I understand you would like to see every child vaccinated. The JCVI are the body tasked with deciding this and in my view are taking the correct approach, vaccinate children who have known conditions that make them vulnerable as they are 20X more likely to end up hospitalized or in ICU compared to the the general population of children. The risk to most children from Covid is very low, whatever statistic you use.
I would say Delta has already ripped through the young population in the UK. I think you’re ignoring the fact that as many as 50% of children are asymptomatic and never get tested, and you want to paint the worst case picture. Serious illness from Covid in children is rare, myocarditis from Covid in children is very rare, and myocarditis after vaccination in children is very rare. So these are the rare events a parent has to consider, and it may sound like a no brainer to you, but I can assure you its not to the parents I talk to.
Basically what you are saying is that the JCVI should be overruled because a ZeroCovid advocate you follow on Twitter says so. It doesn’t work like that. What you are arguing is follow the science unless the science disagrees with my opinion, the same thing you accuse others of.
The only thing I would use VAERS for, as I did yesterday, is for vaccine related deaths as in people who died after vaccination. These reports come directly from healthcare providers and not the general public. I agree adverse reaction data from the public is not reliable. Whether all these ~7k people died directly because of the vaccine is debatable, but debatable in a similar fashion to whether people died because of Covid or with Covid. We recently reduced Covid deaths here in two local counties by 22% as it was found Covid was not a major contributor to death. Either way deaths after vaccination are rare but they clearly happen.
If the JCVI have evidence that the US and Israel and other countries who are vaccinating down to 12 years old are wrong in their approach - and their decision clearly implies such - at least if you’re to assume their decision is based on evidence rather than the ideology of key individuals involved in the JCVI (and that’s a big assumption) - then don’t they have an urgent moral duty to inform these countries they are doing things wrong?
But sure the evidence is all over the map and is constantly changing, there are studies on everything Covid related that contradict other studies, and literally everyone who posts on Twitter on Covid has an ideological axe to grind. I think it’s best to largely ignore Twitter as much as possible and just look at the studies and try and reach a balanced opinion. At the end of the day parents will decide whether to get their children vaccinated, but it doesn’t help when there is public disagreement among experts.
The JCVI are only responsible for the UK, that’s enough of a job in itself. These advisory bodies are in a really tough spot between ideologues pressuring them from all sides and politicians weighing public opinion to determine policy. Both the FDA and CDC pushed back against the White House today on booster shots due to lack of data. We are literally charging ahead with decisions on mass vaccination of children and now booster shots with very limited data, far less trials than was done before the emergency use releases last year which themselves were rushed.
This is pretty simple. Millions of children have been vaccinated in different countries and nothing has arisen to suggest any significant safety problem.
The success of vaccination on a population level depends on mass take up. There is no reason to not extend the vaccines to 12 year olds.
The only thing that would stop it is the ideology of herd immunity, of subjecting millions of children to Covid just for the hell of it. We can do without that sort of ideology.
Not sure why people are still referring to herd immunity as if its a bad thing, the goal of mass vaccination is herd immunity. It’s debatable whether we can get there with antibodies wearing off and variants that evade vaccines, it’s much more likely Covid will just continue to evolve like all previous coronaviruses and hopefully become like the common cold in time.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on vaccinating children being simple. It’s up to parents to decide whether to vaccinate their children or not. I agree with offering the vaccine to them and would strongly recommend that children with underlying conditions be vaccinated, but at the end of the day parents have to consider the risks and shouldn’t be pressured into a decision.
At the very least we should be doing widespread antibody tests to determine how many children have already been infected as there is no urgency to vaccinate anyone who has developed natural immunity from infection. I suspect it’s a fairly high number, over 20% of all Covid cases since April in the US are children.
Because the herd immunity ideologists literally think everybody should get Covid. That’s what’s at the heart of the UK JCVI decision. They want children to get Covid.
That’s a conspiracy theory.
The JCVI, especially Robert Dingwall, are Great Barrington true believers who are all in on the “natural immunity is best” crackpotism.
Even if you were to believe that natural immunity was better (and the jury is still very much out on that), the inescapable logic of that position is to advocate for as many people to get Covid as possible. But that entirely neglects the appalling real world effects of mass Covid spread, both on the health of people and in terms of society.
They will undoubtedly have to row back on their position because reality will intervene. It always does.
Natural immunity is the best form of immunity, and recent experience and studies demonstrate that. The safest people to be around are those that have had Covid and recovered.
The reality is that even with all the lockdowns and other restrictions over the past 18 months and the majority of adults now vaccinated, Covid has been spreading like wildfire. Other than a few token restrictions governments have largely given up, they know the game is up.
Anyway I’m off to bed, enjoy your day.
The jury is still out. There is conflicting evidence and as I pointed out last week there are serious concerns about the methodology of the Israel study that suggested natural immunity was better.
The more concerning point about the “natural immunity is better” narrative is it’s an obvious Trojan horse for advocating people actually get Covid - and that is an unconscionable narrative.
It’s also fascinating how the narrative of B cells and T cells giving immunity has been dispensed with by the Great Barrington mob when it comes to vaccination.
Every person who can get vaccinated needs to be getting vaccinated.
It is the ideology that rejects that that will prolong this pandemic much longer than necessary.
The difference between voting giant douche or turd sandwich?
Propensity to die of Covid19 apparently.
I’m just making the point there is little difference in reality between Democrats and Republicans.
Muricah
Great work guys. Together, we’ll beat this. 
What a joke of a country
Less cases. Less deaths. Less time under restrictions. go fish 
Covid cases are not the only barometer of an actual working country you mong. Enjoy lockdown no.15 and the back garden barbies in Jan 2022. But but but beachside coffees 