CHILDREN aged 12 to 15 across the country are excitedly opening official-looking letters addressed to them. Their name is on the envelope, not their parents’ names, so by the time they read the first line, they are already hooked. It says: ‘Dear Parent/Guardian of [name]. Your child is invited for the COVID-19 vaccination. On Saturday 30th October 2021 at 17:30. Having a COVID-19 vaccination is the best way to protect yourself and reduce the number of deaths and hospital admissions due to coronavirus.’
This now becomes an exciting and terrifying message for a child. Firstly, the appointment is an ‘invitation’ and as one mum said, ‘it makes them think of parties and all things fun’. Secondly, the words ‘death’ and ‘hospital’ will fill them with fear. To refuse this request would go against their every instinct.
Nowhere does the three-page letter mention the possibility of adverse reactions, and children are being asked to turn up no more than five minutes before their appointment, which means no time to discuss any concerns. The only information about adverse reactions is from an external NHS website. This mentions common side-effects of flu-like symptoms, headache and sore arm, and describe the potential heart inflammation side-effects as rare. It says that between three to 17 reactions occur per million children after one dose, and 12 to 34 cases per million after the second. Before Covid, one in a million adverse events was considered acceptable collateral damage.
It is not until page three of the letter that children are told they can opt out. It says: ‘The decision to have your Covid-19 vaccine is a choice for each individual to make. You have to give a clear agreement (called ‘consent’) before any vaccination can be given – so you are in charge of what happens.’ The child is told to go to only trusted sources for information, and the only sources offered are the NHS and, inexplicably, the BBC.
The BBC say that children don’t need their parents’ consent if they can show they understand the issues and although parents were told that children would only get one dose, the BBC say that second doses are available in the spring term.
Behind the scenes, our medicines watchdog has begun releasing the serious adverse reaction figures for Covid-19 jabs and the under-18s. The figures are not encouraging and show that overall, one in 1,127 children have had reactions serious enough to report to the Yellow Card Scheme, although no deaths have been reported.
We forget that vaccines are given to healthy patients to prevent illness rather than to cure illness. There is no way to tell in advance if the person receiving a vaccine would been badly affected by the illness if they’d caught it or whether they would have caught the illness at all.
There are some indicators for the vulnerable, for example, we know that the elderly, those with underlying health conditions and the obese, are more susceptible to Covid-19, so it seems reasonable that they might like to take the vaccine to protect themselves.
We also know that the risks for children suffering serious illness from Covid-19 are extremely rare, but against scientific and medical advice, the government has rolled out the vaccine programme from September to the 12-to-15-year age group. Under 18s began receiving it in August.
When assessing whether children needed a vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, the Joint Committee on Vaccination (JCVI), the independent committee advising the government on immunisation, said: ‘For the vast majority of children aged 12-to-15 years, SARS-CoV-2 infection is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and is self-limiting. Of the very few children aged 12-to-15 years who develop more severe illness requiring hospital attendance, the majority have underlying health conditions.’
Only six under-18s with no underlying health conditions are reported to have died after a positive Covid test. Put into context, under-18s make up 21 per cent of the UK’s 67.22million population, which translates to just over 14million children. As a comparison, between 2018 and 2020, 1,721 children in the 0-to-15 age range were killed on the roads, around 1,000 annually.
According to the MHRA (Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency), more than 1.3million under-18s have received one or two doses of Covid vaccine with 1 in 1,127 suffering an ADR reported to the Yellow Card Scheme. Most are receiving the experimental Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine, but some have had the Moderna while others have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca.
No children should be receiving the AZ vaccine as it is considered dangerous for under-40s and is no longer recommended for that age range. This is because it can cause vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), characterised by blood clots and low platelets, which is more prevalent in younger people; but 11,496 children have been injected with 21,468 doses. The impact on those children has been enormous, with 1 in 49 adverse events reported.
So far, the MHRA say that 1,276,700 children have received 1,507,933 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech, and the adverse event rate is 1 in 1,392 children. Moderna’s mRNA has been given to 16,801 children who have received 27,796 doses and the adverse event reporting rate for them is 1 in 3,360 children.
Unlike the adult population, the MHRA does not break down the child numbers into specific adverse events so we have no way of knowing whether the reports relate to any of the major, life-changing side-effects that occur such as Guillain-Barré syndrome (muscle weakness caused by the immune system attacking the body’s nerves) or Bell’s Palsy (a type of facial paralysis). Other serious side-effects reported by adults include seizures, nervous system disorders, deep vein thrombosis, menstrual disorders, eye and ear disorders including blindness and deafness.
The American Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) do break down their child figures and they had recorded 33 deaths to the end of September 2021, most of them in young males.
The Pfizer jab was approved for children aged 12 and older in May 2021 and rolled out in the US and Canada. Deaths have been recorded in babies as young as one month who reacted to their recently vaccinated mother’s breast milk, and children up to the age of 17. Three of the deaths were suicides, one in a boy diagnosed with ADHD.
The mother of a 16-year-old boy gave this traumatic report: ‘My son died while taking his math class on Zoom. We are waiting for the autopsy because the doctors did not find anything. He was a healthy boy, he had a good academic index, he wanted to be a civil engineer. He was the best thing in my life.’
The only specifics the MHRA offer are for heart inflammation. Pfizer has eight reports of cases of heart inflammation which includes myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart sac). The MHRA describe these reports as ‘very rare’ and say the benefits of vaccination are ‘marginally greater than the potential known harms.’ They add: ‘The events are typically mild with individuals usually recovering within a short time with standard treatment and rest.
‘It is important that anyone who experiences new onset of symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath or feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering, or pounding heart seeks medical attention.’
This is from the MHRA report:
