There is an article in RNZ today about Long Covid in children, and how the most helpful thing that can be done is to reduce infection.
Essentially, it states that “strong evidence suggests preventing infection is key to preventing Long Covid”, which, from a purely logical standpoint, would seem to be obvious. Can’t get “Long Covid” if you don’t get Covid to begin with.
The methods that it suggests to prevent infection?
Simple steps like opening windows to improve ventilation in classrooms, workplaces and at home helps reduce the spread of Covid-19 to others.
This stopped me in my tracks. Surely there’s a word missing from that sentence? Starts with V? I checked through the rest of the article.
Nope. For the very first time, not once does “vaccine” or “vaccination” appear in an article focused on preventing Covid infections. There was one last week that almost had none, but Michael Baker’s quote at the very end included them as what felt like an attempt to just mention the word.
HNZ never released a dose-stratified level of data for Under-12s (for “privacy reasons”), but if we assume the Paeds dose of Comirnaty is essentially the same as the Adult one, the (approximate) 1/3 of the Under-12 population who had 2 doses will be reinfected more regularly than 1-dose, and they the same when compared to 0-dose – the more doses you have, the more Covid you catch.
Is it possible that this fact has finally trickled through? Is that why they aren’t currently flogging the Vaccine so hard?
Or is it the Inquiry?
Addendum:
Before Covid-19’s widespread arrival, 82.6 percent of children rated their health as “very good” or “excellent” – that number dropped to 66.9 percent after the Omicron variant waves. Children who had Covid-19 were significantly more likely to rate their health as “fair” or “poor”, compared to those who did not.
“After the Omicron variant waves” also happens to be “after HNZ rolled out the two-dose course of Paediatric Comirnaty”. Given we know that approximately 60% of that cohort received 1 dose, and 38% received two doses, it seems a little unfair to single out Omicron variants as the reason the percentage of the cohort reporting Very Good Health or above has dropped by 15 or so percent.
