Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bristol and a member of the Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning (around the 50 minute mark) taking a surprisingly strong line against vaccinating children because of the “side effects”. Here’s an edited transcript of what he said:
The main priority at the moment is to try and immunise as many people as possible who are at risk of getting really sick with this virus, because that’s the one thing we want avoid is another big surge of hospitalisations and deaths, and that isn’t going to happen in children. … Children are very rarely seriously affected by this infection. …
The evidence we’ve got with children, particularly young children, is that they are not very infectious to each other or to adults around them and that the majority of the transmission of the infection is in the adult population in fact. …
There is a certain amount of transmission going in secondary schools, so in teenagers, but in fact we’ve been surprised about how little transmission we’ve picked up in schools and of course this time around there’s been a lot more testing and awareness of what’s going in schools. …
In normal times, just as in pandemic times, we simply wouldn’t want to immunise anybody without needing to. It’s an invasive thing to do, it costs money, and it causes a certain amount of discomfort, and vaccines have side effects. So if we can control this virus without immunising children we shouldn’t immunise children as a matter of principle. …
I’m optimistic that we in particular in the U.K., with the high coverage we’re achieving and the extremely effective vaccine we’ve got, that we can achieve population immunity and I’m afraid it’s an open question as to whether we need to immunise any children at all and if we do how many children we need to immunise.
This is quite a change of tune for Professor Finn, who last month told BBC Breakfast that children had been “left behind” in vaccination and vaccine trials, saying: “We’re impatient now to get on and do the necessary trials in children so that these vaccines can start to be used, and actually circumstances are holding us back so it’s a very frustrating situation to be in.”
He did add, though, that side-effects appeared to be worse in younger people: “There is evidence for more or less all of the vaccines against Covid that the side-effect rate, the reactogenicity that we see, basically goes up the younger you are.”
At the time of these earlier comments the AstraZeneca trials in children were paused while the MHRA investigated blood clot links. What has Professor Finn seen since then that persuaded him that maybe vaccinating children isn’t so pressing after all? Is this a sign that the side-effects, at least in the young, are beginning to be taken seriously by the Government?
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I wonder if it is dawning on them that there may be a reckoning.
CYA for Nuremberg 2.
Same as SPI-B recently.
Too late, too little.
Hopefully.
Not a chance. I detect nothing but total apathy on this issue.
Just 27k have signed a petition calling for No vaccination for children before the end of Phase III trials.
I feel the same. It’s good this is a government advisor so at least the experts in some circles know what’s what.
The general public? If you tell them to jump it’s a question of how high.
I don’t think it’s apathy. I have tried to sign but it’s impossible to complete and get the sigature accepted. I feel it ‘s another government set up.
Pathetic article. He’s NOT ruling it out. If he’s not ruling it out in ALL circumstances, he’s ruling it in, in some. I find that totally unacceptable.
Agree heartily.
“In normal times, just as in pandemic times, we simply wouldn’t want to immunise anybody without needing to. “
We immunise children all the time for various diseases that are no longer common, to prevent spread. Why is this different?
Because those rather more tried and tested vaccines might actually be intended for the benefit of children.
I don’t know much about other vaccinations, TBH. I had them all as a child and my kids had all the standard ones more recently. I suppose I just assumed they were worth it. Certainly I suspect they have fewer and less frequent side effects than the current crop, and they have a far longer safety record than c19 jabs.
There seem to me to be a number of problems with the c19 vaccines:
1) It’s tricky to establish the risk of covid because data is patchy and manipulated, but the risk to most seems pretty small
2) Trials finish in 2023
3) They have emergency authorisation, but c19 is not an emergency
4) Initial data from real world is unclear as to actual benefits from vaccine, and suggests it might do more harm than good in many cases
5) There’s an atmosphere of bullying and hysteria around c19 and the vaccines which doesn’t bode well
6) Specifically with reference to kids, they simply don’t seem to get c19 and there’s no good evidence they spread it
So for now, caution seems the best option
We don’t do it to prevent spread, we do it to stop them from getting sick. It’s a basic and fundamental principle that the medicine is for the benefit of the patient, not for the benefit of “society” or whatever Commie slogan we invent to justify control of their bodies by the State.
Fair question. First because those illnesses do have a damaging effect on a minority of children, and small babies. This one doesn’t. But you’re right, we should revisit the usual childhood vaccines to ensure that financial pressures from the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t skewed the equation for them. Secondly, these are not normal vaccinations., which have been tested in humans in tge real world for decades plus. Very different, with unstudied consequences, Early studies raising worrying questions. And note here that this guy admits that the adverse effects are worse the younger the recipient, If Sage is backtracking, rather than lying, remember that they have much better access to the data on harm and death than we do. They say privately that the tens of thousands of deaths associated with the jabs so far – overwhelmingly in the old – are an inevitable, predicted and acceptable part of limiting the rush on hospitals. But they can see that the younger, the greater the bad news from the jabs. You may be unaware that some children have already died very shortly after them in the States, Some were ill, but the risk from the jab to sick children may outweigh benefits, Some… Read more »
“Why is this different?”
A good question, which even a moron should know the answer to.
Because a lot of diseases affect children the most, so you innoculate them to SAVE THEM! With covid, hardly any children anywhere in the world have been recorded as getting seriosly ill with the disease, nevermind dying from it. So the only attempted justification run by covidiastas for giving them the jab is to SAVE GRANNY. However there is no evidence that children are a source of infection for themselves or anyone else.
So the covidiastas are wrong and in pushing this are showing themselves to not just be fools but evil fools as the side effects of the jab are becoming more and more evident especially in the younger age groups with active immune systems.
So, erasmuse, go and do one!
Benefit versus risk….is that not the mantra of those invested in this toxic gene therapy. ? that simply does not apply to such a low risk group as kids…..
We don’t generally see deaths shortly after vaccination but with covid19 several young people have been killed by the “vaccines”.
I have to agree with OKUK, the poster above me, and – although I suppose I’m being slightly hypocritical in that I clearly use this site myself – I’m afraid that publishing this sort of thing is further proof of how right James Delingpole is about Toby Young and his chums. There is no excuse for fascists like this guy being given a platform HERE.
It all sounds horribly like Lockdown Sceptics’ line on masks or keeping to the June 21st “freedom” deadline: “oh look we MAY not have to wear masks after June 21st….oh look, it appears that, after half a year, Johnson MAY possibly come good on his commitment to finally end the police state….we should be grateful for THIS at least.”
This time it’s “oh look, they MAY not be going to insist that an experimental, gene-altering drug is pumped into the bodies of ALL the primary-school-age children who are at absolutely zero risk of the disease it’s supposed to prevent…Goody goody!”
But it is worth noting the prof’s shifting position.
Shifting? Shifty!
I have been vaccinated…..against yellow fever…but the similarities between Britain today and the USSR of yesterday (not the Russia of today) grow by the day: ‘“The Soviet way was: If a doctor told you to do something, you did it,” he said.’ ‘But back home in Russia, a deeper-rooted distrust in authority has resulted in the phenomenon of parents choosing to not vaccinate their kids almost as an expression of agency. “This doubt in any authority has been building up over many generations in Russians,” says Sergei Butry, a pediatrician. “If our government has been controlling people for many decades, here is one sphere of life where a person can stand in opposition.’ ‘The problems began only after Anastasia Dvoretskaya’s son turned one. Before, she says, he had been a healthy child. Then, during his second year, he came down with a nagging cough, then recurring throat infections, and then the flu. Up until that point, Dvoretskaya, 30, had vaccinated her son on schedule. But after talking to other parents and researching online, the architect, who lives just outside of Moscow, decided to stop. “Now he’s back to being a healthy kid,” Dvoretskaya said. “And my younger son” — who has never… Read more »
To some extent, they’ve lost the plot, and we haven’t seen the overall effect yet. It could be that manipulating the definition of products so as to be able to call them ‘vaccines’ might undermine the whole market for the real (and really useful) ones in the future. We’ll see what parents attitudes are like in the future.
Get your child vaccinated. It won’t do him any good and may do him harm, but it will protect you against the venomous nutters who will otherwise make your life a misery via MSM.
The best immunisation against Sars2 for a child is much simpler – it’s getting infected.
Quite so….but we are not dealing with rationality here but with widespread fear, across the globe.
Added to which, there are any number of other viruses against which the BCG vaccination may very well offer some protection.
‘…similar studies in other locations, including randomized controlled trials, showed an up to 50% reduction of mortality induced by BCG in young infants. This reduction in childhood mortality by BCG appeared to be due to the protection against unrelated infectious agents and especially respiratory tract infections and neonatal sepsis. Although the authors did not discriminate between bacterial and viral infections in these studies, it is well known that viral pathogens are the main cause of respiratory tract infections in children.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0337-y
I suspect you are on to something here.
If you take a look at countries who still have mandated BCG vaccination and compare with the ones that have never had mandated vaccination you get a very curious picture if you compare their relative experience with covid.
Examples; Belgium, Italy, UK never mandated, worse experience of covid; Russia, Turkey, still mandated much better per million of population.
Canada, partly mandated , a third of the deaths/million of the US , never mandated.
This is hardly a scientific analysis, but it maybe indicates something, which has been reported previously with a peer reviewed study pointing to some evidence that under 50s with BCGs appear to have better protection against covid.
Overall it seems that the logic is that the BCG ‘educates’ the immune system to attack other virus as well as bacteria.
At the very least this should have to be discounted through clinical trials before anyone starts injecting young kids.
BCG is very interesting. The WHO have started two seperate trials for covid , so there is even serious interest there.
Also it raises other issues. My wife cannot have a TB vaccine because the has anti-bodies naturally. I wonder if those same anti-bodies would be present for covid, neither of us have had those tests?
BCG started being given to 12 plus year olds in UK in 1953. So the oldsters now most at risk from covid probably did not get it. After 2005 the injection stopped being given as a matter of course to early teenagers and became directed to certain people. Because BCG has been around for decades a lot of studies have been done on its efficacy. People immune to mycobacteria do not get any increased immunity from a BCG jab, I wonder if the same is true with covid?
Anything that shows a shift in position is a good thing. Just the fact that they are talking openly about it is encouraging. Yes we know it can change but anything that eats away at the narrative even a bit is encouraging. I’m choosing to be glass half full about this.
I’d make that, ‘glass with a couple of drops at the bottom’.
Yes good that he is prepared to change his mind in the face of actual evidence.
However if he was to go too far he would have to take early retirement to “spend more time with his family”
Any review of the comments on Lockdown Skeptics will reveal universal concern about vaccination in children. It is welcome that this intervention has now occurred but appalling that the use of vaccine with no long term safety studies was ever considered.
Not quite universal – see Erasmuse’s comment earlier on!
FFS, just 27k people have signed this petition
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/586017
It won’t even be debated at this rate.
Yes, I thought this one would sprint past the finishing line!
Maybe people have reservations about the ‘until’.
I agree, I think that’s the problem,
Ok – just let them get on with it anyway. At least the motion gives an 18 month window for all the problems to be aired – and more side effects to show up.
The public mood could change in 18 months
There’s nothing else.
Get the debate then the issue will at least be aired.
It seems if you have a weakened immune system, a vaccine or immunity boost may well be a good idea.
Otherwise the risk of over reaching and creating a dangerous immune response, as with younger people, is increased.
Illogical.
There seems to have been some correlation between vaccine rollout and increased death among the most vulnerable, in several countries. I’m not sure I would be all that keen on taking it if I were in such a category.
I can confirm that. I am in that category, and wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole.
There are two layers to this :
(1) The general fact of it being under-tested and with massively concerning emerging harms
(2) The specific issues involving lack of testing on the vulnerable, the worrying range of side effects and the impacts on already compromised immune systems.
It’s worse than just being under-tested; there isn’t even an interest in collating or investigating the adverse effects, so it will likely never be properly tested. People with severe adverse effects are being shunned and censored.
“the extremely effective vaccine we’ve got”
Another innumerate medic. ~1% ARR.
This is the CDC report on the very underpowered (N=1127) study of Pfizer-BioNTech in 12-15 year olds that they used to clear it for that age group: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/reactogenicity.html#persons-12-15yrs The overall excess of serious adverse events over placebo was 0.2% and this was deemed to be unrelated to the treatment. Just looking through the other adverse events, these are, at best, very unpleasant vaccines.
The very idea of vaccinating a group of people who simply have no need for it is nauseating.
What’s more, we ‘re talking about a group who have no say in the matter. As yet, at least as adults we can choose. How long for though…
What kind of person would sacrifice their own child like this? For some naive notion of the ‘greater good’ perhaps?
But they don’t even transmit it!
There’s something f***ing wrong with parents who allow this: letting their kids lives be sacrificed for strangers.
The Professor is a scientist, he chooses his words carefully: but the message is that this is wrong.
Fauci said yesterday that he would want children to have the vaccine. In my opinion, the man is evil. I mean it. Pure evil.
Were we not at the inception of this toxic jab informed that, even if there are side effects, as long as the benefits outweigh the risk of the disease it MUST be taken……since clearly that does not apply to children it would be bordering on criminal to allow them to be targeted….and despite all the disingenous data being thrown about asserting that children ARE vulnerable. I call that out for what it is…utter BS.
Vaccinating children is murder.
Those doing it are murderers.
Those goading them are accessories.