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Hello and welcome to more or less, the show about numbers that's been learning to live with

Covid since January 2020. This week, governments across the UK have decided to offer Covid

vaccinations to primary school-aged children. What was the data behind this decision?

A new research paper suggests that around the world lockdowns have done almost nothing to

reduce deaths from Covid. Really? Elon Musk has been on the Twitter complaining of a global

population collapse. We're on it. And Kate Lambel zooms in on an e-bike to ask,

are good old-fashioned pushpikes destroying the planet? First, that story about vaccinating children.

Last week, the governments of all four UK nations said all children aged between 5 and 11 will

be offered a low dose Covid vaccine. It follows the latest advice from the joint committee on vaccination

and immunisation, or JCVI, which has been looking at the data on this. So why did they come to this

decision and why now? I've been speaking to Anthony Handan, a working GP, a professor of primary

care at the University of Oxford and deputy chair of the JCVI. We've had a careful and considered

debate about this, and the three key areas that we've covered really are the direct health benefits

and harms by the vaccinations, the indirect effect on education and the wider opportunity costs.

I think the final deciding factor was actually looking at the hard numbers in terms of health

benefits, and we felt that it would be sensible to try and future proof against future waves

and future variants against a background of polling data from parents to suggest they wanted

choice. So what are the health benefits to a child under 12 of being vaccinated?

Well, probably the best way to describe this is to split the 5 to 11 year olds into two broad groups.

One is those with underlying health illnesses and those out of well children. And of course,

those with underlying health illnesses are at risk of Covid and complications, albeit much smaller

...