Dan Wootton: Why on earth are we considering jabbing five-year-olds?

The UK is starting to emerge from this pandemic positively.

It took far too long for Boris to stand up to his power mad scientific advisers on SAGE – especially the all-powerful Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance – and the Covid hysterics in his own Cabinet like Michael Gove and Sajid Javid.

But now we know how wrong all those folk got it on Omicron, the Prime Minister will finally remove all legal restrictions before the end of the month.

We are moving on from what has been a truly horrific two years, with 98 per cent of English adults now furnished with Covid antibodies.

But that’s why I’ve been left horrified by plans for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to announce a decision to jab healthy children aged between five and 11, having previously held out against young children – who, let’s be honest, are at a miniscule risk from Covid – from being jabbed.

According to the Daily Mirror, new guidance would suggest to parents that they may want to jab their kids to protect against a ‘potential future wave’ of Covid.

This is complete unnecessary overreach in my opinion.

As Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair of Covid-19 immunisation on the JCVI, previously said…

“The majority of children aged 5 to 11 are at very low risk of serious illness due to Covid-19.”

And remember, 500,000 children in the five to 11 age bracket who are in a clinical risk group or live with someone who is immunosuppressed are already able to be jabbed anyway.

The Guardian has reported an announcement could come a week today, when Boris reveals the government’s long-term Covid plan, with vaccinations being expanded to younger children via a “non-urgent” offer to parents.

But what is the point, given the risks associated with vaccination for children?

While the media and many of its scientific cronies consistently play down the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine, Vinay Prasad, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, has used data from the UK to confirm the risk of myocarditis among young people is higher from vaccination than from a Covid-19 infection.

The precise estimate of risk is now thought to be between 1 in 3,000 to 6,000 for males in the target range, roughly aged between 12 to 30.

But remember that in healthy children aged between five and 11, the risks from becoming seriously ill from Covid itself with no comorbidities is negligible.

In fact, in the first year of the pandemic, where the Wuhan strain was far more virulent, there were six under-18s with no underlying conditions who passed away, meaning there was a one in two million chance of death for a healthy child with Covid-19.

In other words, your unvaccinated child is more likely to have been killed by lighting over the course of the year.

And the Omicron variant will have significantly improved those statistics.

Of course, there will be the usual drumbeat from the usual suspects who say vaccines result in a reduced risk of transmission, so young kids are being jabbed for the greater good.

But take a look around you, use your eyes, everyone has been getting Omicron, especially the triple jabbed! Everyone can spread it.

The UK is probably emerging more successfully from the pandemic compared to comparable European democracies because children have provided a wall of immunity, built up thanks to natural infection in schools.

As Brent Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Community Child Health at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health – a former member of the JCVI – wrote in a letter signed by 12 scientists and 21 peers …

“I’m afraid the mass vaccination of healthy children is not based on sound evidence. It is time for the JCVI, the Chief Medical Officer and the Government to reassess all the evidence now available and alter its recommendation accordingly.”

Please God, let us come out of this pandemic safely WITHOUT feeling the need to vaccinate healthy five to 11-year-olds.