Sunday, February 18, 2024
Dispute over COVID-19 Vaccination & Children
A prominent British Immunologist and Professor in Biomedical Sciences and Public Engagement at the University of Manchester recently declared in an Op-Ed piece in The Guardian that British health authorities are deviating from the rest of the wealthy developed nations by not placing more emphasis on universal COVID-19 vaccination for children and young adults. Sheena Cruickshank argues that the risk-based approach to COVID-19 vaccination recommended by the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI)---that the vaccines are generally only available for high-risk groups deviates from the norm of wealthy peer nations.
But is Cruickshank correct? Not really. The JCVI’s recommendations reflect more the norm among most developed nations. Even the New York Times would concur. Just read the recent “Covid Shots for Children.” David Leonhardt reports, “Much of the world has decided that most young children don’t need to receive Covid booster shots. The U.S. is an outlier.” Why is this the case? While the COVID jabs helped mitigate risk during the pandemic, now experts align for the most part that the benefits of these jabs for children in most cases “fail to outweigh the costs.”
Contrary to Professor Cruickshank’s stance, the U.S. is an outlier in this regard. And Britain’s JCVI actually follows most of the peer national COVID-19 vaccine policy, where healthy children are not included in the seasonal vaccination campaign.
Either Professor Cruickshank doesn’t understand very well COVID-19 vaccination policy among the rich nations, which we find hard to believe, or she is using her position and the media platform to promote a particularly biased agenda.
What prompts the British immunologists’ call for a new vaccine strategy? She is trying to force an argument, a case, to spark a movement to pressure the government to open up its “limited” vaccination recommendation by attempting to connect it to problems like long COVID. Allow children to get the vaccines, and first, parents will line up to volunteer their children to get the jab. And this will lower long COVID rates, although there is limited evidence that in the age of Omicron long COVID is materially reduced by vaccination.
“We know vaccination helps protect against long COVID, but we are still seeing new cases, so it’s uncertain how long protection persists from previous vaccinations.”
She cites no studies. And that’s likely because there are no studies anywhere that conclusively prove causation linking COVID-19 vaccination conclusively to reductions in long COVID.
Some observational studies suggest an association, but such investigations must be interpreted cautiously given their limitations. In one prominent recent population-based cohort study in Sweden published in The BMJ, Maria Bygdel and colleagues point out what they found to be “a strong association between COVID-19 vaccination before infection and reduced risk of receiving a diagnosis of PCC (Post-COVID condition).
But all sorts of limitations in this Swedish study means such examples should not be used by experts to prove conclusively that the vaccine reduces long COVID.
Bygdel and colleagues point to studies looking into the impact of vaccination on existing PCC, “showing both no effect as well as alleviation and aggravation of PCC symptoms.” This means the science remains uncertain, the situation unfolding and therefore the responsible position of any scientist or doctor should be to acknowledge that reality.
Another reason Cruickshank gives for the UK to open up its COVID-19 vaccination recommendations to more groups such as healthy children and young adults: the “government already negotiated the purchase of millions of doses of COVID vaccines, to be delivered in stages between 2021 and 2024.”
Meaning that under the pretext of emergency the government made prior bulk procurement decisions and now such product would just go to waste because a large segment of the population is excluded from the vaccine category group established by JCVI.
What the University of Manchester professor doesn’t touch on however, are the data involving cost-benefit analysis.
Rather she implies that the JCVI could have some agenda. After all they are using a ‘bespoke, non-standard method of cost-effectiveness assessment” guiding priorities less any details.
Professor Cruickshank fails to make the case for opening up the COVID-19 vaccine category to include healthy children and young people.
She doesn’t’ produce any conclusive evidence of any kind, nor does she point to any morbidity or mortality numbers pressing the current JCVI position on the matter. In fact, she acknowledges the data involving COVID morbidity and mortality is better this year than last. Of course, this is the case, we are out of the pandemic, the emergency has been called off, and the Omicron variant is substantially milder in effect for the substantial majority of the population.
The professor ignores any safety issues, a considerable factor in the young healthy population given the higher incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis. While she points to the U.S. as an example the JCVI should consider, she considers what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) package insert states about children and the Pfizer Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for example.
Under Section 8.4 of this formal regulatory artifact:
“The safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in individuals younger than 12 years of age have not been established. Evidence from clinical studies in individuals 6 months through 4 years of age strongly suggests that a single dose of COMIRNATY would be ineffective in individuals younger than 6 months of age.”
She also ignores whether someone has been infected or not. Natural immunity also can wear off given the mutating pathogen, but it’s a major contributing factor undoubtedly the JCVI and most other developed countries have factored into their analysis.
Professor Cruickshank cites a couple examples of developed nations making the vaccine universally available for healthy children and young adults--the U.S. and France. But as the New York Times now acknowledges, it’s the U.S that is an outlier, not the other way around, as Professor Cruickshank opines.
Finally, Cruickshank evades the topic of the market’s general rejection of the COVID-19 vaccines in the USA, despite continuous promotional energies across both public health authorities and industry. Less than one fifth of the eligible population stepped forward to get the latest monovalent booster (BA.4/BA.5), and the percentage of children that ultimately received a booster jab targeting Omicron BA.4/BA.5 was far less.
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Long COVID can destroy your ability to exercise or do simple tasks — now we may know why
Extreme fatigue and difficulty exercising are common symptoms of long COVID — now scientists may finally have discovered why.
While most people who test positive for the coronavirus are over their symptoms within a week or two, more research is showing that some people continue to report symptoms — and even develop new ones — three months after their initial positive test, lasting for months or even years.
A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that some of these symptoms may persist or worsen as those with long COVID-19 experience biological changes in their bodies after working out — most notably involving their muscles.
“We’re seeing clear changes in the muscles in these patients,” Michèle van Vugt, professor of internal medicine at Amsterdam UMC, said in a statement.
The study found that long COVID patients had extreme fatigue, changes in muscle composition and widespread muscle damage.
Researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) analyzed data from 25 long-COVID patients with post-exertional malaise (PEM) — meaning their symptoms worsened after the minor physical exertion, causing them to crash from extreme fatigue — and 21 healthy control participants after cycling for 15 minutes.
As patients experience PEM, even daily tasks like carrying groceries and brushing their teeth can be exhausting.
After analyzing blood and muscle tissue samples, the researchers discovered that those with long COVID had various abnormalities in their muscle tissue.
“At the cellular level, we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell, function less well and that they produce less energy,” Rob Wüst, assistant professor at the Department of Human Movement Sciences at VU University, explained in a statement.
“So, the cause of the fatigue is really biological. The brain needs energy to think. Muscles need energy to move.”
This biological decrease in energy is specific to those with PEM and not seen in other chronic illnesses.
“Normally we know from all the other chronic diseases that exercise is good for you, that exercise is medicine,” Wüst told National Geographic. “However, these patients do get worse.”
Long COVID patients were also found to have a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which may also explain some of the fatigue.
These muscle fibers deplete energy faster, meaning they exhaust quicker.
“We know that it is difficult to change fiber types in people and that it doesn’t happen with inactivity,” Wüst told National Geographic. “Something else is changing the fiber types.”
The cause of this change is still unclear.
Along with changes to energy production and muscle composition, the research team also found those with long COVID had muscle damage — muscle scarring, inflammation and blood clots before and after working out.
Studies have shown that those with PEM struggle to recover from exercise, but this latest research showed that this may be caused by repeated overexertion — even from daily tasks — that prohibit the body from fully recovering.
The experts noted that this breakthrough will help guide more appropriate treatments for those with long-term COVID, though not everyone would necessarily benefit in the same ways.
“Keep in mind that every patient has a different limit,” Brent Appelman, a researcher at Amsterdam UMC, said in a statement.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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