Schools and vaccination against COVID 19: A cocktail that raises questions.
At the heart of the vaccine propaganda, a red line has just been crossed: that of targeting our children, of drawing them into the hysteria of “everyone vaccinated”. Schools in the Brussels Region are embarking on a public health crusade. It is “urgent”, we are told! Raising pupils’ awareness and school vaccination against COVID 19 are on the agenda of a plethora of secondary schools[1]. One and the same objective for the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking communities: reaching the 12-17 age group. Enough to raise a few deeply worrying questions.
Free consent, did you say?
Besides the usual list of school supplies, parents have thus received a consent form to fill in for children under 16. Since vaccination is, at first sight, a choice left to each person’s judgement, these parents are, in theory, free to veto it. But make no mistake: everything is being done to try to convince! The response of the ONE, questioned by the FAPEO (Federation of Parents’ Associations in Compulsory Education) about the questionnaires sent to parents, illustrates this perfectly: “The aim is to understand better in order to raise awareness better, to give better information according to the reservations expressed, with a view, yes, to ultimately increasing vaccination coverage”. Convincing, then, so much so that one is meant to read between the lines that whoever doubts is wrong. Whoever doubts is a fool, an ignoramus who needs to be educated. That, at any rate, is one of the most common images attributed in the media to people who express reservations about vaccination. So much so that questioning becomes an act of bravery. Doctors and scientists themselves are not immune to stigmatisation. Such a bias risks reducing many parents, teachers and other professionals to silence. Or worse still, leading parents and teenagers to consent through social pressure.
The benefit-risk balance
The question of a “substitutable risk”, namely whether to regard the potential side effects of a vaccine, even if rare, as a greater risk than that of catching the disease or developing serious effects from it, is entirely legitimate. Doubt is moreover (more than) reasonable when faced with a brand-new vaccination technology whose rate of serious adverse effects and deaths reported after administration is particularly high. Yet in the Education sector (judging at least by the actions undertaken there), the balance seems to tip unquestionably towards the benefits. While the ONE’s crisis manager, involved in the roll-out in schools, mentions “indirect” benefits, such as young people being able to “go about their activities more normally”, she says, on the other hand, that she is opposed to compulsory vaccination for young people “because there is no direct benefit for them”. And for good reason: “children and young people generally present a mild or asymptomatic picture when infected with SARS-COV2, and the circulation of the delta variant does not seem to have significantly changed this observation.”. At the “Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation” (in the United Kingdom), caution is the order of the day, since it does not recommend the vaccination of healthy 12-15-year-olds, stressing that the individual benefits for this age group are small and that, although rare, the potential risks linked to the vaccine are potentially serious (we are talking about post-vaccination myocarditis, after all) and still being described. The package leaflet of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine lists myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the pericardium, the membrane covering the heart) among the adverse effects of unknown frequency, that is, whose frequency “cannot be estimated from the available data”.
No direct benefit for young people’s health, but risks accompanied by a multitude of unknowns... the political choice is astonishing (to say the least), even if one takes up the argument put forward by the Task Force that it is also a matter of ensuring wider vaccination coverage in the Brussels Region.
Good pupils and bad pupils
Beyond the questions relating to the “benefit-risk” balance for pupils’ health, possible psychosocial consequences must be taken into consideration. The other major corollary of this awareness campaign is indeed the “transparency” of pupils’ vaccination status: among classmates and towards their teacher. Vaccinated “versus” unvaccinated: this new categorisation of individuals risks making its way back to school with the pupils. This is a major fear of the FAPEO, which reports calls from parents “who are afraid of the stigmatisation of their children who are not vaccinated”. This year, teachers will have to be unfailingly vigilant. It will be necessary to ensure that no symbolic violence is exercised against unvaccinated children (and their parents), who would in a way be the bad pupils of the awareness campaign. Assuming such monitoring is even possible.
A formal demand to answer the questions
For the Collectif Initiative Citoyenne, the questions raised by this measure are serious and touch on many epidemiological, legal, ethical and informational aspects, as well as issues of responsibility.
That is why the Collectif, through its lawyer, has sent the Minister of Education of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation a formal notice demanding that she answer these questions and suspend the campaign until the requested clarifications have been provided.
The letter can be read in full on the Collectif’s website www.initiativecitoyenne.be
By Marley R.
Website of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. The education portal of the Wallonia -Brussels Federation
http://www.enseignement.be/index.php?page=28571&navi=4677&rank_page=28571-
https://www.levif.be/actualite/belgique/la-vaccination-se-fait-egalement-dans-l-enseignement-neerlandophone-a-bruxelles/article-news-1469509.html
The notion of substitutable risk as formulated by the sociologist Patrick Peretti-Watel( INSERM), concerning vaccine hesitancy in general, not specific to the COVID vaccine, in
http://ses.ens-lyon.fr/articles/sociologie-du-risque-et-crises-sanitaires-un-eclairage-sur-la-pandemie-du-coronavirus
In analysis of 09/09/2021 by the covidrationnel.be team on the website
https://covidrationnel.be/2021/09/09/rentree-scolaire-sous-haute-tension-obligation-vaccinale-pass-sanitaire-et-vaccination-systematique-des-enfants-et-des-adolescents-le-point-sur-les-derniers-developpements/
Debate between Véronique de Thier, head of the Brussels regional branch and political officer of the Fapeo, Sabine Stordeur, coordinator of the vaccination Taskforce, and Anne-Claire Henry, crisis manager at the ONE
https://bx1.be/radio-chronique/le-face-a-face-faut-il-vacciner-a-lecole
Website of the FAMHP (Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products)
https://www.afmps.be/fr/usage_humain/medicaments/medicaments/covid_19/vaccins/questions_et_reponses_sur_les_vaccins_contre
under information on Comirnaty/can this vaccine cause adverse effects/in detail/
click on the package leaflet
https://bx1.be/radio-chronique/le-face-a-face-faut-il-vacciner-a-lecole
https://bx1.be/radio-chronique/le-face-a-face-faut-il-vacciner-a-lecole