Thread by @dgurdasani1

Done a few interviews this morning, and want to debunk a few myths I've seen floating around media:
Myth 1: 'Benefits from vaccines to children are minimal & we're vaccinating them to benefit others'
Fact:Multiple studies now show huge direct benefits of vaccines to kids 🧵

To understand this, we need to understand the risk to children. Let's remember that adolescents have had some of the highest infection rates throughout when schools were open, and even more so post-delta. Currently we rates in this group are ~500-600/100,000 population

PHE data from last week shows >60,000 cases in the 10-19 year old age group in just the last two weeks (they don't provide specific data for 12-17 yr olds but this gives an idea of level of infection). Currently 0.5-0.7% of cases in under 18s get hospitalised.

We've had >2,300 hosp in under 18s just since 1st July. And we know 1 in 7 cases (tens of thousands of which occur each wk) will go on to develop persistent symptoms lasting 3-4 months, with some developing chronic disability. 11,000 children in the UK have had these for >1 yr

None of this is trivial. JCVI can argue that most hospitalisations are in those with pre-existing conditions, but the fact is even the risk in healthy children means vaccines are beneficial. And of course long COVID can affect anyone, and often affects completely 'healthy' kids.

Of course even JCVI's assessment of risk is very flawed, as I've discussed extensively. If you underestimate the risk to children of severe disease (as they've done), you automatically will underestimate the benefits. Many others looking at this carefully have shown different

Here's the analysis from the US and CDC about risks and benefits- benefits far far outweigh risks from the vaccine. This doesn't even consider long COVID, or reducing educational disruption for children.

Here's another paper from @PeterHotez who is an expert on vaccines and COVID-19 and has extensively studied the rare side effect of myocarditis with vaccines, that also show benefits overwhelmingly outweigh risks:
ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CI…

Here's our analysis, that used the appropriate denominators - assessing risk based on exposure (rather than population!), which also very clearly showed this. We also looked at long COVID risk:
osf.io/grzma/

And here's recent data from the CDC shared showing 10 times higher hospitalisations among the unvaccinated adolescents in the US vs those who were vaccinated:

https://twitter.com/CDCMMWR/status/1433857644792631302?s=20

Here's numerous world-leading experts on vaccines and children talking about the benefit vs risk of vaccines in adolescents yesterday in our emergency summit:

Here's our letter to Gavin Williamson signed by >35 scientists/HCWs, and ~200 parents/educators asking the govt to urgently vaccinate adolescents and put mitigations in place in schools.
blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/03…

And almost every country across the world is doing this - France has vaccinated ~50% of it's adolescents. US has vaccinated >12 million. Canada has also vaccinated the majority. Almost all of Europe is rapidly moving ahead with this.

https://twitter.com/MoriartyLab/status/1433887034364551168?s=20

This brings me to Myth 2:
Myth 2: Scientists have advised against vaccination of 12-15 year olds
Fact: Most scientists strongly support vaccination of 12-15 yr olds. There are outliers in JCVI & parts of the UK paeds community that don't. But this view is in no way the consensus

This creates a narrative that if the govt moves ahead with vaccinating this age group, they are acting 'against scientific advice'. They are not. The global scientific consensus currently in the world, and in the non-paeds community in the UK is to vaccinate adolescents

It's not even just a consensus view, but also very well evidenced in the literature, and in real-world evidence. So I urge the media to report this correctly, as these narratives will fuel vaccine hesitancy, when the vaccines are inevitably offered to 12-15 yr olds.

Myth 3 perpetuated by the JCVI:
'COVID-19 is not very severe in children
Fact: While it may be less severe than in adults, it causes significant impact. I've outlined the impact from hospitalisations and long COVID above. We vaccinate children for far less benefit routinely.

Myth 4: We're being cautious because of 'unknown' long-term effects of vaccines
Fact: This is rubbish.

If we're weighing unknown effects, let's weigh risks from COVID and risks from vaccine, and their relative probability.
Risk from vaccine- currently 30-40/million cases of myocarditis- typically mild with good recover, no deaths.

Unknown long term impacts from vaccines- >14 million adolescents vaccinated across the globe. 95% of myocarditis - largely mild was all seen within 1 week. Almost no vaccines have been shown to have long term effects after 4 months. This is very unlikely

Unknown long term impacts from COVID-19- known impacts are seriously worrying and not considered by JCVI- occur in 1 in 7 lasting 3-4 months, and in 11,000 in the UK for more than 1 year. Neurocognitive symptoms are common. Brain changes in metabolism have been seen at 5-6 months

Myth 4: "Vaccine roll-out in schools will be challenging and disrupt education"
Fact: Vaccinating children will likely massively reduce educational disruption, which has really impacted children whenever infection rates have been so high. Look at Scotland.

So many countries have rolled out vaccines to kids without disrupting their education. In fact this is one of the policies that allows schools to remain open by helping contain transmission alongside mitigations so children & staff don't get ill and need to isolate.

Myth 5: We're denying the vaccine to other countries by vaccinating adolescents
Fact: This isn't a zero sum game. We can do much more to improve vaccine equity by patent waivers, tech transfer agreements, increased manufacturing, supporting covax than by donating <6 mil doses

We've done none of this, rather diverting vaccines from India when it was in a crisis. Also the options aren't mass infection vs vaccination. If we do decide to not vaccinate certain groups, we have to mitigate and protect them against infection.

Mass infecting them while donating vaccines shouldn't be the option. Similar with booster doses. Also didn't see this level of scrutiny from the JCVI in recommending booster doses for adults, which will be many more millions. All of this seems ideological.

Our govt and scientific bodies have a duty to protect children. They have completely and utterly failed. The actions of JCVI are out of line with evidence, policy in most other countries, and with their own rhetoric and narratives.

Even if JCVI believe as per their analysis that children with pre-existing conditions have a risk 50x higher than those who are 'healthy, why did they wait for *6 weeks* after MHRA approval to vaccinate them at a point where cases in this grp were higher than ever in the pandemic

Surely, this was reckless beyond imagination. If they say the rates in children with pre-existing conditions are so high, how many hospitalisations, admissions and deaths were preventable in this time if they had acted sooner. Yet, they say they adopted the 'cautious approach'

And this sadly is a myth too. Nothing cautious about exposing children to a neurotropic virus that causes long term illness, cognitive effects, and impact on the brain. And all children are precious- regardless of being 'healthy' or having 'pre-existing conditions'.

These myths sadly have found their way into the media and are being repeated again and again. Please do share this to help combat them. I'm really worried that these myths spread by members of JCVI will reduce uptake in this age group when vaccines are inevitably offered.