.

Yes, the decision would seem to prioritise continuity of education over the kids getting covid. To me this makes sense, but again I have no skin in the game so I'm sure a good chunk of parents/teachers think otherwise.

[Bonjoy]

If we continue to open things up, which I think is guaranteed (barring a new disastrous variant), then it is safe to assume that approximately 100% of unvaccinated people will get covid.

To be slightly pedantic, that's not true. At some % below 100, herd immunity will prevent total saturation being reached.
I don't know what the current estimate is, but at the start of the pandemic 60%-80% was mentioned. Obviously various factors (new variants, vaccination level in adult population, partial immunity via old variants, etc) will push that figure up or down somewhat.

[mrjonathanr]

If we end bubbles as touted, I expect most schoolchildren will get Covid. I can’t see on site LFT testing preventing its spread.

Yes, the decision would seem to prioritise continuity of education over the kids getting covid. To me this makes sense, but again I have no skin in the game so I'm sure a good chunk of parents/teachers think otherwise.

A proportion of those infections will have life changing consequences so it's a serious thing. The current loss of education is untenable but I suspect some who are saying that we just have to take the consequences of letting it spread might be less keen if they thought it was their child who will have to take one for the team..

[spidermonkey09]

A proportion of those infections will have life changing consequences so it's a serious thing. The current loss of education is untenable but I suspect some who are saying that we just have to take the consequences of letting it spread might be less keen if they thought it was their child who will have to take one for the team..

100%, its very easy for me to have that opinion! It doesn't seem like there's much of an alternative though, other than vaxxing kids which brings its own set of proportional serious side effects (I think a smaller proportion but am not sure). Its a really tricky ethical question but a really interesting one.

[mrjonathanr]

I was not having a go at you, just in case it appeared that way.
difficult to say where we would be now and with what options had we had an education secretary who had actually organised some effective provision instead of just sitting on his hands.

[Oldmanmatt]

If we end bubbles as touted, I expect most schoolchildren will get Covid. I can’t see on site LFT testing preventing its spread.

Yes, the decision would seem to prioritise continuity of education over the kids getting covid. To me this makes sense, but again I have no skin in the game so I'm sure a good chunk of parents/teachers think otherwise.

A proportion of those infections will have life changing consequences so it's a serious thing. The current loss of education is untenable but I suspect some who are saying that we just have to take the consequences of letting it spread might be less keen if they thought it was their child who will have to take one for the team..

To be pessimistic…

This is already true of a variety of virus and bacterial infections and no more likely, as far as I can see.
I lost a classmate to meningitis and another went blind. A close friend has a now 16 year old son, with significant disabilities as a result of severe meningitis as a baby, for instance.
Not that I like it, it just is.

[sdm]

If we continue to open things up, which I think is guaranteed (barring a new disastrous variant), then it is safe to assume that approximately 100% of unvaccinated people will get covid.

To be slightly pedantic, that's not true. At some % below 100, herd immunity will prevent total saturation being reached.
I don't know what the current estimate is, but at the start of the pandemic 60%-80% was mentioned. Obviously various factors (new variants, vaccination level in adult population, partial immunity via old variants, etc) will push that figure up or down somewhat.

I pride myself on my pedantry . I don't expect us to reach the levels required to end significant community transmission due to the combination of:
- The increased transmissibility of delta (and probably even more transmissible variants in the future)
- The number of adults who will remain unvaccinated
- Unvaccinated children
- The percentage of adults who will remain infectious despite vaccination
- The end of social distancing measures and isolation for school contacts etc

Over the course of a lifetime/childhood, I think ~100% is accurate for where we are headed. I don't think anything close to eradication is achievable unless we have a major unexpected scientific breakthrough or helpful mutations. I see the end goal being similar to the flu for unvaccinated people (i.e. something that everyone can expect to get at some stage in their life).

[battery]

My eldest is at primary and they haven't had a class out self isolating since September (and that was a false alarm as it turned out and they were back in sooner rather than later). My son hasn't had to isolate at all (touch wood and keeping everything crossed!).

It's not an either or, with careful planning and management schools can prevent outbreaks. However I am sure the head would love for things to go back to how they were to reduce workload and stress for all staff and students.