Child vaccination: Who’s selfish now?
There is no reason to vaccinate most children and, given the potential side effects, many not to do so.
A number of school leaders have swung into action following the approval of the vaccination of children against Covid (a disease which almost all children aren’t at risk from) using the Pfizer vaccine (trials of which only included 1,134 children).
It wasn’t very long ago that the establishment line was: if you don’t get a Covid vaccine, you are selfish. Even the Queen (disappointingly) joined in with this line, as I noted in my March print issue editorial.
But now, adult advisers to the Government suggest that children should be vaccinated not to protect children but to protect…themselves.
Professor Anthony Harnden, the Deputy Chairman of the Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, says:
'I think the vast majority of benefit won’t be to children, it will be an indirect benefit to adults in terms of preventing transmission and protecting adults who haven’t been immunised, for whatever reason haven’t responded to the vaccine and therefore that presents quite a lot of ethical dilemmas as to whether you should vaccinate children to protect adults.’
He notes that children themselves are ‘in the main’ not at risk from Covid.
Over half of the adult population has been fully vaccinated (with seventy-five per cent having received at least one dose of a vaccine) and Covid deaths, while still exaggerated, have flattened.
There is no reason to vaccinate most children and, given the potential side effects, many not to do so.
If the Government bottles it on the vaccination of children, it is they who are being selfish.
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