The UKĀ has approvedĀ giving one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to all children aged 12-15, with vaccines largely being given within the education system. Schools are helping coordinate the rollout, including the consent process. Under-16sĀ need parental consentĀ to have the vaccine.
Unfortunately, schools, parents and teenagers have also become the victims of anti-vaccination misinformation campaigns. For example, aĀ fake vaccine consent formĀ was recently sent to many UK schools in late September 2021. It reportedly arrived in an email disguised as being from the NHS, and a few schools believed it to be genuine and sent it to parents and guardians.
The form contained a lot of misinformation and was evidently designed to dissuade parents from giving their consent by depicting vaccines as less safe and effective than they are. If youāre a parent whose child is being offered a COVID-19 vaccine, hereās what you should know.
Vaccines highly safe and effective
The fake form states that the vaccine āmayā reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms in people who get infected. It also says that it āmay notā prevent individuals from passing it on. While not strictly wrong, this is misleading in its emphasis.
The evidence is clear that vaccines areĀ extremely effectiveĀ at preventing hospitalisation and death and that they greatlyĀ reduce transmissionĀ of the virus. Emerging evidence, yet to be reviewed by other scientists, suggests thisĀ remains the caseĀ with the Delta variant.
The fake form also states thereās a ā1 in 29,389 chance of dying from the vaccineā, before claiming that the real risk is probably ten times higher. The source of that statement is uncited. Itās likely that the claim is essentially fabricated.
Looking at the figures used to calculate this statistic, it appears to be using data from theĀ Yellow Card reporting system, an online tool where people can report adverse events (including deaths) that have happened to people in the time after theyāve had a COVID-19 vaccination. At the time of writing, 1,682 such deaths have been logged, out of 94 million doses administered.

The system is an excellent way of spotting possible safety problems. But people donāt need to prove that deaths are related to the vaccine to log them. Deaths that follow vaccination may happen for all sorts of unrelated reasons. Crucially, the UKās medicines regulatorĀ statesĀ that its review of these reports ādoes not suggest the vaccines played a role in these deathsā.
The fake form also makes claims about vaccine side effects. Some are false. Thereās no evidence that the vaccines cause blindness orĀ deafness. Other side-effects mentioned ā such as strokes and blood clotting disorders ā have been linked to vaccines, and someĀ people have died. But what the form doesnāt mention is that they areĀ very rare.
Blood clots, for instance, affected roughly 15 people for every million first vaccine doses given. Itās worth noting that the risk of experiencing blood clots or a stroke isĀ much higherĀ if you get COVID-19. Also, in the UK, blood clots are linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, which isnāt being given to teenagers, and there donāt appear to be any clots (or deaths possibly related to them) reported in under-18s.
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Thereās also one potential side-effect of the mRNA vaccines (those made by Pfizer and Moderna) that the fake form doesnāt mention, which is myocarditis, or heart inflammation. InitialĀ data from USĀ suggests itās also very rare, but also that itās more common in teenagers than adults, more common in men, and more common after the second rather than first vaccine dose. There have been 43 cases for every million second doses of the Pfizer vaccine given to boys aged 12-15. Having analysed all reported cases in under-18s, the US Centers for Disease Control and PreventionĀ doesnāt believeĀ that any have resulted in death.
This is why, until thereās more information on the link between the vaccine and myocarditis, the government is giving 12- to 15-year-olds in the UK only a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Benefits not even across age groups
A common complaint from those who are against teenage vaccination is that children are at low risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19. The fake consent form alludes to this.
Indeed, the governmentās vaccine advisory committeeĀ has acknowledgedĀ that for 12- to 15-year-olds with no underlying health conditions, the exact balance of risks and benefits with COVID-19 vaccines is hard to measure precisely. The threat of the disease in this age group is very low and there are some very rare side effects with the vaccines.
However, childrenĀ have died of COVID-19. There are also other consequences of children being infected such as being hospitalised, getting long COVID, having their education disrupted and passing the virus on. The risk of all of these is lowered by vaccination.
Itās this combination of factors that caused the chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to jointly recommend to government that vaccines be rolled out to all 12- to 15-year-olds. Although the benefits of vaccination arenāt as stark in the young as they are in the old, the vaccines are still clearly beneficial.
Similar policies are already in place acrossĀ many countriesĀ in Europe and North America, with millions of doses having already been administered to teenagers.
Schools now an anti-vaxxer target
Itās almost inevitable that COVID-19 will becomeĀ endemic, continuing to circulate among humans for years to come. High levels of protection across the population will be vital in reducing the burden of the virus. Vaccines are overwhelmingly the safest way to achieving that.
Sending fake documents purporting to be from the NHS is therefore unethical and abhorrent. It will likely undermine public health by dissuading some parents, on false grounds, from consenting to their children being vaccinated.
It is abundantly clear that UK schools have been caught in a very unpleasant campaign against the vaccination of teenagers. Aside from the misinformation, there have beenĀ protestsĀ as well asĀ threats of harm and legal threatsĀ made to schools and headteachers.
We should counter these actions by giving parents the most accurate information on COVID-19 vaccines available so that they can make a decision on whatās best for their childrenās health ā a decision that isnāt clouded by misinformation.

Author: Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health,Ā University of Southampton
This article is republished fromĀ The ConversationĀ under a Creative Commons license. Read theĀ original article.
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