Thread by @HZiauddeen

🧵 The unspeakable horror of JCVI's strategy:

So I asked this last night and many people rightfully pointed out that one does not need to have children to care about them. This is completely true and profuse apologies to those who were impugned by it.

Some elaboration:
(1/11)

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1454570659275845632

I asked the question given the unspeakable horror of the course they decided to take. While we have known from what has happened that they have been following a strategy of herd immunity through mass infection of infection, it is sickening to see it in writing.
(2/11)

For a good summary of the minutes, see below. For me the key points are: they simultaneously hold that children are at low risk and do not transmit, and that infected children would serve as boosters for adults and help control the pandemic.
(3/11)

https://twitter.com/ProfColinDavis/status/1454577545102376961?s=20

The evidence that has been considered is extremely biased and mainly comes from the same group of people who have consistently minimised the risk to children. These minutes go back to May 2021 & form part of the policy our govt has taken wrt kids over the last 5 months.
(4/11)

These are views and decisions that have been integral to why we have virtually no mitigations in schools, why we have not implemented safety measures that are used in so many other countries, why we have had so much resistance to vaccinating 12-15 year olds...
(5/11)

...and such poor vaccine roll out in this age group. The strategy has been to infect children and this is not for their benefit. In fact the harms to them have been consistently minimised and many of the people involved continued to do so.
(6/11)

These are not just views or opinions held by the members of JCVI and other scientists and paediatricians involved with them. These are major policy decisions that will impact millions of children, not just in the moment, but well into their future.
(7/11)

You can quibble if you want about the degree of impact but what you can't deny is that this is impact that they could have greatly been protected from AND the reason that they were not, was not in anyway for their benefit.
(8/11)

All these decisions come down to balancing benefits and risks, and this is balancing probabilities.

But you would always weigh up the benefits and risks for the same group of people, not the benefits to adults vs the risk to kids.

This is frankly immoral.
(9/11)

Now, you don't need to have kids to realise any of this, to comprehend or contextualise how horrific an approach this is.

Wanting to ensure that children are protected is a core value that many of us do, and all of us should, hold.
(10/11)

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1449009117230768133?s=20

My thinking is, if you were going to make decisions like that, perhaps at least the thought that they involve exposing your own (grand)kids to this risk might make you pause & think if you were really doing the right thing?

At least I hope it might?
(11/11)