England removes parental choice for vaccination of 5-11
Green Book claims it was a "one off" offer
Parents seeking to have children turning 5 vaccinated have been refused the choice and been directed to a passage in the updated Green Book that directs local authorities. Children who turn 5 from September 2022 will not be eligible until they reach secondary school.
The section claims that when vaccination was approved in February 2022 it was a one off non urgent offer, this hadn’t been communicated at the time.
It states the reason for this is that by February 2022 the majority of children had already been infected, the vaccine would offer only a small and short term addition to infection and so the offer was a one off to essentially ride out an Omicron wave.
The offer was only made available in April 2022 and children had to remain infection free for 12 weeks before they were eligible to be vaccinated, this means that very few children in this age group have been vaccinated. It appears the timetable for vaccination was delayed despite cases being high in February in order to blunt the next wave of Omicron in the Summer term instead.
Considering the section in the Green Book states most children had been infected before the vaccine was offered, by withdrawing the offer the expectation is that most children now turning 5 or under will be infected in primary school, most likely multiple times.
With the definition of high risk eligible for boosters being reduced, and immunocompromised individuals unable to access Evshield this could leave at risk households in a potentially precarious position.
Concerns were raised when the JCVI immunisation body passed the decision to vaccinate 12-15 year olds onto the Chief Medical Officers that the language suggested vaccination was a short term measure that would come to a halt in favour of infection.
With boosters being offered in the UK to a more limited group of people it must be asked if the strategy is to rely on most adult receiving what has been nicknamed “booster infections”.
It appears the plan is for covid to become a child hood disease treated like chickenpox is in the UK that’s allowed to circulate freely without the offer of a readily available vaccines protection. For UK readers, we are an outlier on this, many countries offer children the chicken pox vaccine. We were told as kids chicken pox protected us from shingles.
The problem is, I don’t know if covid has been told about the UK government’s plan for its evolution into a benign children’s disease.
The other problem is that if this is the government’s strategy then it hasn’t been communicated to the public, consent for the gamble hasn’t been sought.
Update: Another thought
The fall in other childhood vaccines has been cited.
The question is, does offering covid vaccination reduce vaccination rate for other diseases. Covid for 5-11 isn’t offered in school while most other common vaccinations are done in school, so does it directly inferfer with the school immunisation teams?
The other option is that they are worried concerns about the covid vaccine are causing hesitancy in vaccines for other diseases.
If the decision was made to remove choice from parents because of fears being stoked about a safe vaccine then the government has given into disinformation rather than choosing to tackle it.
Which is exactly what funders of antivax disinformation such as Robert F Kennedy Jr and his Childrens Health Defense wanted to happen.
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