I'm vaxxed and had my booster:

1) I had my booster 2 weeks ago and still am having side effects. I had 2 days of feeling like shit and having my physical output at maybe 20%, slowly recovering but after 2 weeks still around 75% or so. Not sure if it will improve come the new competition season. Same issues were reported with teammates. (I play a sport competitively, 2 days before the vaccine I did a 4.5 hour hard intensive training day, was ok and recovered fine. Just yesterday I had a training match and after 1 hour or so was feeling the lack of strength and difficulty breathing). I am not high risk for covid related issues. Right now, the booster has been quite an issue for me, and if I don't go back to 100% soon, my next year tournaments/ranking is compromised.

2) My kid is at an age they are pushing for vaccine for his age group. His risk based on my country data is pretty much zero (4 severe cases, 3 had co-mobilities that a normal cold would get them in the hospital, and one apparent healthy kid had severe issues but recovered). Risks from the vaccine for this age group are bigger than covid for him. I am against vaccinating him. (mother isn't and he will be)

I am not anti-vaxx (I even got my booster) but if they told me I could be 2+ weeks at reduced physical capacity befora having the booster, I wouldn't have done it.

Looking at the vaccination materials my wife got when she was vaccinated, I noticed some disturbing notes including that animal trials had never been completed.

Being healthy and under 40, and given how quickly these vaccines were rushed out, I merely want to wait until the long-term effects are known. I don't think there's anything extreme about that.

It should be noted that I've had covid (from visiting fully vaccinated and boosted family) and have had the antibody test confirming I should have some degree of resistance now.

However government policy and messaging has all been based on vaccination - not verified natural resistance (which studies show are robust to many variants, unlike vaccination). I can only conclude that the government does not care about health outcomes: It only cares about vaccination status. After being denied entry to restaurants and events and generally punished by society for what I deem to be reasonable caution, it starts to feel very dystopian and gives me all the more reason to pause and wait for long-term studies to be completed.

Incidentally, I'm one of the most vaccinated people on Earth. I've had over 90 vaccines prior to this event, including three just prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. None of them have ever required me to sign a liability waiver. Yet another reason I'm cautious about these vaccines: If the manufacturers are more uncertain of these vaccines than usual then why shouldn't I be?

why do you care about animal studies which are fairly unreliable when it has already passed human studies?

Because the basic controls that prevent us from harmful outcomes were not observed. Did you read nothing else I wrote?

but animal trials only exist as a precursor to human trials. If the human trials have successfully concluded, animal trials are redundant. The idea of having skipped animal trials is worrying while doing the human trials, but if the human trials complete successfully, then the worry is no longer founded.

> If the human trials have successfully concluded

They have not.

yes they have. what are you talking about?

I’m vaccinated but I won’t get a booster because:

- My heart hurt as hell from the vaccines. A study from the UK shows more risk for myocarditis from the vaccines than from infection in males under 40. [1]

- Studies say vaccines stop/slow transmission but in reality we see more cases in regions with high vaccination rates than we did last year without vaccines. And more cases than in regions with a lower vaccination rate. Breakthrough infections seem to be the norm, not the exception. I’m not the US.

- Natural immunity is superior. [2]

- Vaccines don’t protect against long covid. [3]

- The people at risk are old or have other problems. Statistically you will be fine when you’re under 60.

So when we add all these things up it’s clear to me we should have only vaccinated older people and the ones with health problem. Because the vaccines only work to protect yourself. And you don’t need artificial protection when you’re young and healthy. Just like the flu.

[1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...

[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2

Edit: I source my claims yet people downvote me. If you downvote me just because you heard something else in the media I consider you an irrational person.

> Edit: I source my claims yet people downvote me.

The actual contents of your sources don't back up the summaries you wrote.

That’s not true. And I was downvoted immediately after posting. No one reads that fast.

> The research impresses Nussenzweig and other scientists who have reviewed a preprint of the results, posted yesterday on medRxiv. “It’s a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination,” says Charlotte Thålin, a physician and immunology researcher at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute who studies the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. “To my knowledge, it’s the first time [this] has really been shown in the context of COVID-19.”

> Putrino has noticed that even being fully vaccinated doesn’t necessarily protect against long COVID. Many of his clients were infected before vaccines were rolled out, and had been coping with symptoms for a year or more before they were referred to him. But he has seen about a dozen people who experienced long COVID from ‘breakthrough’ infections — in which vaccinated people catch the coronavirus.

Unvaxxed here. Lost my job due to it. Couldn't attend a close friend's wedding. So - it is not a casual decision I made.

mRNA "vaccines" are not as tested as the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe. They've been in development for years and had serious issues. The mainstream media has severe conflicts of interest, financially, with regard to Pfizer. There are smaller conflicts of interest with regard to J&J and Moderna. The Asch conformity experiments are one example of many that show that even experts can be manipulated. If I do happen to have a bad reaction to the shot, I have no recourse to get compensation for my medical bills. I have very, very low risk of complications from the SARS-Cov-2 virus itself.

The risk analysis does not justify the shot, for me.

What data did you use to perform the risk analysis?

I performed my own risk analysis and it should positive results for the vaccine for every population cohort.

If you're looking for hard data, there was some, but it was more of a logic based risk assessment. I deduced, for me, that the best bet was to avoid the disease as much as possible, and not risk a novel medicine for something that was low risk anyways.

Risk of me having major complications from Covid: Very, very low. Less than a hundredth of a percent, IIRC.

Rate of drugs recalled by FDA: Shockingly high.

Rate of fraud and abuse by large pharmaceutical companies: Also very high.

Effectiveness of the vaccine: I have an admittedly non-expert level understanding of statistics, but I did not agree with the efficacy analysis from the initial trials. I assume some modeling was applied, but I found that to be rather opaque. IIRC again - it was about 5k ea of active/placebo, and on the order magnitude of about 100 cases for placebo and 50 for active treatment.

> If you're looking for hard data, there was some, but it was more of a logic based risk assessment.

I take it that you did not look at odds ratio. This is probabilistic analysis not if-then-else. With no use of risk analysis this is an emotional judgement, not a logic based one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds_ratio

> but I did not agree with the efficacy analysis from the initial trials.

???!! What part of the analysis did you disagree with? It was super straightforward.

> it was about 5k ea of active/placebo, and on the order magnitude of about 100 cases for placebo and 50 for active treatment.

These numbers are straight up false. The placebo group had at least 10X more infections than treatment group.

Odds Ratio can only factor in known risks. I very specifically mentioned in my comment I was concerned about the unknown risks.

If my numbers were wrong, I apologize. I mostly remember not being impressed enough

How did you incorporate unknown long term effects of a covid19 infection, even if you dont die from it - in your own analysis?

Btw, the idea behind a multi stage RCT is to identify the unknown risks in a stage wise manner. The odds ratio does just that.

At this point you left scientific reasoning and logic a long way behind, and there is really no conversation to be had. 94% efficacy is actually extremely fucking impressive.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389

"Symptomatic Covid-19 illness was confirmed in 185 participants in the placebo group (56.5 per 1000 person-years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 48.7 to 65.3) and in 11 participants in the mRNA-1273 group (3.3 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 1.7 to 6.0); vaccine efficacy was 94.1% (95% CI, 89.3 to 96.8%; P<0.001)."

Your own memory reflects your unconscious bias

> it was about 5k ea of active/placebo, and on the order magnitude of about 100 cases for placebo and 50 for active treatment.

>How did you incorporate unknown long term effects of a covid19 infection, even if you dont die from it - in your own analysis?

How do I incorporate unknown long term effects of the vaccine? If both offer unknowns, of unknown severity, why should I intentionally take one to avoid another? How are you quantizing these? You seem so caught up in how others have told you to analyze risk, you are unable to do so for yourself anymore.

>At this point you left scientific reasoning and logic a long way behind,

I find you rather rude

>and there is really no conversation to be had.

Fine by me

> You seem so caught up in how others have told you to analyze risk, you are unable to do so for yourself anymore.

I am a professional data scientist[1], and get paid to do these kind of analysis myself every day. Analysis far more advanced than odds ratios. I used that as a simple measure that even laymen can understand. Your non-existent analysis is not an adequate replacement for statistical methods.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29671172#29674008

> I find you rather rude

Whats that popular phrase Ben Shapiro uses ..... - "Facts don't care about your feelings".

If you are willing to lose your job to avoid a protective shot, as demonstrated by every medical review and very basic math, you are long beyond the pale of logic or reason.

I don't see much extremism. Most of the anti-coved-vax folks are ok with the tried and tested vaccines .For all I know the mRNA technology is new and the covid vax is the first of vaccines based on the said technology to get an approval - an emergency approval. This is a gamble. And I'm sure that nobody should be forced to gamble with their health, thats it. It might be redeemed a bit if the vaccine really stops the spread. but it seems to be not he case.

Preliminary note: I don't claim to be an expert in any field relevant to vaccines. This is just an everyday layman's opinion. (Also, I'm vaccinated and boosted as well).

I think "anti-vax" sounds inherently extremist and conspiracy-theorist, and isn't an accurate representation of the middle ground here. To be fair, it's more like "pro-choice."

Plenty of vaccines are given to children every year and required for them to attend school, and there hasn't really been any negative side-effects of that policy. It's tough to argue that we should not be required to have any vaccine to attend school, and that would break the status quo in the other direction.

The question then becomes: What could make the Covid vaccine different from other vaccines, such that it shouldn't be required?

* If these vaccines were approved earlier and with more early-stage preliminary data than other vaccines?

* If Covid is not as severe as the diseases we currently require a vaccine for? [1]

[1] The current required vaccines for school in New York, for example, are Diphtheria, Hepatitis B, Measles, Polio, and Chickenpox. The mortality rate and permanent damage for some of these diseases are much higher than Covid. With others, I'm not sure of the pre-vaccine mortality rate as it's been around for a long time.

With all that in mind, Covid spreads as much if not more as the diseases we saw fit to require vaccinations against, and the mortality rate for the older population is high. I think a fair argument is whether schoolchildren should have to be vaccinated to protect against infecting the more vulnerable population.

> I think "anti-vax" sounds inherently extremist and conspiracy-theorist, and isn't an accurate representation of the middle ground here. To be fair, it's more like "pro-choice."

It's just a smear to divide and rally the left. Nobody who has received the plethora of other standard vaccines and given them to his child can reasonably be called anti-vax for refusing an experimental first-of-its-type vaccine that didn't follow the same rigorous process as the others. Especially not in a climate where natural immunity is ignored and off patent treatment are not pursued.

I got the Pfizer vaccine and a single, final booster. I'm expecting that decision made from fear to come back to haunt me at some point in my life. I have nothing but respect for people who decide not to get a COVID vaccine.

I mostly agree. It is genuinely hard in this environment to rationally discuss individual options. As an example, here is an example of Hep B vaccination for infants.

How is it transmitted: "This can happen through sexual contact; sharing needles, syringes, or other drug-injection equipment; or from mother to baby at birth. "[1]

Why do I need it? My kid's doctor paraphrased: um, chart says so and school won't her in if she does not have it.

And that does not mention super annoying conversation with wife, whose entire argument for it is: 'it won't do damage'.

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hbv/index.htm

It’s because people cheat on their spouses a lot more than people think and a baby getting hepatitis B during vagina birth is just awful. Basically everything in standard of care assumes the worst about the individual.

There is a test for that ( and for heaven's sake -- doctor is where you go for awkward conversations to begin with ) and I genuinely resent that the real reason is being hidden from me as a parent. How on earth am I supposed to make decision if I am getting inaccurate information? Or more importantly, as a non-doctor, why I am I forced to learn all the things I should be able to trust my healtcare provider with? Why do I have to peel the onion for various agendas for something this important? I swear.. each day it seems healthcare starts to resemble Office more and more..

It is infuriating.

Then perhaps cheaters should be punished, and not parties not involved in the cheating?

The state doesn't track who is cheating, so all they can do to protect kids is to assume everyone is equally likely to cheat. If you think it is better they tracked your sex life to ensure they didn't punish the wrong people then you have very different values than most.

It doesn't have to be active sex life tracking, there are other ways. When cheater are punished, it will make others less likely to cheat. Win win for everyone.

This is an excellent analysis, and I wish we saw more of these comparisons.

The status quo (which differs by country!) for compulsory or somewhat-compulsory vaccination provides a great benchmark for what's seemingly "reasonable."

I think that benchmark--and your analysis seems to show similarly--suggests most developed countries are sorta fine with compulsory vaccines for diseases like Covid. But looking at things through this lens helps contextualize and normalize the current policies--people who are concerned about Covid vaccines might feel a lot better when the vaccine is put into perspective.

I think the "anti-vax" are drawing the opposite conclusion: Covid (for most people, and particularly for young people) is orders of magnitude less dangerous than measles, polio, diptheria, and the other compulsory vaccines. The feeling is that for this large subset of the population, it's on par with, or less dangerous than, the flu. Given that belief, it's understandable to question the logic behind compelling vaccinations.

I think it's understandable, but not necessarily accurate.

First, in the US, seasonal flu vaccines are used by >50% of the population (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-2021estimates.ht...). Yes, they're not mandatory, but many employers heavily encourage it.

Second, chickenpox is compulsory for public schooling in a majority of states, and has a CFR of about 1/100k (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html#:~....), which is, if I am reading https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.7384... correctly, significantly lower than the covid CFR for the same age strata.

Obviously it also makes sense to consider things like safety of the vaccine, risk to vulnerable populations, etc. But just on its face, it's not obvious that the covid vaccines are in any way contrary to prior precedent, at least not to me.

Covid vaccines went through the same safety and efficacy trials as every other vaccine.

Covid has a 2%? mortality rate against the immune naive, with a much greater proportion requiring hospitalisation and suffering long term health consequences. I believe that is pretty similar to many other illnesses we vaccinate against.

There are varied and complex reasons for people being anti-vax, but none of them are grounded in science.

Phase 1 trials take several months. Phase 2 trials take months to 2 years. Phase 3 trials take 1-4 years.

https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3...

In the case of Pfizer-BioNTech, the Phase 3 trial was started before Phase 2 even completed, and was completed in less than 8 months.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04713553

Even with the rather expanded definition of "died while infected with COVID-19," the mortality rate is approximately 1.5% (845627 deaths / 55202306 cases) in the United States, or 25% lower than you claimed.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

> As such, I’ve been trying to find the non-extremist[1] anti-vaccine argument… but I’ve struggled

I doubt that you've really never heard any opposition to covid vaccines that aren't deranged things, but okay, I'll bite.

Simply being against forcing people to get covid vaccinated is now defined as "anti-vaccine"... So if, by chance, you also don't think people should be forcefully injected, you're anti-vax too.

Covid vaccines clearly had some positive effects, especially for vulnerable people, but:

* I don't think the balance is right between the risk of catching the virus versus forcing everyone to get vaccinated every few months

* If you think there are no problems with vaccines how do you contend with Astra Zeneca being abandoned in so many places and Moderna being disallowed for under 30s?

* Studies show that kids have more heart issues from the vaccine than from the virus. It's a sick society where we care more about the risk of passing the virus to adults than the risk on the kids.

* If everyone is following the science, why do so many countries have different policies? Especially when it comes to masking and vaccinating kids?

* It's not great to play along with the removal of your rights. How are you ever going to recover them?

But most importantly:

* I shouldn't have to have a reason. We used to think that every man is his own master and he's allowed to make wrong decisions. Do you know how some people have cards saying "do not resuscitate"? Science may decide that the person needs to be alive so he needs to be forcefully resuscitated, but we used to respect people's choices anyway.

Now, because of an infectious disease (as if we've never had one before), we've thrown the individual out the window and worship The Science, even though every government as a different The Science.

I am young and very healthy and covid, especially omicron, does not have much of an effect on me. At this point, everyone is going to get covid even if 100% of the population is vaccinated. Folks who are worried and/or high risk should of course get the vaccine to reduce covid’s effects. No young person should be forced to take a covid vaccine much less a booster to go to school because covid isn’t the Spanish flu or polio and doesn’t have crippling effects on the young.

I have had covid and I am vaccinated with JnJ but I will not be getting boosters. I would like to see the longer term effects of mRNA vaccinations first. I have all my other vaccinations. Most of my immediate family is not vaccinated for covid (while having all other vaccines) and has a similar position.

There are too many unknowns about the risks of both COVID (with its multiple strains and poor research) and the vaccines (with their novel techniques and "warp speed" approval rather than going through the normal 3-year study). As a general moral proposition, it isn't acceptable to require people to take on unknown risks to protect others.

I am defined as anti-vax, but I am really just against it for myself. People are free to do as they wish and I would like that same freedom extended to myself.

Context, I have some health issue with food where consuming a handful of very common foods - gluten (wheat), sugar (sucrose in particular, lactose is fine), sodium nitrities (deli meats, bacon, celery), glutamate (msg in chips, tomatoes, hard cheeses), caffeine - leads to sinus headaches. They are debilitating and were a regular occurrence up until I figured out they were food related. That is to say, some perfectly safe things are not safe at all for me to eat. I am very strict in my diet. I also work from home so I can cook every meal, I am not very social (no bars, restaurants), so I view myself as very low risk of spread.

I do not really trust doctors to give good advice. I have gone for my sinus headaches and was never told it was food. I was given prescriptions to mask the symptoms but that is not addressing the root cause of the illness. As well, doctors and the government are both in pharma's pocket, and hospitals have a profit incentive here too [1].

I am in my early 30s, very low risk of getting sick from COVID, lower risk of dying [2]. Low risk of transmission due to my lifestyle. I am pro mask.

Now my beliefs about COVID. Bluntly, it kills and hospitalizes old people and fat people [3]. I am neither. If you eat yourself into a risky position, that is on you to isolate, vaccinate, and take precautions, not me. I believe more cases are asymptomatic than reported due to the bias of testing only when you have symptoms. The risk of a young healthy person getting hospitalized is very, very low.

Let's look at the vaccine. It reduces symptoms in people who have it. It reduces transmission rates by reducing the window in which vaccinated people carry it, though vaccinated people carry the same viral load. Its efficacy wanes pretty quickly. It is not effective against omicron. It gives people more confidence to go out and participate in risky behavior. My main take away is that it protects the individual from severe symptoms, it does not eliminate the risk of transmission. We are also seeing a ton of breakthrough infections as anti bodies wane.

The vaccine is not without side effects. Myocarditis in particular is what I am concerned about, but given how my body responds to perfectly safe foods, there are more unknowns for me. I know that myocarditis and blood clots are relevant to specific vaccines and certain populations. However, in the same way that I'm not knowingly exposing myself to COVID, I am not going to knowingly expose myself to those risk and other unknowns for my body.

Given my health issues, my perceived risk of COVID, and the efficacy of the vaccine, I will not be taking it.

Now the mandates. I'm a federal contractor. There is zero flexibility. No exception for working from home. I sought a medical exemption and doctors aren't giving them unless you have taken a shot and had an allergic reaction. So here I am, working below market for my country, for a small contractor, and carrying a few programs. Will I continue to work with the threat of being fired hanging over my head as the court challenges go forward? Nope. I've accepted another job. It is going to fuck this company and my boss who I like. I feel really bad about it, but I'll take the OSHA mandate which has a WFH exemption, plus a nice salary bump, over uncertainty about my job's future.

Couple all that with the media pushing every stat that promotes the vaccine and ignoring actually helpful data. For example, we up the number of tests and then report more cases rather than percent positive. We have not done a randomized and blind trial of how many cases are asymptomatic because that would harm the narrative. We have seen that 94% of COVID deaths have at least 1 comorbidity, many of which are weight or age related [4]. The way they were doing COVID deaths was literally testing anyone who died (car crashes [5] and gunshot wounds in extreme cases [6]). As well, ICU beds are elastic, hospitals can expand and decrease capacity, so reporting that metric is also bad.

It will be different for other people, but I don't know anyone who has gotten extremely sick or died from it. None of my healthy friends have noticed it. It just feels like a big narrative to pump pharma and hospital stock price. If I need to be told by the news that there is a pandemic, is it really a pandemic?

All told, I have done a risk assessment and am making the personal choice to not get the vaccine. You are free to do whatever you want. I think it is beneficial for old people and fat people to get the vaccine. I think masks are beneficial. The vaccines offer personal protection, they do not prevent catching it, they reduce symptoms when you do catch it, and they curb spread a little but not really.

tl;dr Personal health issues, lack of confidence in medical institution, low risk of COVID, low risk of symptoms, lower risk of hospitalization, very low risk of death, existing risk of vaccine, waning efficacy of vaccines, media narrative, inflexible mandates.

1. https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-hospital-profits-a...

2. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi... (even how these stats are reported with <1x rather than an actual percentage feels very disingenuous)

3. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...

4. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-94-percent-covi...

5. https://www.westernjournal.com/county-counted-car-crash-covi...

6. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/12/15/grand-county-covid-de...

There are acknowledged side effects of the vaccine, notably myocarditis that is a risk for men in their teens and twenties (the risk is several fold higher for men in this age group than it is for women). The Israeli and CDC data variously put the risk at 1 in 3000-6000, but that doesn’t mean that many times more milder cases of damage aren’t more prevalent.

Various countries in Europe have balked at or delayed vaccinating under 18s for this reason. Interestingly for people who got the mRNA vaccines there was almost no myocarditis after the first dose, so this was mostly a second dose effect. We may not have enough data right now to say whether a booster dose is even more likely to produce heart damage but it’s possible.

Since myocarditis is also a risk of COVID itself, it’s probably still a better deal for many people in this age group to get vaccinated. In fact public health officials seem to think that it’s a good deal for the average person in this group. However, if you are a healthy man in his early twenties whose absolute risk from COVID is already very low, there’s a decent argument that you should be given a chance for informed consent and not have this mandated.

This is even more true if you’ve already had COVID and acquired natural immunity. In many countries proof of infection functions the same as proof of vaccination in terms of accessing services, it arguably should In this case as well.

The sorts of mandates we have had in place for things like MRR are different because we have decades of data on the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, and we know that we can lose herd immunity if we don’t have high compliance. The current COVID vaccines are clearly not providing herd immunity, given that omicron is tearing through highly vaxxed countries like the UK. Many experts are basically acknowledging that nearly everyone will get omicron eventually.

Also, unlike measles which can be kept at bay by mass vaccination, COVID is rampant in massive animal reservoirs like whitetail deer, which means that we aren’t going to make it extinct like we did with polio or smallpox. If the best that can be said about the vaccines is that they reduce hospitalization and death risk for those who take them, then is there justification for a mandate? You can argue that reduced severity is important for protecting the hospitals from being overwhelmed. But does that justify a mandate for boosters amongst college kids whose absolute risk of hospitalization from COVID is already very very small?

Anyway, I’m as fully vaxxed as I can be in my jurisdiction, but I don’t begrudge people making different choices for themselves in a case like this where it’s more about personal risk management than public benefit. Rational decisions are being made and the vaccination rates amongst elderly are much much higher than people in their twenties.

I also think that part of our resiliency as a society is having a range of perspectives. Even if the paranoid personality is annoying or maladaptive, sometimes they help bring things to light.

In the case of mRNA vaccine skeptics like Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, they is just consistently very far out on precautionary principle spectrum. Like they don’t think you should learn the sex of your child before birth because it would increase the psychological trauma of a miscarriage. A lot of their concern boils down to overweighing the unknown unknowns (from my perspective). I’m on the other end of the precautionary spectrum, but I have come to value the perspective and role that people like this play in our society, and I think they should be part of the conversation.

> They've already backpedaled the vaccine story from stopping transmission to preventing the most severe symptoms.

In practice, we have always, always, always known that vaccination did not stop transmission but simply made cases significantly less severe. Unfortunately that is not what was communicated, and many parties basically lied and said the vaccine stopped transmission.

This is the third time by my count that an official lie about covid was spoken, proven wrong, and recanted. I'm very pro-vaccine, but by god we need to stop lying to people.

> The official numbers say kids under 18 don't die from this virus.

Yeah, kids are basically fine. Vaccinations don't hurt them but they're a really low risk group to begin with. The mask thing is silly for kids - you can kind of make an argument it helps protect teachers/babysitters/etc, but that is a group that should be mandated to be vaccinated in the first place.

> Yet they are still pushing these admittedly non-neutralizing vaccines on children as young as 5 and talking about mandates for them as well?

Kids being vaccinated results in no harm. It may, depending on long term protection plays out, save them having to worry about getting vaccinated as an adult. For lots of reasons, mostly tied to schooling, we're pretty good about getting kids vaccinated and really bad about getting adults vaccinated, so it's generally desirable to get all the life-long (or really long lived) vaccines into kids, even if they don't need them immediately.

> In practice, we have always, always, always known that vaccination did not stop transmission

Since this is something people commonly write around here, I am truly curious to know what you read that lead you to believe this? It's weird how many people believe the vaccine is not effective in stopping transmission. It's not 100% effective, and how well it's working to prevent transmission is a moving target as the virus changes, but if you think the effectiveness number is zero percent, I would like to understand where you got that. I'm pretty sure the official numbers are still above ninety percent, even with Omicron.

(it is of course true as you hinted that the vaccinated have less severe cases and shed less virus, etc.)

The original Israeli study made this clear: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34706170/

To be more specific, vaccination does help reduce transmission, partially, for a short period of time, but it's reduction in transmission is low compared to it's significant reduction in severity.

To be clear, it's totally fine that the vaccine doesn't really do much for transmission. That's not the goal. Covid is certainly here to stay and it's probably going to be a seasonal illness much like the flu - and we might even see seasonal covid shots like we do with the flu. We only care that the severity and hospitalizations are kept low. The vaccines do accomplish that and with basically no side effects.

I appreciate your sharing it but I'm not sure what I should be getting from that citation of the Israeli study, since I already knew that the vaccine wasn't 100% effective in preventing transmission and that the effect of the vaccine wanes over time. With official effectiveness numbers still above 90% I don't really think we should say "the vaccine doesn't really do much for transmission." (I realize the extent to which this might be an argument about verbiage and communication for me.) The immunity it provides demonstrably does an awful lot to prevent infection and transmission. And its effectiveness trends downward disappointingly fast, yes.

I don't think I disagree on the other points. I'm fairly certain you're right about seasonal COVID shots coming, and there's no doubt about the vaccine's importance in ameliorating symptoms. Communicating all this will be interesting. Something that's always been communicated poorly about influenza vaccines, for example, is that people who got a bad case of a strain they were immunized against would quite possibly have been a lot worse off without the vaccine. (Pet peeve: influenza A can be quite dangerous and that's not communicated well.)

Transmission protection at best is 39% and drops significantly quicker than severe symptom protection.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/07/23/pfizer-sh...

Thanks. Back to one of your other points, the much newer stories out of Israel (I found while looking for newer data on this) mostly involve their government's very strong push for more frequent vaccinations.

> Kids being vaccinated results in no harm.

Unless they get one of the bad side effects.

Like what? Please, do tell.

Here's mine.

My children are very young, my wife and I are young and we workout 6 days a week. We eat healthy and are healthy.

I'm not going to give my children a vaccine against something that has a miniscule mortality rate. And I'm not going to get vaccinated because I'm not morbidly obese or old. Lose weight and stay safe.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

It's not just yourself and your family you are putting at risk, it's everyone you encounter.

Thems the breaks. I'm not going to inject my children or my wife.

Yet people who are vaccinated can still transmit the disease. So how do you quantify the excess risk? Particularly for those who are young and healthy and unlikely to develop severe viral loads or complications? Are there any studies that show transmission rate for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated by age range?

> Yet people who are vaccinated can still transmit the disease.

They're over ninety percent more likely than their unvaccinated counterparts to remain uninfected, in which case they will not transmit the disease.

The questions regarding reduced viral shedding among the infected but vaccinated, and how much that effects that population's transmission rate, is interesting but probably secondary, I would think. (I don't know quite whether those were all rhetorical questions or something you wanted a dissertation on :D )

> They're over ninety percent more likely than their unvaccinated counterparts to remain uninfected, in which case they will not transmit the disease.

Not against omicron, it basically ignores vaccines. Vaccinated people might be a bit less serious, but they still get ill and we have had many super spreader events among vaccinated populations where almost everyone exposed got it.

Vaccine might reduce spread a little, but vaccinated people spread it so much already that it can't be anywhere close to 90% not spreading.

> Not against omicron, it basically ignores vaccines. Vaccinated people might be a bit less serious, but they still get ill and we have had many super spreader events among vaccinated populations where almost everyone exposed got it.

Omicron increases vaccine escape rates from about 5% to 30% which is bad, but not ignoring vaccines.

Hey, it's you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Sinistra

One case among published CDC numbers. You should know better.