We gave Covid 19 the keys to our house 283 days ago, how are things going?

It is 08.00 am on Friday 18^th June 2021, 283 days from the start of the 2020 – 2021 school year.

Week seven into our ‘new horizons’ programme

Note: Mum and Dad had to go offline last week to deal with some urgent family stuff.  So, this week’s blog catches up by covering the last 2 weeks.  

1. Back to the school kids and the SARS-CoV2 debate – should they be getting vaccinated as well?

In the last two weeks, this subject has bubbled up rapidly to become a hotly disputed international controversy. Should we be shouting for our kids to be vaccinated or not?

1a. Preparing the ground – Pfizer, European Medicines Agency and the EU

• In March, Pfizer BioNTech, having tested their vaccine on 2,260 children aged 12 to 15, announced it as safe and effective in this age group.
• Last week, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds, the first vaccine to get the green light for children in the EU. The drugs regulator said there were no major concerns over side effects, adding the vaccine was “well tolerated” in children. Moreover, data from the clinical trials showed the vaccine was “highly preventative” for young people.
• The EU three deals with Pfizer BioNTech, most recently one securing 1.8 billion doses.

1b. A sample of country level responses

• The UK has last month approved the Pfizer vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds.  On 4^th June, school leaders argued for pupils to be vaccinated as a matter of priority.
• Canada authorised the Pfizer vaccine for children over 12 on May 8th.
• The USA – vaccination for 12-year-olds and over is ‘under consideration’, with a possible start in September.
• France started offering Covid-19 vaccinations to everyone aged between 12 and 18 from 15^th June. This initiative was said to be designed to “accelerate the movement towards herd immunity” and slow the spread of variants.
• Germany started vaccinating children over the age of 12 from 7 June.
• Spain: Secondary school pupils including sixth-formers will be given at least their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine before the autumn term starts, president Pedro Sánchez has confirmed. 

1c. The argument for and against the expansion of vaccination

The rich countries are now buying up and hoarding millions of doses for their own citizens. Clearly, the frighteningly regular appearance of new waves of the virus, and the latest explosion of the even nastier Delta variant, have galvanised many governments into concerted action to chase down anybody and everybody, and the young, to try to achieve at least local herd immunity within their own countries as quickly as possible.

1d. But hey, how short-sighted can you get?

As long as borders stay open, as long as people can fly about as if everything is normal, local herd immunity will never be enough of a defence against further virus invasion. And as long as the underdeveloped countries continue to be starved of vaccines by the capitalist attitudes of the rich countries, there are an obvious potent nursery reservoir for the development of the next generation of variants, the Delta 2, Delta 3 and Delta ad infinitum, triggering wave after wave in whatever countries they are smuggled into.

Not only that, recent news tells us:

• double vaccination does not necessarily prevent a person from dying from a Sars-Cov2 reinfection
• the new variants are already demonstrating ‘vaccine escape’
• Israel, hailed because of its leading-edge national vaccination programme is already into another lockdown cycle; and
• South Africa is now exploding again in a new wave of the virus.

• Mum and Dad’s take on vaccinating the 12-15 year olds

On the basis that:

• the poor countries are still being shunned by the rich countries, with no sign of softening of their stance, and with no sign of acknowledging, even understanding, that their own country’s long-term safety is dependent upon the similar establishment of long term safety at the global level; and that
• this stance is a strictly unemotional mix of hard capitalism and geo-politics that the ordinary citizen has no power to change (even the World Health Organisation is struggling with this cold-hearted, capitalist monstrosity); and that
• on the ground, and in every family, although the virus is recognised as of very low incidence in the young, NONETHELESS, there is a still a clearly definedSARS-CoV2 risk, as expressed by:
• the ability of the virus to be transmitted from young to the old / infirm
• the measurable rate of Covid 19 related deaths, and perhaps worst of all in some respects
• the clear chance of even ending up with long Covid, just like the adults do.

For all of the above reasons, we reluctantly endorse the easily achievable expedient of including the young in national vaccination programmes, to get it all done ASAP, and then proceed for the rich countries to at last demonstrate their largesse by distributing vaccines to all those countries still exposed to the ravages of SARS-CoV2, again ASAP.

• Our new horizons programme – update

We have temporarily removed our progress tables, they need tidied up, they were getting too messy even for us to follow our trail of success and failure!

By John Saunders

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World Health Communication Associates (WHCA) & INSPIRIT Creatives UG NGO,
MediaWise and MediaFocusUK

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