the ah, [000:00:00;00] me welcome to the alex salmon. sure. where today we examine controversial decisions of the u. k. government, in dealing with the corporate pandemic. faxing policy is recommended by the joint committee on vaccination and immunization the g. c v. i. and i'm surprised. i'm heavily caviar to devise. last week. the committee recommends at the fall of consideration of often corporate vaccines to secondary school children. should the government wish to consider the vaccination of children and young adults age less

than 18 years with the primary aim of reducing the valve cover to infection rate. a symptomatic and symptomatic cases irrespective of other direct or indirect benefit, as discussed above. the known benefits from vaccination, unlikely to be limited. in this instance, j. c. v. i favors deferral of a universal offer vaccination until more data have accrued, including a clear understanding of the impact of coven 19 in the u. k. within the context of a successful adult vaccination program. however, many scientists disagree and even more strikingly saw what is most international advice and high back need to countries, including the policymakers in america, germany, new zealand of the netherlands. the position is particularly pressing in scotland, where the schools go back in a mere 3 weeks. under recent comparisons between the scottish and english suits of infection strongly suggests, the schools had been the key vector of transmission of the virus. scotland rates of

cobra transmission was higher than england until the scottish schools went off on holiday and then was quickly overtaken by the english 8th where the schools were still in session. today show we talk to to t experts from north and face of the border about the government's decision making on vaccination. wait to christmas to talk cambridge for all just has become a high for them during the pandemic. while professor, how did formerly the chief medical officer for scotland is president of the british medical association. but 1st, to teach emails i met this and this point for research shows it seems scottish also it's angela mcknight and mighty armstrong. i mean sealants epidemiologist, professor, my co baker and dr. pardon and connie of x 2 university 1st and relation to our authors. dalrymple said, really interesting. show many thanks to all contributors. clear content that's fabulous than to do with engineering mccloud. i am definitely buying this big and i

wish them all the best with netflix. loved his comment to alex and our summit 1000000 says it's a part as enlightenment. scott fundamental in the formation of american politics. one must ask with the benefit of hindsight, hatred that paiute arthur goes on to say all history should be available in schools to everyone interested about everything, whether you like or new. and finally on our authors. and he said that a special message to, i'm just by says amber, love it, your husband was, can eat. and so see all of us that moving on to i show on corbett and vaccinations . gordon mckenzie says, when i was in school many years ago, we got vaccinated at school. i remember a long length of kids getting jobs one by one. there was no problem with the strategy back then. would it be a problem? no. linda said, great topic, alex for bringing up the sheer incompetence of the board is johnson. and lisa says, well, i for one will be continuing to wear my mask. and finally, kevin says we must anesha if only protections. now dr. chris smith,

of the nick of scientists, platform has become a high thought name during the pandemic. no one better explains the behavior of this crew. no vidas. don't chris smoke? welcome back to the i'll examine tricia. so christmas, we have a situation where a high vaccinated countries like israel in america, and though vaccinating school children certainly 2nd to school children. but you can't face not to explain this. well, we've waited a long time for the j. c, v i the joint committee on vaccination and immunization to pronounce their verdict on this. and many a suspected they probably would say because l regulates the mh re, had endorsed and pronounced safe. the use of axioms in 12 to 16 year olds. and we have other major jurisdictions like the us of the european countries, like france and other countries elsewhere in the world, like israel, as you say, that have gone down the path of saying these are scenes

a safe and we're going to use them and they are indeed, using them in young people. so we assume that we would probably follow suit. and the argument in favor of doing that is that if you've got a population and you want to vaccinate as many people as possible, this will translate into a reduction and spread the virus, especially in the new school year. in the autumn, when we know that everything becomes much more common in the autumn, because that's when seasonal infections tend to surge, and there will be no comb repercussions of that. the j. c, the i, on the other hand have said they're not going to support that course of action. and they cite those as one reason for that. in their cost benefit analysis. the low risk of some side effects out of nearly 200000000 doses of the 5 vaccine which has been approved for this age group being given and the middle of ac seem to works the same way. there's a couple of 100 cases of a mile called itis, and inflammation in the heart will not put the frequency about side effects about

one in a 1000000. that though is about the same as the risk of you getting severe dose of current of ours to feel that age. so you can see why there's a tension for them. they're protecting young people from something with a risk profile that sorts of the same frequency as the side effects of the vaccine . but the wider protection isn't being taken into account. so i think it's a difficult decision. i can see why they've made it, but i would personally have supported encouraging. anyone is 12 an up getting a job because i think it will contribute to our ability long term to control the virus. so you can see why professor adam fell in love. the g, c, b, i would say that the risk to children is vanishingly small, but it's less easy. explain about the risk of infect timothy across the population, given that the guy is recommending the jags be given to children who have the vulnerable adult in the household. how to explain that contradiction was speaking

to the baby say on saturday. adam famous was asked about the rationale behind doing this. and he made precisely the point that the statistics show you are about as likely to be hit by lightening as you ought to get a severe dose of covert if your child children also tend to spread karone of ours a bit less well, but not 0 than older people and they do not suffer from severe side effects of kind of ours. but what they could do is, of course take the infection home and introduce it through the household unit to other more vulnerable people. and at the same time, remember that we have seen encouragement of use of the vaccines in vulnerable children. so we are going to be by exciting children who are judged to be particularly vulnerable. we're just not vaccinating children or mass at the moment . but in the last few weeks, we've seen an indication that the schools out a vector from faction i mean scottish effective, effective at the rate was higher than england's the scottish schools for the holidays of abil neglige, gloat if 3 or 4 weeks ago. and suddenly the scottish rate

a drops below england has to be in the study to look at the comparison, the scottish language skills to establish whether it's true. i'm not sure whether anyone, so specifically, whether there is a relationship between the school year in scotland versus in england and cases of current of ours. but certainly we have looked for decades increase in previous decades. the issue of whether the school year drives searches in season infections and it absolutely doesn't mean there's a really good body of research that shows that children go into school mixing at school. it's a giant crucible for infections that we know that the school year is a potent driver. and that is actually why the u. k. government have said, well, we're going to have freedom day when we're going to have freedom day because it will overlap strongly with when schools are. and that would be supported by the 5 to last week. a 1000000 school children in england were off or paying off for self

isolated because of classmates. they are teachers who had been fight corona fire. if the schools were a vector for the fax and high went to a 1000000 children back at home last week. well, i think a 1000000 workers are also back at home this week on them. we've got to companies like felix dogs saying organizations like felix, i dog saying that they're almost on the cost of not being able to operate. we've got certain other operators sort of said we're just going to have to shut up shop at the moment because we do not have enough staff to run our business safely or effectively. this is being up to the ping demik for ologist to understand the behavior of viruses. in particular, the support and highly infectious new strain of corona virus. what was your passionately, actually, when you, you saw the scenes of rebels in nightclubs celebrating freedom day and or going down the terms and pleasure, boats. last week we had a passionate with them. you looked at that was the thing is going on. well, it's

a pressure relief valve, isn't it? and this is telling us that there's a lot of pressure in the boiler is a considerable head of steam. and young people feel that they've been robbed, not of one, but 2 summers almost now. and they're desperate to get back to some semblance of normality that said, i hope that people will remain responsible and accept. we're not out of the woods as we keep being told by politicians. it hasn't gone away. we have got lots of cases, but what i find reassuring is that the cases are currently cropping up in younger people and chiefly in unvaccinated people. and that means that if we carry on the way we're going, which is to have a strong push towards ventilating everybody, then we have a fair chance of actually really suppressing down numbers so that it remains manageable. we will accept that of ours is not going to go away. it will become endemic, it will continue to circulate. but what we need to do is to convert it from what could be a lethal infection for some into

a fairly trivial infection. for everyone from national precedent for, for a come to have a partially vaccinated population. a opening up restrictions into the, the people for a pandemic. i don't think so, which is why we're being described as a unique experiment by a number of commentators, even the w h. i have said that this is a dubious state of affairs that if we don't use the advance just being handed to us at the present time, which is a very heavily vaccinated open with some way to go adult population. the summer, the end of the school year, people going away on holiday, so few people in the workplace on public transport and so on. then we're coinciding with a drop in pressure on the an h s. anyway, this gives us a window of opportunity. if we don't move now and try this, then we are absolutely committed to not doing this until at least next spring. often we've come to believe the virus behavior. as they become more infectious,

they become less potent unless deadly. is that still a hope and expectation of this corona virus? alternatively, i'm going to get ever more threatening. i'm more potent deviant strains of the virus. well, the reason we've got a problem with this delta variant is, is more infectious. it can so mount preexisting immunity and it cancer mount preexisting immunity conferred by vaccination. so you've got something that spreads better, and it get through previous preexisting defences. which means that if you're a vulnerable person, it doesn't have to be a nasty virus. it's just the mere fact that it's infected you. that means if you get lots of infections, you'll still get people who have consequences of those infections are the big level, at least until you get enough people who are sufficiently immune in the population that they become less vulnerable to that effect. so really, we don't know at the moment you never say never medicine because if you do, you will be caught out. so dot smith,

one thing people are referring to because of the conditions of social restrictions and lot bones, other via this is not just kind of a virus of, of, obviously been suppressed. can we not expect an up? so just some of our more familiar viruses to also for the 1st coming optimal winter where we're seeing that happening. and we have already seen that happen in some other countries. the usual seasonal suspects. viruses like all rest of the spirit trees in cities. bars. bars is like power, influenza, power, flu. they are already causing a problem in some places and in significant amounts. and there are several reasons about one coming back because people are mixing more and these viruses transmit through close personal contact. so you tend to see more cases as you is locked down there to make infections. the other worry is that with time of not being exposed to these things, people will have lost some of their immunity to them. certainly among older people . and there is therefore

a theoretical risk because of that slippage and immune response. some of them may come back and produce more profound, more significant illness, particularly this winter. and people are particularly concerned about the flu, either this year or in for the coming years. because a flu completely gone off our radar, we have seen so few cases that it's much harder to track how the bars is changing, what is doing, what is actually going to re materialize us. and therefore, whether the vaccines are going to be effective against it is more of an unknown. and at the same time, people are losing their immunity. so therefore, there is potentially the threat of a big flu season, which is why governments in many, many countries are really pushing flu vaccination. and they brought down the age at which some, in some countries that people are paying fax nights against the flu. as a safeguard against that, dr. chris smith. thank you so much for joining me again. i'm the simon show. coming up after the break. alex introduce professor heidi barnes. we'll see you then

the the, the, the, the long when i was the wrong one, all just don't the rules. yes. to fill out the thing because after an engagement equal betrayal, when so many find themselves world far as we choose to look for common ground in i

haven't been in my phone are 60 and i don't i just saw under the format isis fighters and they're now boarding a philippine naval ship with $900.00 just aren't abdulla still don't know what's waiting for them to do can i get

a hold of me . ready ready well, come back, professor for harvey barnes is both the president of the british medical association and the world's leading public health expert hottie. welcome back to the alex simon show. and cute krasier. this advice from last week from the g. c. b. i. this long awaited by saying, don't vaccinate the, the school because how do you explain that when countries like as sill america, highly vaccinated come to so thing vaccinate the school kids? well, what's going on? i'm not entirely clear what the basis of the g b i i school and i know certainly howard shot records all younger kids in some of these countries and becoming, you know, whether or not i need to know there was enough my colleagues from abroad. i said there was

a concern about it about that they were entirely 100 percent comfortable with bikes and eating young's young children. if we could be sure of the safety, then obviously it would make a lot change to actually the big problems school really difficult to socially destined difficult to ventilate an older buildings and so on and waiting. maybe not so good for younger children. it would be bad for transmitting virus from one child to another and the child back home and the page reading become infected, our grandparents and so on. so it would be good to do it, but we should only do it when j. c. b, i absolutely sure of the safety on that because the last thing you want to damage

a child who might be a little risk for gauging violence annually, but the committee felt the vice seamless unsafe for children, then why would they be advising it for killed them or set the conditions and indeed for children were the adults at home and particularly vulnerable to the violence. so why it would be advisable for some children and others if it was felt to be unsafe. i could only imagine that irish benefit and choice the making is the risk is greater then you know, the benefit is greater by nature more and i think it may be that some of the children haven't been exposed, turn off a lot of i've seen and therefore they're not sure they can say with certain page

that the risk is day small. so i think it's safe. i haven't seen data on complications of just canada and daughter way about children who have had some and some complications. but they really have to get the data and shot that hurt to get cracking because we're only 3 weeks away. and i from scott skills going back another time table that literally right. and i think me, well know, bit more about what things are happening in the next week. but in the absence of vaccinating, let's say the 2nd be the school children and teachers still some if so, maybe other measure payables can take to make the children say for the going to school and turn on vaccinated environment to

regular testing of pupils and teachers from so on might work, but you know that, that, that hard and hard polish he can come in. you don't know what people are casting properly. lateral lord cash are not entirely accurate and so on. and i think that the teachers need to be rights at age. the older pupils need to be right connected and we need to see what is happening to younger children and let j. c d. i. nations lower down the trains. i absolutely. if i know i should aging, that kid is a hard decision. but i don't see any reason then safety not to do it,

to be honest. and you know somebody somewhere must be asking questions about the safety of it. the vi are saying you will do it yet, then he can answer the question. so my question saying, and these kinds of things are other things that we have to rely on a moment while we get the details on the safety of the vaccine for younger children . but for our public health perspective, over the last few weeks, i mean i went to the england, scotland game, wembley, 2 weeks ago and it was 12000 fans and it was all you have to be double tested before you go. and the whole thing was conductive. of impeccable rigor, but 2 weeks later the 60000 for the final, those the 50000 a day and the open gulf, those 140000 the grown plea of in least other things just asking for trouble. correct. the actual and you know,

a lot of these things change and being treated better with being in change, particularly after sunny to violence seems to have a depressing say on the bias. but what is really what a real nice cost of that. i mean, not, not, i could use a stronger work, but from a public health perspective, when you, when you assess what your former colleagues have been doing, both north and south of the board of never come to the united kingdom. how would you basically assess the performance of the, the government on public health? is it, is it a minus? so doesn't somebody may have gamma well, and you might work coming as far as things, but it does show. and you and i both know that professional advisors are

they are tied to by his full attention. and i was very fortunate during this with me because the professional politicians, western and the right thing. and i think by and large that's what happened. they came in scotland and get the sense that same thing is happening in wales and island . i'm not so sure about too much about it yet. there is a discomfort in my medical colleagues that they've been working really, really hard for 18 months that listing restrictions don't, there's gonna return a search the u. k. government hasn't, i see, listen to what they're being told by the medical profession particularly.

and the other thing is that a lot of my medical colleagues are worried about what, what's happening to people with cancer and aren't really even sure if we need other treatment. if the banks are getting full again and, and not delay treatment for other things, potentially durable or modifiable, and people are going to suffer, show suppressing this as much as we can as soon as we can. it's important. and i actually recognize the controller absolutely notion pissy was the idea that option or when it came to saying where everyone run riot and spread, divide us not as damaging a very finally a highly b. i'm going to see that the imagine some for some of a familiar old enemies who have been suppressed by the lot. the next set of the, the, the flu of the and the range of other viruses is that can sound to you on

a tablet of li will the better of public health habits that some of us have picked up and will continue with will not help us in the long term, against these more familiar falls. where don't last feet, of course we shall happy any. because the way in which you should press the edge you wear masks and users, you wash your hands and so on. and i think way of dealing with bias is generally, so, i mean, it wouldn't surprise me if corona virus became a new flute and not people actually to the severity of the crew of virus will be less will. and and the 1918 crime, demi literally hundreds of millions of people around the world either lou lou began to produce different types which were last serious and so on. and that's what we live every winter. and it might be that corona,

irish follows him to the same potter. we get right to naked, therefore it becomes less severe. and every year we get a boost or shock and depend to restrain corona, writers making. and we are not so much be planned this year and not the correct what's a hot button so that fairly optimistic look at the future, which we all hope will come to pass. thank you very much indeed for, for joining me once again. malik silence. you pleasure. to vaccinate or not to box and eat order school children. that is the question that this is the decision to define a decision has provoked consternation among some experts in terms of the vaccine 50 . they point to the strong advice from other regulatory authorities in terms of public health. they point to the evidence of skills. i think key vector of infection and the unknown impact of long corporate amongst children,

even following a mild, initial infection. most disturbing. it's a thought that scott schools are there training within weeks i learned one month before the english counterparts. that means children will be returning to a largely unvaccinated environment, which in turn suggest higher rates of infection in the population and continued destruction of the school time table. none of these are easy decisions to make, but to govern is to choose the fall of a decision until after this quarter. second to schools are bike seems the worst of all options. a non decision corporate, perhaps at the expense of children and their families. but for now, from alex myself and all the show is good by stacy's, i hope to see you all again next week. ah,

me in the so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy. even plantation let it be an arms race is often very dramatic. development only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, a very critical time. time to sit down and talk from germany where a long study find that the the biomass of fly in say the weight of flying insects

fell by 76 percent in the last 26 years. so instead of just becoming much, much less common, which means all the jobs that they do are not being done anymore. and that, that is the real danger. and that's what's going to impact on ah, building hero or weak willed in the face of adversity. opinions divided over a top us student us to put to a limping fund of mental health concern. german complex. okay, thank a stand against sexism we debates it also relevant. the woke games are going increasingly dominated by politics. i think it could be seen so many changes already. i'm not where we should be confirmed because we don't want to be just a vehicle for the latest. 5 that comes along. the rain is tackling and influx of illegal migrants. but as authorities we allow measures to stem the flow the you