Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
Interesting cognitive disassociations being displayed in this thread.
"Scientists don’t know what they’re doing, wanting to vaccinate school kids with a new vaccine without knowing what the long-term effects might be".
and
"Scientists know what they’re doing, allowing COVID to rip through school kids without knowing what the long-term effects might be".
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Applies the same way to the other scenarios though doesn't it.
Scientists don't know what they're doing, allowing Covid to rip through school kids without knowing what the long term effects might be - we've already heard of plenty of parents whose kids have also struggled with longer covid type thingies (still really post viral stuff) despite not having been too badly ill with the virus. So you could also say that is true even if it does contradict naturally the 2nd statement, which is probably more based statistically than anything else in that it is known with as much degree of confidence that you'd expect in a virus which has only been around about 2 years that kids don't usually get seriously ill and don't usually go to hospital and die. But still, not known fully.
The main problem is that though there are several options to solve the spread in school kids none of them are a total win scenario.
You could let it rip, but that means more kids ill, more risk of complications, more risk of spill over into adults such as parents, staff, other family members, people who work in shops etc.
Vaccinating kids is a pandora's box and even the JCVI weren't confident which way to go. The risk to the kids of the virus complications is generally lower than adults and the risk of other complications from the vaccine such as heart issues in young teen lads, is much higher than adults, which stacks opposite to the argument for adults where risks of vaccine complications are much lower than risks of the virus (and probably lower in the example situation I mentioned than with kids). And given that the vaccines are predominantly effective against hospitalisation, which doesn't happen in kids as much anyway, and less so against spread and mild illness, you're looking at the argument of "if it's effective enough to stop 1 kid in 30 getting covid at all that's 1 less missing school because of it" which is still a benefit but less marginal than if it was like for example 1 in 2.
You could close the schools, but that has longer term detriment potentially lifetime on their education and prospects no doubt more so than any effects from covid.
Scientists as you will no doubt be aware are all from different backgrounds and different specialism (you only need to look at who's on SAGE for this, we have a mixture of doctors, behavioural scientists etc etc) and of course different views. As the virus and knowledge of it evolves people will change their minds.