Coronavirus vaccination card
Coronavirus vaccination card

Young people aged 16 and 17 in Lichfield are being urged to take up their Covid-19 vaccine.

It is being offered at Whitemoor Lakes between 10am and 1pm today (24th August).

It is open to all over 16s, but those under 18 must take proof of ID with them.

Cllr Johnny McMahon, Staffordshire County Council cabinet support member for public health, said:

“The clinic is a chance for 16 and 17-year-olds in Lichfield to get their first jab of the Pfizer vaccine immediately instead of waiting for their invitation from the NHS.

“The vaccine is safe and effective, and is the best way for young people to protect themselves, their friends and their families.

“While the younger a person is the lower their overall risk from Covid, young adults can still get Covid and long Covid, when symptoms of the disease persist for an extended period.

“The latest figures for England show people aged 18 to 34 now make up more than a fifth of those admitted to hospital with the virus, four times higher than at the peak last winter – and most of those are unvaccinated.”

Cllr Johnny McMahon, Staffordshire County Council
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Refugees Welcome
2 years ago

How many Afghan refugees we’re welcoming in Lichfield will be double-vaccinated? I hope that they will be willing to take the vaccine and don’t listen to anti-vax lies.

John Allen
2 years ago

Over four thousand cases of COVID have been linked to a music and surfing festival in Cornwall, mostly amongst young people, so let’s hope that vaccinations amongst this section of the population are taken up. It would also help if they exercised a bit more responsibility.

Lichvegas
2 years ago

I think you are being a bit unfair to young people, John. You really could not pay me to be young again in this country. Their education has been massively disrupted, young people are disproportionately affected by layoffs in the service sector which is low-paid and insecure, many of them won’t be entitled to redundancy payoffs and the benefits system provides very little support for under-25s. Housing and the cost of living generally are expensive. We are stuck with a callous and incompetent Tory government and the preposterous debacle of Brexit, where young people’s rights to work and study abroad have been taken away from them, and both of these things are squarely the fault of older voters. If I was younger, I might think twice about protecting the boomer generation in a pandemic, so today’s young people are undoubtedly better people than me.

Yes, of course they should get vaccinated but I can’t blame them too much for their mistakes – it’s a dumb idea to put on festivals in the middle of a pandemic, but the organisers are allowed to put them on and the government says it’s ok, so who are they supposed to believe? They’ve been asked to put their lives on hold, mainly for the benefit of their elders and they’ve complied for 18 months – that’s nothing to me at age 45 (and having had COVID-19 in 2020, I am more than happy to ‘cower’ away from catching it again, to quote the vile dogwhistles of ‘Health Secretary’ Sajid Javid), but when you a teenager 18 months is a long time.

ProfessorPineapple
2 years ago

LichVegas – There is much with which to agree in your post. The young are certainly feeling the effects of this government’s flawed policies. However, discussion of a young v old generational gap is falling into the divide and rule trap that de Pfeffel Johnson and his cronies like so much.
“We are stuck with a callous and incompetent Tory government and the preposterous debacle of Brexit, where young people’s rights to work and study abroad have been taken away from them, and both of these things are squarely the fault of older voters”
The biggest factor in determing who voted to take away these rights was not age. It was the level of educational attainment.
Interesting read below.
Educational attainment alone can correctly classify over 90% of local authorities by voting outcome in the EU referendum
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/educational-attainment-brexit/

Judith Nock
2 years ago

I think the fact that young people are the last to be vaccinated was a completely stupid idea. Back in April when pubs and restaurant’s were opened again the covid cases went up and of course it was blamed on young people going out and enjoying themselves. People in care homes were prioritised. These were people that were not going out anywhere and without sounding disrespectful how many of these people have since passed away. Utterly ridiculous. Leave the young people alone

Lichvegas
2 years ago

@ProfessorPineapple – thank you for the link, v. interesting. You are right, we shouldn’t look for divisions but things to bring us together.

@Judith Nock – I totally agree that young people should have been vaccinated earlier. They are much more likely to be in service sector jobs which bring them into contact with lots of people, e.g. shop work, bar and restaurant staff, and/or in educational settings and their social contacts tend to be more numerous than those of older people. It is totally unfair that they have been put in this position and then get blamed for not being responsible enough.

George
2 years ago

Judith, look at this
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths?areaType=nation&areaName=England#card-deaths_within_28_days_of_positive_test_by_age_and_sex
which breaks down deaths in England within 28 days of a positive test by age range and sex. Note how you could ignore all the deaths in people under 50 years old without hardly changing the total and how steeply the numbers go up after 50 years old. Then tell us more about why you think it was a completely stupid idea that young people were the last to be vaccinated. People in care homes do go places you know. And even if they stay inside, people had to go in from the outside pandemic ridden world to care for them. Yes a lot of them will have since passed away. Up to Between April 2020 and April 2021 around 42000 of them passed away with Covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/11/more-care-home-residents-died-of-covid-in-second-wave-than-first-in-england-and-wales

John Allen
2 years ago

All valid points Lichvegas but they don’t excuse the irresponsible behaviour of crowding together at nightclubs and festivals when we still have a pandemic around. For that matter neither do they excuse the irresponsible behaviour of government in abandoning all legally required infection controls.