Forgive me if I am not jumping for joy at the thought of ‘Freedom Day’. For many clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) families who have been largely ignored, apart from getting priority slots for supermarket home deliveries and occasional emails warning them to shield, it represents a backward step and a loss of freedoms. 

CEV families know only too well about the impact of chronic illness. You value health and well-being and will do everything to preserve it for you and your family. Life has become a series of risk assessments over the last 16 months, but the stakes are surely about to get even higher. 

The Government appears to be carrying out a herd immunity policy through natural infection, via schoolchildren and the unvaccinated. The argument is apparently that the vulnerable people have been vaccinated and we now have to “learn to live with the virus”.

Like many families who live with chronically ill people, many CEV families don’t live in a vacuum. They live with school-aged children who need to be out and about in the world as much as Covid allows. These children have had to miss out on so much – no parties, camping trips or playdates etc. They have been forced to wear masks at home, to distance from their families indoors every day for over 16 months now.  

I’ve heard of kids eating lunch on their own in the pouring rain in the school playground to avoid crowded canteens, terrified by the knowledge that they may bring home a virus which could kill a parent or sibling. Many of them are on high alert the whole time. Not so good for mental health perhaps?

This is on top of the often-overlooked deprivations of living with a disabled parent in normal times. Surely all children – but particularly CEV children (themselves CEV or living with someone CEV) – should be a priority for the vaccine now.

I’ve read too many desperately sad stories of young people still suffering months after Covid infection to know that, for many children, it is far from a mild illness. Research has linked Covid infection to changes in the brain and there are reports of a spike in the number of kids being diagnosed with diabetes. We simply don’t understand the potential long-term impacts on young lives.

But there has been no serious Government effort simply to make schools safe and protect young lives as in other countries, notably the United States In England the buck is passed to overworked head teachers and their staff, not ventilation experts.  I am trying desperately hard to understand how this Government could be so casual towards young people.

We know from the Marmot Review about the impact of health inequality. Every MP that claims to care about disadvantaged children, levelling up, and so on, everyone who claims to advocate on behalf of children – including the Children’s Commissioner – should be putting pressure on the Government to keep kids in school by making sure schools are safe and offering the vaccine to young people as a priority.

For months we have been warning kids about the grave dangers of Covid. It’s fine for double-jabbed ministers to now tell them to “live with it”. We are now removing all mitigations from children who have no protection against the virus. What does that do to their mental health, putting them, their families and young teachers in the firing line without regard to the consequences?

Removing the bubble system (for which there is apparently no evidence base) without offering the vaccine may just force many more parents to withdraw them from school altogether. Why should CEV parents be put in such an invidious position? Why should the children of CEV parents be denied their right to education? Until we have proper mitigations and classes are safe spaces for children, we have failed to protect the most vulnerable now and from the potential long-term consequences of letting a novel virus rip through young lives.