I refer to plans to vaccinate some 300,000 children aged 5 – 11. (Singapore setting up paediatric vaccination centres. Dec 17)
I
am a 74-year old tertiary-educated Singaporean who is blessed with many
grand-nephews and grand-nieces from this age group. They make me feel
young.
Our children are our future. Never “play tikam tikam” with
their precious health and lives — whether during National Service
peacetime training or a disease pandemic.
I take great umbrage at
misguided public officials who are knee-jerk quick to label
well-meaning feedback as “anti-vaccination fake news”.
An
important reminder: Vaccination is irreversible. Once the vaccine is
injected into your young child, there is no changing your mind.
Vaccination
is also never a 100% cure-all tool to fight Covid-19. Other equally
important tools include masking, hand-hygiene and social distancing.
Parents
are entitled to truthful answers, substantiated with full facts and
figures, to help them with “informed decision” and “informed consent”.
Merely saying “The vaccine is safe. The benefits outweigh the risks.” is
an easy lazy way out that will never earn public respect nor trust.
The buck of convincing parents was conveniently passed down to Junior Minister Janil Puthucheary who did an unconvincing job.
He
confidently declared that American trials found no cases of anaphylaxis
(severe allergic reaction), myocarditis (heart muscle inflammation) or
pericarditis (inflammation around heart) in the 5 – 11 age group.
The
following day, he was contradicted by an American CDC announcement of 8
reported cases (so far) of myocarditis in children aged 5 – 11 who took
the Pfizer vaccine.
During the Raeesah Khan lengthy saga,
Workers Party politicians were constantly reminded to “tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Likewise, concerned parents
are impatiently waiting for a whole-truth high-level joint response by
Health Minister Ong Ye Kung and Covid-19 Vaccination Expert Committee
Chairman Dr Benjamin Ong at a MTF televised session to convincingly
address all remaining unanswered questions.
The Pfizer paediatric
vaccine is newly developed. How effective is it? What are the known
possible side effects, and their “possible long-term implications” for
the health of a growing young child?
Singapore parents must not
“feel pressured” but be completely free to decide for themselves whether
to vaccinate their young children based on “informed consent”.
Will unvaccinated children be stigmatised or penalised by deplorably divisive vaccination-differentiated curbs?
David L K See
[
Writer's Note for Readers --- Above is original text of my 20 Dec
letter to STForum, which was not published (read: censored?). Please
help to forward/circulate to as many Concerned Parties as possible to
counter typical PAP bull-dozing tactics. ]
12/26/2021
Just How Safe is Covid-19 vaccination for young children?
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11 comments:
From Merdeka Generation:
December 25, 2021 at 6:22 am (Quote)
I am a 71 years old Singaporean and have gone through a lot in life. During my youth, I was willing to sacrifice my life as a NS man for my country because LKY did a very good job running the country....
My children one from NTU and one from Poly are now unemployed and have difficulties looking for jobs. I myself a PMET from US company have for the past 20 years doing nonsense jobs like Private Hiring job etc.
My question is why are we still bringing FTs to take over Singaporean jobs ?
Is LHL and the PAP Ministers looking after the welfare of Singaporeans like wgat LKY used to do ? If not time to kick them out abd give others a chance to rule. KNNBCCB
Comment in TRE
Same situation here. LHL is not doing his job as our PM. He is looking after himself, his wife, his children and his cronies but not looking after us. He is also looking after the foreigners for his own power base survival. We are just digits in his mathematical calculations. Nothing else. KNNCCB.
Chan Chun Sing
Our P4-6 students will be receiving their #COVID19 vaccination from tomorrow.
Visited the paediatric Vaccination Centre at Senja-Cashew Community Club this morning to see the preparations, safety protocols and design features that are specially catered for children at the Vaccination Centres, including:
• Dedicated queue for children and their parents/guardians, and clear signages featuring Ministry of Education, Singapore Soaper 5 heroes to provide a familiar environment.
• Added verification checks at the registration counters.
• Differently colour-coded paediatric vaccine vials, segregated paediatric vaccine prep area and logistics chain.
• Medical personnel trained in paediatric care, along with staff who are experienced in vaccinating younger children. The medical staff are even putting on colourful attire to differentiate themselves and help put the children at ease.
To date, more than 40% of next year’s P4-6 students have signed up for vaccination.
• From today, we have extended registration to all who are born between 2010 to 2012 i.e. all remaining 9-11 year olds who are not in our MOE schools and Madrasahs.
• The weekend slots are fast filling up. I encourage parents to consider weekday slots that are still available. Would like to reassure parents that students getting vaccinated during schools hours, or feeling unwell from vaccine will be deemed to be on medical leave, and will receive help with their schoolwork if needed. We will also keep students away from strenuous activities in the 2 weeks after vaccination.
• Understand that some parents are waiting for the 2022 school schedule before registering. We will open registration for students in P1-3 in our MOE schools and Madrasahs from 5 Jan 2022, after school reopens. As with the older students, parents of these students will receive SMS invitations to make vaccination bookings.
Special thanks to our officers from Ministry of Health, Singapore, MOE, ECDA and our service providers who have been working hard through the festive period to roll out the vaccination exercise as soon and as smoothly as possible, to keep our children safe.
Ho Ching
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1928711320650026&id=100005335308340
This surge in the arrival/imported cases shows that the Omicron is pervasive in many places like USA, Europe, UK.
It is likely to be pervasive in Asean and the rest of Asia sometime in January.
True, the above are cumulative numbers, mostly accumulated in just the 1st 3 weeks of December.
But the uptick is clear, both for local, and especially for the arrivals.
Most arrivals are detected during their SHN without mixing in the local community, but some are imported within 2 weeks of arrival but already with local contacts.
Am using “arrival” for cases detected in SHN with minimal contact with the local community, other than SHN arrival/transport/stay personnel who have a higher infection prevention protocol.
Am using “imported cases” to mean those who arrived but were tested positive within 2 weeks of arrival, and have local community mingling.
Imported cases mean Omicron has been likely brought in, when local Omicron cases are still low, and not in a wave as yet.
With 79 local cases, we are ar the cusp of a breakout into a wave, likely before end January, and certainly before March.
We are seeing signs that the Omicron can re-infect those who have has covid before, and can also break through those who are fully vaccinated.
But the symptoms are either mild or asymptomatic, or like a bad flu, for the fully vaccinated with mRNA or viral vector vaccines. So being fully vaccinated helps reduce risk of severe or fatal illness.
A 3rd shot booster with mRNA vaccines can reduce breakthrough.
The Israelis are working on the possibility of a preemptive 4th shot booster for their senior folks above 60, plus their healthcare folks. But the Israelis will likely see a large wave as they still have something like 30%+ of their population not vaccinated, though they may have some protection from the 3 large waves of infection.
We’ll see if this 4th shot booster is something that can make a difference for seniors. Likely so, but the population vaccination cum past infection coverage vary in different places, and we’ll need to assess that.
It is yet unclear if the Omicron will be similarly or less dangerous to the unvaccinated compared with the Delta.
Some early reports suggest that the Delta is a bit more dangerous to the young including young kids. We do not know if this is so for the Omicron as well.
South Africa saw large numbers of hospitalised children with the Omicron - but these were incidental cases of kids admitted for some other serious conditions who were then tested to be Omicron positive as part of the hospital admissions protocol, but whose medical threat did not arise from an Omicron infection.
We should know some of these over the next few weeks, given the large waves already happening for the Omicron.
USA has already lifted travel ban from South Africa and other southern African states. This is partly bcos when the prevalence is similar, the risks are similar, and the locations with similar prevalence can be treated as one common risk pool.
The epicentre of the 1st Omicron wave, Gauteng in Pretoria, is already seeing their Omicron wave subside, even as the waves are taking off in other parts of South Africa.
So we can expect to see fast rise in numbers, with huge record numbers as we are seeing in UK and Europe, but also a decline sooner when the Omicron finds it harder to reach the decreasing number of Omicron naive folks, as Gauteng is demonstrating.
Sp even as we celebrate Christmas and prepare for the new year, both the calendar and lunar new years, let’s vaccinate and boost whenever we are due.
Hopefully, we will be left with fewer than 25,000 unvaccinated seniors before the Chinese New Year.
As usual, the granny is telling her long-winded grandma stories again. So boring. Yawn....
I will always remember what he labelled all of us: "Xia Shuay".
Actually, he should keep the label to himself. He is the most Xia Shuay amongst all the scholars and paper generals. As a top scholar in Singapore he can't even know where cotton comes from. He thinks cotton comes from sheep. What a great Xia Shuay!
She must be suffering from boredom counting her amassed $billions every day and night. And feeling very lonely?
German city reaps tax windfall from BioNTech’s Covid vaccine success
https://www.ft.com/content/5a705ebc-ce1f-4525-8406-d2875a32c473
As residents of Mainz gathered in late November for their first festive glass of mulled wine in Schillerplatz, the medieval heart of the German city, officials in the nearby City Hall realised they had even more cause for Christmas cheer.
The former Roman stronghold on the banks of the Rhine had become the beneficiary of a billion-euro tax windfall, largely thanks to BioNTech, the Covid-19 vaccine developer founded in the city in 2008.
“During the pandemic, Mainz became the world’s pharmacy,” said mayor Michael Ebling, who pledged to use the funds flowing from BioNTech’s pivotal role in fighting coronavirus to clear the city’s debts.
Corporation taxes — some of which can be set by local German authorities — will also be cut in a bid to attract more biotechnology businesses.
More than 2bn doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine have been delivered to date, and BioNTech is on track to post more than €10bn in net profit for 2021. For the nine months to the end of September, the company, which has sites in the US and other German cities such as Marburg, paid more than €3bn in taxes.
Officials would not publicly confirm how much tax BioNTech paid to Mainz in the past few months. But the company, unknown even to many of the city’s 220,000 inhabitants before the pandemic, has almost single-handedly lifted Mainz’s corporation tax haul from €173m for 2020 to more than €1bn in 2021, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
Having achieved global fame for Gutenberg’s 15th-century printing press, Mainz has long since been the poor relation to neighbouring Frankfurt, Germany’s financial centre. But unlike Sindelfingen, a south-west German city that is home to a Mercedes-Benz plant and which used recent tax windfalls to install marble zebra crossings, Mainz is not going on a spending spree.
“Our highest priority is to clear our cash debt [short-term loans] of €634m by the end of 2022,” finance director Günter Beck told the Financial Times. “There is a broad political consensus for this move because until the debt is paid, we have no freedom to decide on discretionary spending.”
Indebted German cities in receipt of these loans can only spend money on “unavoidable” projects.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate, of which Mainz is the capital, had the highest per capita level of short-term debt in 2020, according to figures from the Bundesbank. The city itself has been enrolled in a debt relief programme for almost a decade.
Now, Mainz will have a surplus of almost €1.1bn in 2021, and authorities expect a further surplus of more than €490m next year.
Once its short-term debts are paid, Ebling, of the Social Democrats, aims to leverage the city’s good fortune to reduce its reliance on a single company.
“We will now use our positive financial position and budget surpluses to establish a global science and biotechnology hub,” he said, promising to accelerate the transformation of a 12-hectare former barracks near BioNTech’s headquarters into a business and cultural centre. About 5,000 jobs would be created in the process, the mayor added.
There should be no shortage of tenants. Thanks to BioNTech, companies from across Germany and beyond have inquired about a move to the city, according to officials.
“Suddenly, we are well known in Singapore,” said Günter Jertz, chief executive of the chamber of commerce for the Rheinhessen region, which includes Mainz. For a city that used to make headlines only for its annual carnival, BioNTech’s scientific and commercial success, he added, “is priceless advertising”.
The Big Pharma must have bribed him US$MILLIONS. That's the reason he kept thanking nonstop!
They were actually celebrating the success of a great con-job pulled through with the help of corrupted politicians, national leaders and goveenment officials, at the expense of the world of stupidity has no cure taxpayers.
KNNCCB.
Turning a holy occasion of Christmas Cheers into an obscene and vulgar occasion of commercialism.
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