Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[servodude]

Probably because they were following current Government guidelines. Is that not reasonable?

If guidelines are defective they should be ignored.

V8

And who decides if they are defective? Why not just advocate anarchy?

Ooh an interesting digression... sometimes I think there's more of a whiff of anarchy in what many would term libertarianism
If you haven't already read it I can recommend The Dispossed by Ursula Le Guin

Anyways, as an advocate of masks to help reduce the spread of this thing, even I have to suggest that they would likely be reduced to a token bit of theatre among a class of pre/young teens when expected to be worn for the entire school day - every day.

- sd

[dealtn]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school. They have a round of vaccinations today. She hopes to discover how typical her school is or not when she meets up with the immunisation team later.

[servodude]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school. They have a round of vaccinations today. She hopes to discover how typical her school is or not when she meets up with the immunisation team later.

Are they vaccinating in the school premises? It would make sense to me as a logistical strategy.

My 14yr old had her first Pfizer last weekend; heard today that some of her friends have had their appointments changed (by the parents) from Moderna to Pfizer on the back of the news from Scandinavia

-sd

[redsturgeon]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school. They have a round of vaccinations today. She hopes to discover how typical her school is or not when she meets up with the immunisation team later.

Are they vaccinating in the school premises? It would make sense to me as a logistical strategy.

My 14yr old had her first Pfizer last weekend; heard today that some of her friends have had their appointments changed (by the parents) from Moderna to Pfizer on the back of the news from Scandinavia

-sd

Yes AIUI

John

[dealtn]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school. They have a round of vaccinations today. She hopes to discover how typical her school is or not when she meets up with the immunisation team later.

Are they vaccinating in the school premises? It would make sense to me as a logistical strategy.

Yes that's normal.

Interesting that some children want it (either because that is what they want, or don't want the peer pressure of being in the minority) but haven't received parental consent (for whatever reason).

[servodude]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school. They have a round of vaccinations today. She hopes to discover how typical her school is or not when she meets up with the immunisation team later.

Are they vaccinating in the school premises? It would make sense to me as a logistical strategy.

Yes that's normal.

Interesting that some children want it (either because that is what they want, or don't want the peer pressure of being in the minority) but haven't received parental consent (for whatever reason).

I think you're on the ball with the peer group influence being a bigger concern (especially at that age) than what your parents think
- how does the legislation work these days wrt. informed consent of teens? I can imagine it's a minefield

-sd

[dealtn]

Are they vaccinating in the school premises? It would make sense to me as a logistical strategy.

Yes that's normal.

Interesting that some children want it (either because that is what they want, or don't want the peer pressure of being in the minority) but haven't received parental consent (for whatever reason).

I think you're on the ball with the peer group influence being a bigger concern (especially at that age) than what your parents think
- how does the legislation work these days wrt. informed consent of teens? I can imagine it's a minefield

-sd

In this instance, in practice, no parental consent means no vaccination. In theory a court can ultimately overrule and grant the child's wishes (to be vaccinated) over the parents' wishes (not to vaccinate). In practice I can't see that happening.

So what should the school nurse who hears a child asking "why can't I be vaccinated like the others?" do? What are the potential consequences to them, professionally, and the child, and the school, and the parents, do you think?

I won't give the theoretical, or practical response, but you are correct it's a (potential) minefield.

[servodude]

Yes that's normal.

Interesting that some children want it (either because that is what they want, or don't want the peer pressure of being in the minority) but haven't received parental consent (for whatever reason).

I think you're on the ball with the peer group influence being a bigger concern (especially at that age) than what your parents think
- how does the legislation work these days wrt. informed consent of teens? I can imagine it's a minefield

-sd

In this instance, in practice, no parental consent means no vaccination. In theory a court can ultimately overrule and grant the child's wishes (to be vaccinated) over the parents' wishes (not to vaccinate). In practice I can't see that happening.

So what should the school nurse who hears a child asking "why can't I be vaccinated like the others?" do? What are the potential consequences to them, professionally, and the child, and the school, and the parents, do you think?

I won't give the theoretical, or practical response, but you are correct it's a (potential) minefield.

Thanks.
I feel like there's a global test of Gillick competence legislation waiting to happen
If only common sense was common! (or litigiousness less so)

-sd

[murraypaul]

The official guidance says that the specialists in charge of administering the vaccine (not the school nurse) can decide to vaccine a child against the wishes of the parent if they judge the child to be competent to make their own decision, without needing to resort to court procedures.

Whether they will be willing to do so, given the controversy it would produce, is a different question.

(SAIS = School Age Immunisation Service)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... or-schools

What happens if a parent has not consented, but the child wants to be vaccinated?

Young people who understand fully what is involved in a proposed procedure, such as vaccination, can legally give consent. This is known as ‘Gillick competence’.

If no consent from a parent has been received, but the child wants to be vaccinated and is judged to be Gillick competent by the healthcare professional, the child can still be vaccinated. In this case, the healthcare professional will make every effort to contact a parent to check before they proceed.

If a parent objects to their child being vaccinated but the child wants to be vaccinated and is judged to be Gillick competent, the healthcare professional will try to reach agreement between the parent and child. However, the parent cannot overrule the decision of a Gillick competent child.

Trained professionals in the SAIS team, with expertise in vaccinating children will speak to the child. The SAIS team will assess the individual child’s capacity to self-consent (Gillick competence) and be responsible for deciding the appropriateness of administering the vaccine.

[Sunnypad]

Hi all

Does anyone know if the legislation for vaccine passports in Wales is meant to be temporary or has nothing been said about that?

Thanks.

[dealtn]

The official guidance says that the specialists in charge of administering the vaccine (not the school nurse) can decide to vaccine a child against the wishes of the parent if they judge the child to be competent to make their own decision, without needing to resort to court procedures.

Whether they will be willing to do so, given the controversy it would produce, is a different question.

You are correct, it won't be the school nurse that administers the vaccine, nor does the decision rest with her (rightly). But he/she will be the conduit between child and all the others (parent/school/imms team) and the likeliest to know of potential issues. That is the dilemma, and how any issue comes to light. The imms team will only be introduced to children that have received parental consent, so won't know of any child without consent, but wanting vaccination.

Anecdotally it's not that common. There are more often issues where a child has parents that don't agree with each other.

Incidentally my wife has performed both roles as school nurse and immunisation specialist, and the two sets of professionals know each other and their practices well (at least in non-state schools where school nurses are rarer). The trend is for school immunisations going up as the different number of preventative measures rises. These kinds of issues won't be going away.

[jfgw]

Parental Consent for Covid Vaccination in schools of children aged 12-15 around 65%, based on my wife's school...

Based upon vaccines by age data, I would guess (and it can only be a guess) that only about 75% of the parents have had a first jab, and a small number of those have not bothered with a second one.

I have posted the relevant graphs on the modelling thread, viewtopic.php?p=448603#p448603


Julian F. G. W.

[XFool]

Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic

The Guardian

Exclusive: Report from planning exercise in 2016 alerted government of need to stockpile PPE and set up contact tracing system

[88V8]

Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic
Exclusive: Report from planning exercise in 2016 alerted government of need to stockpile PPE and set up contact tracing system

And in 2005 https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=30651
We seem to be good at making plans, then doing nothing about them...

V8

[murraypaul]

You are correct, it won't be the school nurse that administers the vaccine, nor does the decision rest with her (rightly). But he/she will be the conduit between child and all the others (parent/school/imms team) and the likeliest to know of potential issues. That is the dilemma, and how any issue comes to light. The imms team will only be introduced to children that have received parental consent, so won't know of any child without consent, but wanting vaccination.

Well that shouldn't be how it works, and if schools are doing that, then they are not following the guidance they have been given.

[dealtn]

You are correct, it won't be the school nurse that administers the vaccine, nor does the decision rest with her (rightly). But he/she will be the conduit between child and all the others (parent/school/imms team) and the likeliest to know of potential issues. That is the dilemma, and how any issue comes to light. The imms team will only be introduced to children that have received parental consent, so won't know of any child without consent, but wanting vaccination.

Well that shouldn't be how it works, and if schools are doing that, then they are not following the guidance they have been given.

How exactly do you anticipate this works then?

Consider a school with 500 pupils. A consent form is presented to the parents of the children by the school. This is the school acting on behalf of the imms team (who won't have a database or practical ability to send this themselves). The school collates the consent information, and let's say there are 300 "yes" consents", 100 "no" consents, and 100 "no reply" responses.

The imms team turn up with 300 (plus a few) vaccinations. Do you think the 200 children are going to be presented to the imms team for them to discuss with them the "no" or "no reply" responses? Check what they want? As you say the guidelines are for the child to be giving the consent, not the adult. They then do 200 Gillick competency assessments?

I suggest, in practice, only very few children that have declared a wish to be vaccinated but the school (and imms team) haven't received a "yes" consent will be presented for Gillick competency, in coordination with attempts from the school to involve the parents. The (vast) majority of non "yes" children won't have any contact with the imms team, and post vaccination event dialogue will continue between school and parents on whether any additional "yes" consents get delivered ahead of the next visit of the imms team to the school.

How do you see the practical delivery differing to that?

[redsturgeon]

There certainly seem to be a lot of problems which are slowing down implementation. It seems that natural immunity might win the race over vaccination in school age children. Which may not be a bad thing...though there will be collateral damage.

John

[Hallucigenia]

Probably because they were following current Government guidelines. Is that not reasonable?

If guidelines are defective they should be ignored.

V8

And who decides if they are defective? Why not just advocate anarchy?

It's not a question of anarchy, just being a bit sceptical that current UK guidelines are as good as they could be, given that they're an outlier in international terms in how lax they are. It's not anarchy to take a more cautious approach when there's pretty good evidence now that it works. For instance, in Georgia last year mask wearing in schools correlated with a 37% reduction in Covid, ventilation saw an independent 35% reduction, and (ventilation + HEPA filtration) saw 48% reduction. If I had a child in school I would be fighting for those measures to be enforced :
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm

For instance, Toronto's school board has gone against state guidance and put HEPA filtration in all classrooms, gyms and shared spaces, and it seems to be making a big difference to infection rates in Ontario, which has not had a great record on Covid so far (whereas eg schools next door in Quebec are a disaster) :
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/here-s-the-v ... -1.5541550

And it doesn't have to be expensive - commercial HEPA units work out at about £10/child, less if you build your own. Students at UC San Diego held a workshop to build DIY units for the whole campus :
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/ ... -19-spread

Here's a thread optimising the performance of a C$55 (£32) DIY filtration unit - MERV-13 is cheaper than HEPA but still works pretty well :
https://twitter.com/DavidElfstrom/statu ... 3009889286

UK guidelines have consistently been behind the curve, and new challenges will always arise. For instance, there has been a rash of cases in the West Country lately where people are positive on lateral-flow, may well have symptoms, but come up negative on RT-PCR and so don't have to isolate. One possibility is that they have a variant similar to B.1.616 from Brittany, which gives a negative RT-PCR result in 85% of naso-pharangeal swabs but still comes up positive in swabs from deeper in the respiratory system (per Fillatre et al in preprint) suggesting it's not mutating the PCR recognition sites. If it's deeper in the lungs then that could be "good" in that it should transmit less (delta's transmissibility seems to derive from having a much higher viral load in the upper respiratory system), but it's not good if it evades testing.

[dealtn]

If guidelines are defective they should be ignored.

V8

And who decides if they are defective? Why not just advocate anarchy?

It's not a question of anarchy, just being a bit sceptical that current UK guidelines are as good as they could be, ...

So we agree then the appropriate response isn't "they should be ignored"?

Schools accept guidelines, and many have measures in place in addition to them. Individuals be they pupils, teachers, and others can also take additional measures themselves as individuals.

What I don't get is an an immediate response by some who question why "everyone" wasn't wearing a mask, when the obvious answer is there isn't a compulsion to do so, nor a current guideline suggesting that is the correct way to behave.

[murraypaul]

The imms team turn up with 300 (plus a few) vaccinations. Do you think the 200 children are going to be presented to the imms team for them to discuss with them the "no" or "no reply" responses?

No, I think any child that had declared to the school that they wanted the vaccine despite a lack of parental approval would be.

I suggest, in practice, only very few children that have declared a wish to be vaccinated but the school (and imms team) haven't received a "yes" consent will be presented for Gillick competency, in coordination with attempts from the school to involve the parents.

Yes, that is what I would expect also. (Assuming you mean that very few children would declare the wish, rather than that of all the children that did so, very few would be presented.)

That isn't the same as:

The imms team will only be introduced to children that have received parental consent, so won't know of any child without consent, but wanting vaccination.