Quote:
Originally Posted by papa smurf
Leading expert says issue of long COVID 'slightly overblown'
Some more now from Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, who's been giving his thoughts on the pandemic today.
He said he believed the issue of long COVID "has been slightly overblown", with "proper epidemiological studies" finding the incidence of it is "much lower than people had anticipated".
Sir John told Times Radio he agreed with England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, that the vast majority of children would get infected without a jab.
But he added there are "no bad consequences" in children with COVID and "I don't think there's any reason to panic".
He said: "I don't think we're going to have a lot of children in intensive care units. And in fact, the evidence is we don't, we never have."
The likelihood of severe disease is quite small, he added.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-new...emand-12406800 |
As others have said, there are some words doing some heavy lifting there that don't inspire confidence. It also assumes that the sole reason to vaccinate children is to stop them getting ill which is not necessarily the case. Yes, it stops kids getting sick, it may also lower the number of kids being kept at home due to positive test but most importantly, it will lower the chances of infecting those that will get seriously ill if they get it.
That's a decision we have had to make in our house. My mother (in her mid-70s) lives at the other end of the country and we have not seen her in real life for getting on for two years. She's double jabbed and so am I and my wife but the kids weren't and the infection rate in kids is pretty high. Knowing that they will get the jab next week gives me the confidence that the chance of giving her COVID that sneaks past her vaccination is much lower. It's the old '
Swiss cheese' for lowering risk. Getting the kids vaccinated adds another layer of 'cheese'.
This was also how I sold the vaccination to my kids. One hates jabs but lowering the risk of infecting their nan was incentive enough. I also used the example of HPV jabs for boys as they are of that age. My two are girls who
really need the HPV jab. Boys don't, they get warts, not cervical cancer but jabbing boys lowers the risk for girls on top of their own jabs.