Covid and Kids: Jacinda DIDN’T Follow the Science
Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash
Cranmer
Two Shots for Summer’ was the New Zealand government’s edgy tag line to get young people vaccinated. The only problem was that it was contrary to the health advice.
By early October 2021 the media started to run stories that promoted the New Zealand government’s new Covid line – ‘Two Shots for Summer’ – meant to encourage all young people to get their two doses of Pfizer vaccine in order to be able to enjoy their summer with some freedoms after months of lockdown.
One such article in RNZ began: “That’s the edgy, and somewhat boozey, tag line the government’s relying on to encourage better vaccination rates in our younger population”.
The only problem was that that was not what the government’s technical experts were recommending. In fact, the minutes from the 7 December meeting of the Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group (CV TAG) and its subsequent memo setting out their recommendations to government represented their strongest worded advice during all of 2021. Minutes from 7 December state:
An update was provided on the memo advising that those aged under 18 should not be required to have two doses of vaccine under vaccine mandates.
CV TAG does not want to see two doses of vaccine absolutely required to under 18s to be able to work
STA outlined the current status of the draft memo, aimed at clarifying the CV TAG advice that vaccine mandates should not apply to those under 18
Policy, health, legal and crown law will continue working with STA and CV TAG
On 9 December the Chair of CV TAG, Dr Town, issued a strongly worded memo setting out the medical advice of our experts to the Director-General of Health, Dr Bloomfield. It was titled ‘COVID-19 Vaccine Technical Advisory Group (CV TAG) position statement: Vaccination mandates in those under 18 years of age’.
It has ramifications not only for people under 18 who were subject to workplace mandates but also for children who were subject to ‘quasi-mandates’ that restricted their access to sports and after-school activities, amongst other things.
I have set the memo out below as it needs to be read in order to gauge its full import.
The memo notes that initial advice was provided by CV TAG to Bloomfield on 11 November which highlighted that “younger age groups are more at risk than older age groups of myocarditis after the second dose of Pfizer vaccine, while a robust antibody response and early limited clinical effectiveness data indicate some protection from COVID-19 after a single dose of Pfizer vaccine in these younger age groups”.
It goes on to state “consequently, CV TAG expressed concern about vaccine mandates requiring younger age groups (e.g. <18 years) to be vaccinated with 2 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and stated: ‘consideration should be given to permitting younger people who have had one dose to be permitted to work or undertake other activities covered by the mandate’. This particular detail has not been carried through to the implementation of this advice”.
CV TAG notes “the individual risk to young people of severe disease is very low. For them to make an informed decision not to get a second dose of the vaccine eg, due to potential myocarditis risk is justified.”
“Risks associated with the transmission of COVID-19 throughout Aotearoa New Zealand among those aged <18 years are insufficient to justify mandating a 2 dose schedule of the Pfizer vaccine prior to working in any environment.”
“The 2 dose schedule, particularly when administered in the shortest possible clinical timeframe, may add unnecessary risk to increasing the likelihood of myocarditis as an outcome in this population.”
The memo concludes by recommending “Those aged <18 years only being required to have received 1 dose of Pfizer vaccine to meet the vaccine requirements for employment.”
Together with its earlier memo of 21 July recommending an eight week dose interval to the under 30s, this memo of 9 December seems to most accurately represent CV TAG’s views on the vaccination of young people and teenagers. Importantly it refers to informed decision-making although it is surprising that this didn’t feature more prominently in earlier discussions.
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https://cranmer.substack.com/p/covid-and-our-kiwi-kids-part-2/