Child virus infections in Japan remain high amid low vaccination rates

Stunning stupidity here. Saying want to boost rates of vaccination on the 5-11 year olds while at the same time saying symptoms are mild. So what's the point.?

Remember you can't say it's to save their elderly grandparents, anymore too, as the anti-bodity autonomy group have never said they were ever meant to stop transmission. Right?

And why would kids want to damage th eir future environment by wearing masks? It's their fufure world being destroyed and how many 'How dare you' comments do we need to be hear?

"Children wear masks in school. But during summer break, there may be many cases in which they will take them off to play with their friends,"

I feel so bad for these children. Can you imagine that a 4 year old has spent half of his life wearing masks? Not even being able to see their friends, teacher or maybe even mother (!!) smile. These adults need to pick up the pace asap or it will be the children who suffer.

Since catching the virus in Japan on a night out several months ago I have no worries about a possible reinfection whatsoever.

I have been out many times since and have obviously been exposed but have had no issues.

I must have a degree of natural immunity then.

Children are not facing severe consequences of infection even being unvaccinated.

People are beginning to understand this.

When children used to catch colds and develop symptoms they were not banned from learning nor did schools have to close.

Covid needs to be downgraded and classified as a less threatening disease now but that would stop big pharma from continuing to reap big profits.

stepping up its calls for parents to actively consider inoculation from a public health perspective.

Asking while the 4th time vaccinated PM got it

Anyone vaxxing children for a virus that doesn’t effect children should be ashamed. If grown adults want to make a conscious choice to get the shot that’s their right. But for children the risks of the vax outweigh any benefits and hence has been outlawed in many countries because of this.

Stating the risk of heart inflammation from the jab gets comments removed. Anti-science disinformation, indeed.

The problem is not vaccination, which given the recent spike in cases; it is obvious it doesn't work, the problem is people caring for an illness with a minimum mortality rate that has become akin to getting a cold.

Just curious...

How many people in the comments have read and analyzed any of the EUA Submissions to The FDA in regards to the Covid Vaccines?

Do they close kindergartens if a child gets the common cold?

Putting a massive guilt trip on parents who haven’t made their kids take the vaccine. Seriously, don’t they get it that even with vaccines, people will still get it and spread it. Just ask Kishida-san

Wouldn’t a 25% infection rate by this 0-19 age group be expected if we were to segment the population into quarters (ages 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60+)? Perhaps we might even expect a higher rate since this age segment is less vaccinated.

Doesn't quite work that way. Japan is an aging country. Only about 15% of Japanese are in the 0-19 age group.

I'm vaccinated, but got Omicron and all of the symptoms including a 2-day fever.

I haven't seen any difference in symptoms among the vaccinated and unvaccinated around me.

That said, most got our boosters a few months ago so maybe it wore off (they were saying 6 months at first but now 4...).

Or maybe it just has no effect on Omicron. Hard to tell as a lot of the information is misleading. But they are coming out with an Omicron version of the vaccine for a reason, so that tells me the original vaccine is not very effective against Omicron. Just something to think about when deciding whether to vaccinated your kids.

weekly number of new cases for the age group hitting over 300,000

How many of these children died? Probably near zero. I personally don't think vaccination is necessary.

Virusrex

Denmark stopped offering vaccines for everybody

Nope, they specifically stopped offering them for under-18, see the official state virust institute page here:

https://www.sst.dk/da/Udgivelser/2021/Retningslinjer-for-haandtering-af-vaccination-mod-covid-19

(Fra den 1. juli 2022 vil det generelt ikke længere være muligt for børn og unge under 18 år at blive vaccineret med 1. dosis, og fra den 1. september 2022 vil det ikke længere være muligt at blive vaccineret med 2. dosis.)

Please check your facts before making incorrect statements.

because they have a very good control of the pandemic, so the risk for everybody is diminute,

What exactly is "very good control of the pandemic" supposed to mean? The population is highly vaccinated, and the latest Corona variants spread anyway (as the vaccines are leaky), however with fewer hospitalizations, as the latest variants are less virulent. That is the same as in Japan. Can you specify what you mean by the nebulous term "very good control"'?

What about stopping spreading opinions and being wise enough to wait for the trial test to be completed by February 8th 2024 before stating what was safe and what was not?

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT04368728

Btw, "independent" researchers will access the trial protocol data only 2 years after the study will be completed, so around 2026, there cannot be any trusted peer-reviewed studies written before independent researchers can access the full study data.

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/378/bmj.o1731.full.pdf

but wearing masks too long contradicts your efforts and keeps the virus loads inside your body for further exponential growth and a following outbreak with symptoms if you are in a weaker condition for any other reason.

Wearing a mask has absolutely no effect on the viral loads of the patients, there is no data that support your personal theory of the effect of the mask.

There is no good reason to vaccinate healthy children against covid 19.

Fear and Loathing

I will never, and I mean never under any circumstance, accept the vaxx. I am not anti vax, I am anti this serum. 

None of the current vaccinations are a "serum". The Pfizer/Moderna mRNA conconctions are gene therapy, not vaccines in the traditional sense (the CDC changed the definion of "vaccine" to accomodate this, look it up). The now available Novavax is a traditional vaccine, however it only contains particles from the first, by now outdated, virus version. I would not object to that one in principle, however since I had Omicron and have thus natural immunity now I give it a pass.

ZorotoToday  01:41 pm JST

My child, as long as I have a say, will not have it either.

I hope your wife (and her family) is on-board with your "stance", as in Japan she can easily take away your right to make these decisions.

I can't speak for whoever wrote the original comment, but my wife and her parents (her father took the first vax but none since, and neither my wife or her mother had any of the jabs) are completely on board with mine.

We understand the risks vs benefits as informed by suitably qualified doctors who understand them and aren't intimidated by the propaganda.

Denmark no longer vaccinates U18s

Trust the science has become influenced by money and power. So, do what’s right for your circumstances. All the people who were screaming “I trust the science” at the beginning of this pandemic have suddenly gotten a lot quieter. Science is always changing and evolving so if some one thinks that, maybe I’ll wait, or due to my personal medical issues, my children aren’t at high risk, etc. then by all means they have a right to do so.

is The information from children getting Covid and the follow on infections from close contacts with these children being reported? From what I think I know, almost all children, their teachers, their families should be infected with Covid. How could they not be?

Denmark has officially stopped offering these vaccinations to people under 18, based on the fact that age group has practically zero problems with the virus, while there are small, but noticable risks with with injection (myocarditis in one in 5000 according to Danish data. There are different policies in different countries, and I am sure Denmark is not the only country that has made this decision. This fixation on vaccination should have stopped long ago.

My child is too young to qualify anyway, by he sure won't be getting any covid jabs. The risk of heart problems and blood clots is far too high.

Do what’s right for your circumstances. Many people who were screaming “I trust the science” at the beginning of this pandemic have gotten a lot quieter. Science is always changing and evolving so if some one thinks that, maybe I’ll wait, or due to my personal medical issues, my children aren’t at high risk, etc. then by all means you have the right to make that choice and shouldn’t be chastised, threatened, etc. because of it. More and more studies are coming out and depending on who funded them, how they were applied, what info was and was not released and we are getting mixed messages. So, if a parent can think critically and use all the info out there to decide whether to jab or not to jab their child is a common sense approach. At this stage when the children aren’t at high risk, I’d say it is prudent to be cautious.

@virusrex

Yes they are. Pediatricians have been very vocal on supporting the vaccination of children because they do have important risks because of covid, risks that are much higher than from common cold

And if the US is taken as an example (you quote the CDC) where the cause of death was Covid even in an auto accident and where hospitals were financially incentivized to ascribe illness to Covid then your analysis and conclusions are obviously flawed.

Where there is arguably an oligopoly and large amounts of money at stake then it is to be expected.

But guess what?

I rely on my own personal firsthand experience of the virus that I see and experience around me.

@Nepalibabu

I suggest that life is for living and not constant worry.

I don’t fear death-tomorrow or 5, 10, 12 years time-no problem!

Good luck with your spiritual journey.

 will never, and I mean never under any circumstance, accept the vaxx

This obviously means that you will never accept the vaccine even if proved to reduce the risk for children, which makes not only an irrational position to take, it is also a negative one.

 I am not anti vax, I am anti this serum

There is no serum contained in the vaccine.

If you trust the government, I pity you.

There is zero need to trust any goverment, the ones saying the vaccine reduce the risk for children are the best experts on the field from many countries all over the world, and they show the evidence to prove it.

The link to the study in Thailand (not Taiwan):

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202208.0151/v1

And if the US is taken as an example (you quote the CDC) where the cause of death was Covid even in an auto accident and where hospitals were financially incentivized to ascribe illness to Covid then your analysis and conclusions are obviously flawed.

Provide proof the numbers are not reliable, just saying you think a reason for them not to be true is not the same as proving it. The numbers from the CDC are well correlated with those found in other countries, are all studies invalid just because they prove something you do not want to accept? then provide more and better evidence that says the opposite, just saying "they must be wrong" is not a valid argument.

I rely on my own personal firsthand experience of the virus that I see and experience around me.

Which you have demonstrated to be heavily biased, but since it is a bias you are willing to accept then you think it becomes valid against the much better evidence that says the opposite, it is not the case of course.

According to health ministry data, around 336,500 people in their teens or younger tested positive for the virus from July 23 to 29, comprising more than one-quarter of the infected overall.

Wouldn’t a 25% infection rate by this 0-19 age group be expected if we were to segment the population into quarters (ages 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60+)? Perhaps we might even expect a higher rate since this age segment is less vaccinated.

I trust those opinions from actual experts who study the virus and the vaccine efficacy over those who think they are now experts after doing some google searching.

Denmark no longer vaccinates U18s

Denmark suspended all vaccination programs because of adequate control of the pandemic, but are planning to resume it seasonally, that obviously do not applies to Japan.

The 'vaccines' obviously don't prevent infections and for children it's overwhelmingly nothing more than a cold.

That is false, covid has killed more than 500 children in the US and caused thousands of hospitalizations, no cold does that, much less in the middle of measures to prevent respiratory infections.

Trust the science has become influenced by money and power

That is not a believable conspiracy, if your argument depends on every institution of the world being "influenced" by money so you can be right it stops being realistic.

Science is always changing and evolving

Based on evidence, not beseless conspiracies that are unbelievable. The consensus of science right now is that vaccinating reduces very importantly the risk for children, you have a right to expose children under your care to higher risks, but not as present this decisions as rational or evidence based when they are obviously not.

I just calculate the risks and then try my best possible to avoid them, but knowing that there’s no real chance to avoid them completely. For example, currently 1 in 7 is or was a registered infected, 1 in 62 is currently officially infected and 1 in 3416 has died so far from corona. How to interpret such numbers? Well, avoid gatherings of about 60 people or more, if possible, and have quite some respect and take care that you don’t become 1 dead out of the 3400, which can be highly probably realized by getting vaccinated. There’s not so much more one can do, maybe wearing a mask and disinfecting can bring some effect too, but wearing masks too long contradicts your efforts and keeps the virus loads inside your body for further exponential growth and a following outbreak with symptoms if you are in a weaker condition for any other reason. Take care and watch out, it’s real.

You may not think reducing the risk for children (not only of death but also hospitalization and long lasting negative effect to their health) but for the children, their guardians and the doctors in charge of taking care of their health this is an excellent reason to do it.

There really is no good reason for vaccinating healthy children against covid 19. Zero.

@Fear and Loathing: Why is it that its only the unvaxxed who seem to know vaxxed people who have had Covid 'countless'' or 'multiple' times? Seems very convenient to address your agenda.

I

The link to the study in Thailand (not Taiwan):

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202208.0151/v1

The link to a pediatric cardiologists explaining why the preprint do not change the current understanding of the risks on children and why many of the claims are not supported by the evidence presented.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-vaccination-and-myocarditis-another-preprint/

There is no good reason to vaccinate healthy children against covid 19.

You may not think reducing the risk for children (not only of death but also hospitalization and long lasting negative effect to their health) but for the children, their guardians and the doctors in charge of taking care of their health this is an excellent reason to do it.

I was always told by my father to weigh the risks when making choices in life. But more importantly he reminded to be objective and understand the consequences, not just to yourself but to others as well.

too bad so many fail to comprehend the "understand the consequences, not just to yourself but to others as well". The world would be so much better off if we followed this advice.

We adults should definitely vaccinate

However, based on anecdotal evidence, along with the mild symptoms of omicron, and mild symptoms for kids, I think parents with young children may have good reasons to hesitate vaccinating their kids right now.

What is that evidence, you ask? My 15 yo niece lost consciousness after getting her third vaccination. When her parents told the doctor, he simply said "it happens..."

For the love of sanity, vaccinate your kids.

 The vax does not stop transmission or infection.

Nothing stop transmission or infection, vaccination (the same as other measures) helps reducing both things demonstrated scientifically. If you don't want to reduce the risk for your self or minors under your care that is a decision you can make, but misrepresenting the value of vaccines to make it as if this decision is rationally supported by the evidence is not valid. The experts (including pediatricians) coincide in recommending the vaccines, you can disagree with them, but that does not make their recommendation wrong.

We understand the risks vs benefits as informed by suitably qualified doctors who understand them and aren't intimidated by the propaganda.

Doctors that can't produce evidence to defend their personal opinions and that have been found repeating false information? that is not a trustable source for anything, much less to do the opposite of what the best experts on the field recommend.

Stunning stupidity here. Saying want to boost rates of vaccination on the 5-11 year olds while at the same time saying symptoms are mild. So what's the point.?

Reducing the still present risk of complications, hospitalizations and even death. The same as every other vaccine directed to children.

Remember you can't say it's to save their elderly grandparents, anymore too, as the anti-bodity autonomy group have never said they were ever meant to stop transmission. Right?

Vaccinating do reduce the presence of symptoms, the rate of infection and even the transmission from vaccinated people, so this argument is still valid.

And why would kids want to damage th eir future environment by wearing masks? It's their fufure world being destroyed and how many 'How dare you' comments do we need to be hear?

Non-sequitur, wearing masks do not automatically means they will become an increase on pollution, this argument would work against irresponsible treatment of the waste, not for using masks on the first place.

Putting a massive guilt trip on parents who haven’t made their kids take the vaccine

No, providing necessary information, so the parents do not have any excuse if their children have complications or worse because of the infection. The scientific consensus is that vaccinating children reduce their risk, acting against this is just irrational.

Apparently we had a vaccine - but its misuse in giving it to everyone from children to the elderly resulted in the vaccine resistant strains becoming dominant

Completely false, variants have appeared in populations with low vaccination rates, because the immunity from the vaccines is still partially effective, meaning that vaccinated people are less likely to be infected for longer times giving opportunity to variants to appear. The comparison with antibiotics is completely mistaken because giving the vaccine for everybody actually works against the appearance of variants.

What about stopping spreading opinions and being wise enough to wait for the trial test to be completed by February 8th 2024 before stating what was safe and what was not?

The current results are more than enough to prove the vaccines are safe and effective. But even more than that the clinical data from literally billions of people that have been vaccinated and lead to the same conclusion are a proof beyond any reasonable doubt.

Absolutely no extra data from just a few extra thousands of people will change the conclusions made from well validated data of hundreds of thousands more subjects.

All major scientific and medical institutions of the world openly call the covid vaccines safe and effective, what arguments do you have to call them all wrong?

Apparently we had a vaccine - but its misuse in giving it to everyone from children to the elderly resulted in the vaccine resistant strains becoming dominant. There are very good reasons why we limit the use of antibiotics today (to prevent the antibiotic resistant bacteria from becoming dominant) - but that knowledge was ignored with the Covid vaccine because there was a huge amount of money to be made very quickly by telling the world that everyone would die if they did not force the vaccine on everybody. It was this financial incentive that was the real cause of misinformation - designed to inflict as much panic as possible to ensure the consumption of the drug companies' vaccines.

There really is no good reason for vaccinating healthy children against covid 19. Zero.

Again, you personally considering less risk not a good reason do not make it true, anybody interested in the well being of the children do consider this a perfectly valid reason to vaccinate.

I haven't seen any difference in symptoms among the vaccinated and unvaccinated around me

But scientists looking at very detailed data of thousands of people do, which obviously is much better evidence to make a decision.

so that tells me the original vaccine is not very effective against Omicron

Much more effective than not vaccinating, which is the other option available.

Denmark has officially stopped offering these vaccinations to people under 18

Denmark stopped offering vaccines for everybody because they have a very good control of the pandemic, so the risk for everybody is diminute, that obviously do not applies to Japan. Also, Denmark is going to offer the vaccine again from autum, because it (logically) consider the season will increase the risk for the people so vaccinating becomes justifed again.

Nope, they specifically stopped offering them for under-18, see the official state virust institute page here:

Again, they stopped the vaccination campaign for everybody, your link does absolutely nothing to disprove this. As you would have known if you had made an effort to check this fact instead of just assuming it was false.

https://www.sst.dk/en/english/corona-eng/vaccination-against-covid-19

And again this is done because Denmark has a much better control of the pandemic so the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths leaves them enough room for this luxury, this is obviously something that can apply to Japan.

What exactly is "very good control of the pandemic" supposed to mean?

Having about 1500 daily cases nationally which is less than 4% of the cases they had on the latest peak, compared with the situation in Japan the contrast could not be more obvious. This is in no way the "same".

Children are not facing severe consequences of infection even being unvaccinated.

Yes they are. Pediatricians have been very vocal on supporting the vaccination of children because they do have important risks because of covid, risks that are much higher than from common cold

over 500 children have died from covid in the US, how does that compares with any other respiratory infection?

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

This is not even including thousands of hospitalizations and the ever increasing other risks to the health that are continuously being found for covid. The vaccines reduce the risks for them, so they are indicated, your personal experience is a terribly bad argument to refute this.

What is that evidence, you ask? My 15 yo niece lost consciousness after getting her third vaccination. When her parents told the doctor, he simply said "it happens..."

So, data taken from thousands of cases prove beyond any reasonable doubt that vaccinating reduce the risk for children, and very importantly, but you think one single case that is not being characterized nor detailed for its importance somehow makes those huge studies false?

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-03-30/pfizer-biontech-covid-vaccine-slashes-pediatric-hospitalization-risk-u-s-study

Anyone vaxxing children for a virus that doesn’t effect children should be ashamed.

That has been happening for decades, no children die of liver cancer because of hepatitis viruses, but they are regularly vaccinated against them.

This of course is not what is happening with covid, because children do become hospitalized, ingress to the ICU or die from the infection.

But for children the risks of the vax outweigh any benefits and hence has been outlawed in many countries because of this.

Studies have proved this is completely false, vaccinating reduces the risk for children and very importantly, what is the point of using false information in something as important as public health?