How does anyone convince themselves that this is actually a problem?
Especially when the vaccine no longer prevents catching the virus or transmitting it.
What remaining benefit are people so eager to confer upon their toddlers?
Also vaccines reduce risk of some post-acute COVID disorders like MIS-C (which can result even from asymptomatic COVID).
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e1.htm
And of course you don't want to infect your child with a disease that has long term consequences which we are still learning about. Diabetes hit the news recently in the US, but it is actually been known for a while in other countries.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/43/11/e170/35903/N... (UK)
https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/27/archdischild-20... (Finland)
If that wasn't bad enough, diseases that are associated with T1D like celiac disease are on the rise, and show stronger association in COVID patients:
Not for kids under 5. That's why it's not approved.
>And of course you don't want to infect your child with a disease
Breakthrough cases are so common now that the media refuses to use the term anymore. That (lack-of) "preventing-infection" efficacy is baked into the <5 study that showed no benefit.
>that has long term consequences which we are still learning about.
Why is this a valid concern, but potential long-term effects of the vaccines aren't? Especially the known risk of inflammation in still-growing bodies and especially in developing hearts.
Wrong. Per the Pfizer press release [0], the immunogenicity analysis of the trial failed in children ages 2 to 4, but succeeded in children ages six months to two years. Given the small dose (3ug) in that study cohort, there was probably not enough rna in the vaccine for the 2-4 age group to show any effect.
>Why is this a valid concern, but potential long-term effects of the vaccines aren't? Especially the known risk of inflammation in still-growing bodies and especially in developing hearts.
The risk of developing myocarditis from the vaccine is about 100-150 in 5 million [1]. The risk of developing myocarditis from COVID-19 is about 150 in 100,000 [2]. I know I'm picking the vaccine for my child.
[0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
edited for typos.
I’m all for getting kids vaccinated when it’s deemed safe and effective (my daughter got vaccinated the first week it was available). But the risk to kids is quite low.
The issue is that you're not comparing apples to apples. The Israeli data is looking at the entire population that received the vaccine. The COVID study is only looking at hospitalized patients with/without COVID which is a subset of the entire population restricted entirely to those experiencing the most severe symptoms.
This is not an easy problem to solve. A more apples to apples comparison [3] puts the COVID:vaccine myocarditis ratio at about 6:1, but it also suffers from a bias. In order to measure those rates they relied on the population that tested positive for COVID. This excludes the population of individuals which were infected with COVID but did not received a diagnosis who presumably also had a near 0 rate of myocarditis. This bias [presumably] becomes more pronounced at lower age groups where COVID displays milder symptoms making it less likely to end up diagnosed.
Finally, there is also the consideration that while the vaccines have not yet changed - COVID has. And its likely that the omicron strain will have a different distribution of side effects. It's a difficult problem to solve, and conflicts of interest abound make it all even more challenging.
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm [2] - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y [3] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
Statistically we should be much more worried about something like RSV or the flu (even after vaccination).
Despite its name, SARS-CoV-2 is not strictly a "respiratory virus". While it is spread airborne, it attacks multiple tissues besides the respiratory system, and causes multi-system dysfunction (including but not limited to MIS-C, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, acute kidney injury, erectile dysfunction, ...). Many of the damages are immune-mediated, which is in line with what we know about T1D and celiac as autoimmune disorders.
Pneumonia.
The study you cite specifically excludes those under 5.
As does early treatment, https://c19early.com
Vaccine efficacy decays monthly (Delta/2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZMtSPX3iE
The unvaccinated get COVID 400% more than the vaccinated, and the unvaccinated die from COVID 1,200% more than the vaccinated[1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
It is pointless to quote rates without their context (country, age, virus strain, month, etcetera).
(Edit: forgot the source :P) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
Post vaxx kid: "I don't feel good." Doctor: Let's check you for this myocarditis thing I've read about.
Pre-2020 kid: "I don't feel good." Doctor: You're probably fine.
It’s true, but we’ve had plenty of vaccinated that were 90%+ effective compared to the Covid vaccines at 30% for infection risk.
My problem with that statement is that it wasn't a fact. The vaccines do prevent catching the virus, just no where near as well as they used to and even at their best they never eliminated the risk of catching and transmitting the virus.
It sucks that the new variants are able to overcome so much of the protection we had from vaccines, but we always knew there was a risk that would happen if we allowed the virus to spread uncontrolled. We didn't do enough to keep the number of infections down and evolution did its thing resulting in poorer vaccine performance.
I really hope that adjustments are able to made to existing vaccines to compensate or new vaccines are developed which do a better job, but it's going to be an arms race until people stop passing this virus around by the millions every day giving it more opportunity to mutate and spread again.
Right now, the vaccines are still the best defense we have. 30% is a hard number to hear when we had 90% but 30% of 7.9 billion people is 2,370,000,000 so it can still prevent a whole lot of infections in the world and if we work harder to bring the number of infections down hopefully we can prevent things getting much worse. My biggest fear was that some variant would evade the protections we have entirely and negate the lessons we've learned in treating the sick and we'd be right back to where we were early 2020. That's still a possibility we have to be ready to face.
Oh please. We have a truckload of vaccines that convey multi-decade/life-long immunity. case: the smallpox vaccine, polio vaccine, etc
We truly never had a real Covid Vaccine - we only have "protective boosters" and for Omicron they are utterly in-effective.
Albeit, I do not believe it is that common, it's still possible. However, if you isolated in a remote location in the woods miles away from humanity, then perhaps you'd be safe, I suppose.
What we do have evidence for are future problems caused by these coronavirus infections along with a long list of immediate problems like deaths, severe (sometimes life altering) symptoms which can at times persist for weeks, months, and years, healthcare systems being overwhelmed preventing or delaying access to care and making accessing health services more risky, etc.
If you have to choose between getting a vaccine which appears to be perfectly safe but maybe could cause harm at some point in the future, and not getting it which we know does cause harm now and is very likely to cause harm in the future the choice is pretty clear. We can only deal with the evidence we have today and our best understanding of our current situation.
Especially when the vaccines benefit us not only by keeping us healthier and helping to eliminate the strain on our healthcare systems, but they are also our best bet to help reduce the need for social restrictions and disruptions in education and the economy.
There's still always that chance that the vaccines will have some negative impact on us later, but anyone in the future looking back and seeing our current situation won't have to wonder "What were they thinking taking their chances with this new vaccine!" It should be very clear to them that because we had no indication that there would be problems with the vaccine and because the vaccines were our best option to keep ourselves and each other healthy in the face of current problems and known future problems caused by the virus it was perfectly reasonable to take the chance on the vaccines and that doing so saved many lives and prevented many problems.
And I hope that should we have to deal with any future consequences from these vaccines that we can once again turn to medical science to find the best available option to treat those problems using the best understanding of them we have at the time. A huge percentage of the global population will be impacted after all so once again we'll be in a position where the entire world has an incentive to work together to find a solution which will hopefully go even smoother next time following the lessons learned here and now.
With more research and time things could change, but until there are indications that the vaccines could cause more harm than the known harms of the virus the vaccines will remain the smartest option we have today, no matter how tragic things turn out decades later.
This is enough for me to avoid them. I didn’t read the rest because it’s a short essay.
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/how-effective-are-co...
I wonder if the early data has been proven wrong or if something is wonky about Alberta. At even 30% effectiveness you’d expect to see a big gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated new cases.
Weirdly near the bottom of your link they show nearly 90% effectiveness against all the variants of concern, but omicron isn’t listed. It seems like the vaccines would have to be negatively effective against omicron for all the other data to work out, though.
It seems unlikely that the Alberta population is experiencing a significantly different pandemic than neighbouring regions (demographics and responses are largely the same). I also wouldn't conclude from this data that vaccines are negatively effective as hospitalization rates are lower in the vaccinated group.
I agree. But I don’t understand that data. It doesn’t seem to line up with data from other areas.
e.g. Seattle is seeing 2.5x more infections among the unvaccinated.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/record-covi...
If you search hard enough (and quickly enough, they’ll likely be removed soon as they’re anti-narrative) you’ll find articles of people discussing exactly this. That the vaccine actually increases your chance of infection.
You can find anything online if you search hard enough. That doesn’t mean it’s true. It probably means you’re actively seeking out bias-confirming articles.
> (and quickly enough, they’ll likely be removed soon as they’re anti-narrative)
And now it’s full on conspiracy theory. This stuff is nuts. People like Alex Jones loudly put forward blatant lies that are “anti-narrative” and no one shuts them down. Why does every group imagine they are persecuted?
> you’ll find articles of people discussing exactly this. That the vaccine actually increases your chance of infection.
I would be interested in any relevant reputable articles showing this, but I’m pretty certain there are none.
It's not conspiracy theorist BS to suggest Google shapes search results for various reasons, to include politics. They been forced to admit as much. And before you use the confirmation bias argument, I'm pro-vax and all in favor of as many boosters as they offer.
The existence of that article in the New York Times would certainly seem to indicate a lack of suppression.
I do appreciate the link, though. That’s interesting and I hadn’t heard that was a concern. I wonder if there is science evidence that or if it’s hypothetical. The article doesn’t indicate one way or the other unless I missed it.
I don't know a ton about the science behind it other than some teams in Israel seem to have pretty strong feelings about it (more pointed than what's in the NYT article), but in my quick search I didn't see them in the search results.
With regards to search shaping, it's pretty easy to see: just Google image search "black inventors" then "white inventors". Also try "black family" then "white family". I'm not claiming any kind of oppression here, just noting that one of the sets of results looks like a Benetton-style diversity ad, while the other just has black people. I find it difficult to believe this was an organic result that wasn't explicitly influenced behind the scenes.
You could be right. I certainly see that “white family” involves a fair number of pictures of non-white folks. Individually the results all make sense (one from an article called “my white family”, stock photo “interracial black white family”, another about from an article about adopting a white child), but it’s odd that “black family” doesn’t have the same.
At the same time, it’s entirely plausible that this is just surfacing biases in the input. Maybe articles about families that aren’t just white have higher page rank? Maybe it’s something else. It’s interesting, but I’m doubtful it’s intentional (but it could be). If Google wanted to push a bias, it would make a lot more sense to push it on the unqualified “family” or “inventors”.
“White inventors” showing some black inventors makes a lot of sense given popular articles like “The iconic American inventor is still a white male” that specifically discuss non-white inventors.
The vaccines never stopped catching or transmission... they lessen the chances of you developing severe symptoms, your immune system still has to work.
Although I hope we will see vaccines that do a better job at preventing infection and transmission the benefits we're getting from them right now are enough that everyone who can should be vaccinated and boosted as needed to maintain those benefits.
-- writing this while my toddler is banished from daycare for 10 days because a single kid there tested positive.
Hopefully it's transient, soon followed by calm risk-benefit analysis.
Also, are you aware that children sometimes die from RSV and even the common cold? The problem COVID vaccines for kids are facing is that the problems from COVID in that age are so infrequent that they are essentially in the noise.
I think the very young child (<18 months) is at higher risk, though.
Which means that scenario playing in your head is just as likely to happen (or more likely, not happen) whether your children are vaccinated or not.
If they are ignoring symptoms to approve a vaccine who's primary remaining benefit is ... reducing severity of symptoms ... then how exactly has the trial proved anything?
Since antibodies are no longer a reliable indicator of immunity or of preventing transmission, then reduced severity is the primary remaining benefit.
Ideally they'd be looking at a cumulative risk/prevention assessment, but I don't see how they do that while excluding observed symptoms.
If they are using antibody levels as a proxy for this when they could just ... directly observe symptoms... then there would be a bigger problem with the study than just a failure to show sufficient efficacy.
It's just a fine line between arguing what would justify FDA "approval" vs what merits have changed that actually increase the risk-versus-reward assessment.
Put another way, when the biggest excuse for not getting vaccinated was "it's experimental and not approved", it became a straw-man-esque "gotcha-trap" of a battle to achieve "approval", even though that approval process looked nothing like any before it (no matter how many times "full fda approval" is repeated).
When the metric becomes the goal, it's no longer a metric, and all that.
We get bogged down arguing whether criteria of a definition or standard are being met, while the regulators end up just redefining things.
And we're supposed to pretend the teacher applying a curved grading scale actually represents a difference in the students performance.
BUT, the tests were administered based on self-reported symptoms which were then evaluated by a staff member to decide whether a test was warranted. This absolutely blew my mind.
This kind of avoidable subjective decision making should not be happening in a clinical trial. All participants should have been tested at regular intervals.
Passed+Failed = "Passed!"
[0] There will be a reason given to ignore that first trial, it just likely won't be a good one.
I think you meant to type 'vaccine'
Do you have a source on that?
My understanding is the reason it's taking so long is 1) an abundance of caution because the risk/reward calculation is different and 2) young children's immune systems don't work the same as adults').
Moreover, the government should be representative and derive it's power from the consent of the governed. Not enforce compliance to administrative state edicts. The slide from a representative republic to a technocracy is worrying.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/dangerous-push-to-give-boosters...
Moreover, the governed don't want the actions of others to kill them. That's why they created a government that prevents others from polluting, driving dangerously, and spreading disease.
400
> Why are you comparing across years?
Many seem to have the misconception that covid is risky for children, while they are at low risk, so I highlight that the child covid death numbers from covid was low and comparable to a normal flu season like the one in 2019.
That would make Covid hundreds of times deadlier for children than the flu. If it were a regular flu season without the mitigations that dropped flu deaths to 1, Covid would have killed even more children.
The FDA advisory panel unanimously approved the vaccine for kids. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-advisory-pane...
You are also misinterpreting what the term comorbidities means when you say that 75% of Covid deaths weren't due to Covid. Having those comorbidities means that you're more likely to die from Covid. By your logic, 75% of flu deaths aren't from flu every year, not just 2020-2021, leaving Covid still hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu, which leaves them lucky to have had mitigations that contained flu and Covid deaths to such a degree.
The new test knows the difference between flu and covid, which is why the CDC recalled the old and instituted a new that did better. However, you can’t go back in time and fix the old tests. Re-read the article to comprehend it better.
You are getting hung up in the artifact for 2020, where unlike previous years there were 1 pediatric death case categorized as flu instead of 180-400 like in the years I mentioned due to the old pcr covid test not knowing the difference. It’s not hard to do a Google search on this to see that your pediatric flu death data for 2020 is not representative when compared to a normal year.
> Did previous PCR tests confuse COVID-19 cases for influenza cases? > Not at all.
Or is it this part?
> Dr. Broadhurst says, "The PCR test is validated against many different coronaviruses and common respiratory viruses, including influenza so that it would not give false-positive results."
Maybe you're referring to this part?
> How do we know COVID-19 cases aren't actually influenza? > Every PCR test must be validated, meaning checked for its sensitivity and specificity. The Nebraska Medicine PCR test has been extensively vetted with multiple ways of validation.
> Dr. Broadhurst explains, "At the beginning of the pandemic, we went through a very rigorous process. That includes demonstrating the specificity of the test to exclude anything that may cause a false positive."
Or perhaps you mean this part?
> Researchers also looked through large databases of viral genetic sequences – the building blocks of a virus. That way, they ensured the PCR test only picked up a piece unique to SARS-CoV-2 and not another coronavirus or influenza.
I don't know how many ways your article needs to tell you you're wrong before you'll believe it, except that it's larger than four.
Once you understand that, your entire argument that Covid is less dangerous for kids than the flu falls apart. The reason there was only one flu death is due to masking, social distancing, and lockdowns. In that same setting, Covid caused hundreds of deaths.
You are incorrect on pediatric flu deaths in a normal year being around 1. See this link to the CDC [1] about the 2019-2020 season:
"total number of flu deaths in kids reported to CDC for that season to 199."
which is not around 1. 199 deaths for 1 year is not hundreds of times smaller than 400 covid deaths over 1.5 years (averaged 266 over 1 year). When will you admit you are wrong on covid being “hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu”?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2020-2021/pediatric-flu-d...
We are talking about how severe covid is for children. A comparison to a normal flu year is very relevant, because people in a normal year is not worried about the flu for children. When are you going to admit pediatric flu deaths in a normal year is around 190 and not 1?
Yes, you can lock a kid inside to avoid the flu and car accidents. But that is not a way to live and not worth the reward in mitigating a low risk.
> We could expect the number of pediatric Covid deaths to be higher still without those mitigations.
A lot of kids already had covid due to how infectious it is. How much more severe than 400 deaths amongst 73 million US kids over 1.5 years do you claim it would be and on what grounds? 20 or 20k more deaths?
Your proposed policy of vaccinating kids severely increase young kids risk for severe conditions such as heart issues including stroke and long term risks are unknown. How do you know the reward outweigh the risk of vaccinating kids that are at low risk for covid?
People in a normal year vaccinate children against the flu.
> When are you going to admit pediatric flu deaths in a normal year is around 190 and not 1?
When are you going to understand that I never disputed that, and none of my arguments are affected by that? My point was that Covid is so bad for children that even with severe mitigations in place (so severe that only one child died of flu), it outkilled the flu in a normal year without those mitigations.
> Yes, you can lock a kid inside to avoid the flu and car accidents.
That's a silly idea. We could vaccinate kids instead, and that's what is going on.
> Your proposed policy of vaccinating kids severely increase young kids risk for severe conditions such as heart issues including stroke and long term risks are unknown.
Viruses, including the one that causes Covid, are an even greater risk of heart disease, including a more severe form called MIS-C that has resulted in amputations.
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/viruses-are-the-most-common-...
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/covid-19-child-ra...
> long term risks are unknown
They are well-known because any long term effects will be observed at most days after the vaccination or infection. There is no mechanism by which a change can take place in the body that does nothing until years later. What has been observed is that the effects observed within a week show that long term effects will be far worse for the disease than the vaccine.
> How do you know the reward outweigh the risk of vaccinating kids that are at low risk for covid?
Just as you were wrong about the PCR test article, you were wrong about the FDA advisory panel, which concluded unanimously that vaccinating kids is better than letting them contract Covid.
The FDA panel approved the childhood vaxx after skipping the FDA Science Advisory panel.
Again, you are not spotting that the FDA circumvent the standard convening of the expert advisory board when the FDA advisory board approved it, see my original link [3] and the non-paywalled [4]. This is after the science advisory panel denied approval in September.
This is corrupt and unscientific.
> Just as you were wrong about the PCR test article,
You are incorrect judging by the source. Quote from the original CDC policy source I remembered [1] instead of the secondary link I clearly didn't read well enough:
"After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel ... CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses."
Basically after December 31, 2021, the CDC will withdraw the emergency use authorization of the PCR test for COVID-19 testing. If I read this correctly the CDC said the old tests are no longer authorized because the do not differentiate well between the flu and COVID virus.
It doesn't matter much to my argument since 400 pediatric deaths over 1.5 years is already very low, and as I said I am fine with just counting the all as covid deaths.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert... [2] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/01/05/cdc-do... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/dangerous-push-to-give-boosters... [4] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/01/05/cdc-do...
> If I read this correctly the CDC said
You did not read this correctly, and the original link you posted explained why.
> It doesn't matter much to my argument since 400 pediatric deaths over 1.5 years is already very low,
This would be low if it happened without mitigations (or the first half year of that being before the disease had spread to most of America). It happened when mitigations severe enough to reduce flu deaths a hundredfold were in place. Do you not understand that?
Pediatrics covers teens.
You clearly value a political process higher than the scientific method when you don’t distrust a vaccine approval entity that cut scientific advisory committees, cut required steps from the process, ignore extremely elevated myocarditis cases amongst boys etc
In what seem politically instead of scientifically motivated you invent hypothesis such as “ Viruses, including the one that causes Covid, are an even greater risk of heart disease, including a more severe form called MIS-C that has resulted in amputations.” which the best science indicate is wrong for covid.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...
You are both severely overestimating how much myocarditis covid gives and underestimating how irregular the vaxx myocarditis numbers are. These seem designed to fit your motivated reasoning that the mitigations worked as desired.
> This would be low if it happened without mitigations (or the first half year of that being before the disease had spread to most of America). It happened when mitigations severe enough to reduce flu deaths a hundredfold were in place. Do you not understand that?
According to this nature article by end of 2020 1/3 of all Americans had covid, so you are severely overestimating the effectiveness of the mitigations.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03914-4
You said "Covid still hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu", so that means you claim we should expect 20k+ deaths without mitigations.
Again, we had 400 pediatric deaths amongst the unvaccinated 73 million US kids over 1.5 years.
Where do you get your excess mitigated pediatric deaths from in a population when 1/3 already had the virus by end of 2020, way before mid 2021 that the 400 deaths cover?
If by "Covid still hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu" the parent means "flu as the one officially detected in 2020 instead of the around 200 that is normal" it's disingenuous as you need to compare to normal flu death numbers of time (we seem to be going back to normal official flu numbers). Unmitigated covid had pediatric deaths at the level of the normal flu, and the heuristic here is that people are not worried about the flu for healthy kids.
If by "Covid still hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu" the parent means relative to the normal flu, around 200, (s)he is claiming at least 20k+ deaths are mitigated despite us only seeing 400 pediatric covid deaths over 1.5 years after already by the end of 2020 1/3 of the american population had covid. The parent may be threading this needle by severely underestimating how many had covid.
This kind of thinking is used to argue for it being a-ok that the FDA blatantly break vaccine approval process standards because of a pediatric severity that is manufactured. And this is for vaccines we know will be mandated or taken without informed consent, vaccines that have known to ruin lives or kill otherwise healthy children while it doesn't even work well for omicron.
Maybe the parent is caught up in the mass transformation? A lot of otherwise smart people has been scared into this state.
Sometimes I ask myself if the FDA and CDC credibility died with covid, or because of covid. Likewise with my fellow acadmics that has failed to defend the scientific method and instead defend "Science" administrative institutional processes even after obvious corruption that make them unscientific.
To make matters worse administrative institutional representatives often obviously misrepresent the core document, contributing to misinformation for political aims and profit. E.g. making it seem like approved vaxx is injected while approval doc reissue Emergency Use Authorization that has a liability shield and only EUA vaxx is injected (see FDA approval page 3 [1]).
People that defend health and science organizations that break the scientific method as well as best practices, all while having revolving doors with those they regulate, are enablers. It's like living in a house infected with termites with people that ignore the signs. Without you guys defending them in forums like this their bullshit would be much harder to pull off, and we could have nice things such as a healthy scientific discourse and probably many fewer covid deaths.
Many like myself will pry science back out of "Science" hands, because it's annoying to get political answers to scientific questions.
Quote from the scientist in [1] showing you are wrong on long term effects: "One of the worst medical disasters was diethylstilbestrol (DES) which was commonly prescribed as an anti-miscarriage medication in the 1940s. It was recalled 30 years later after it was connected to a rare tumor that appeared in the next generation of daughters of women who had taken it. "
Reproductive damage would also only show up once the kids grow up and try to have kids. Cancers other than the one in the quote also take a while to develop.
The scientists that wrote [1] are concerned about long term adverse effects as well as the short term we know: Larry Kwak, MD, PhD was named to the TIME100 for his work in cancer vaccines and is a former advisor to FDA; Steven Rosen, MD is Dir of a US NCI-designated Comp Cancer Center - he dev monoclonal Ab & drugs for cancer; Idit Shachar, PhD served as a dept chair
> What has been observed is that the effects observed within a week show that long term effects will be far worse for the disease than the vaccine.
The pre-print article below [2] is backed up by solid data that observes for young men, the risk of myocarditis is greater with the mRNA vaccines than from natural infection.
> When are you going to understand that I never disputed that, and none of my arguments are affected by that? My point was that Covid is so bad for children that even with severe mitigations in place (so severe that only one child died of flu), it outkilled the flu in a normal year without those mitigations.
You said "Covid still hundreds of times more lethal for children than the flu", so that means you claim we should expect 20k+ deaths without mitigations.
Again, we had 400 pediatric deaths amongst the unvaccinated 73 million US kids over 1.5 years. According to this [3] nature article by end of 2020 1/3 of all Americans had covid.
Where do you get your excess mitigated pediatric deaths from?
> That's a silly idea. We could vaccinate kids instead, and that's what is going on.
For Polio this makes sense as the reward is higher than risk, but low pediatric covid risk coupled with so much risk and uncertainty around the mRNA gene therapy vaccines makes the reward not worth it.
Plus, it seems like the vaccines are ineffective against new variants such as omicron and wears off pretty fast. Boosters have not worked for variants so far, which is especially clear in highly boosted Israel and Singapore.
Some hope further boosters will solve the vaccine effectivenes, but "European Union regulators warned that frequent Covid-19 booster shots could adversely affect the immune response and may not be feasible" [4]. So again, risk vs reward is off and part of the damage would only show up long-term (and being immuno compromised is no fun).
[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/28/applying-br... [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03914-4 [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-bo...
I saw one paper claiming the reason is that MMR vaccine gives children some protection against "severe" covid due to overlapping T-cells, but didn't check if it reproduced so wouldn't believe too much in that. (And I saw it on twitter from Dr Feigl-Ding who's an alarmist type.)
This is likely correct, but
> Omicron is much less risky than other kinds of covid.
There's some indication (though no solid proof) that the jump in child hospitalizations is due to omicron being _more_ severe in children. The proposed mechanism is that its focus on the upper respiratory system instead of the lungs makes it less severe for us and worse for young children (in line with other childhood diseases that are generally taken somewhat seriously).
Most likely they’ll get the disease, completely recover and move on.
If you believe prior cases of COVID don’t affect your survival rate in subsequent cases, and that there will be an infinite number of similarly deadly successive variants, then you conclude that most unvaccinated people will eventually get the variant that kills them.
I think this makes three large assumptions:
1. That natural infection doesn't result in durable immunity. This appears to be, unquestionably, not true [1].
2. Those that are unvaccinated will not get a natural infection. This is exceedingly unlikely, assuming they're living normal lives.
3. Vaccines will be constantly updated. This appears to be true, with a large time delay (see omicron vaccine being worked on now).
I agree that "kill one another off" was a bit hyperbolic, but it was past the edit window before I noticed that it was being genuinely misunderstood. All I meant was what would seem to be happening: People exposing one another to a communicable disease with a death rate of X. I was arguably using the wrong terminology for the magnitude of X.
Whether a death rate of X is acceptable or not may depend on social acceptance of the cause, the visibility of the cause (plane crashes always make the news, suicides don't) social class, etc. This is evident in the use of analogies within this sub thread, as a way of trying to make sense of the issue.
With natural immunity [1], the death rate will not be constant [2].
1. https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
The unvaxxed won't be killing off each other at a rate much (if any) higher then the vaxed and this is clear as day right now. Numbers.
What is it about this disease that is causing otherwise intelligent people to step into this reality of alternate (and untrue) facts? Even US supreme court justices.
I don't mean this as an attack, it's just I don't get it.
> Preliminary state data suggest that more than 90 percent of today’s deaths are still among unvaccinated people.
Source they provided: https://dshs.texas.gov/immunize/covid19/data/vaccination-sta...
From the numbers, it seems fairly clear that this virus is much more likely to cause death amongst the unvaccinated - unless I'm misinterpreting.
Given that fully vaxxed places are blowing up in case numbers, the vax obviously isn't stopping transmission much if at all right now.
Many more people are vaxxed then not right now. So if you are unvaxed and infected on a trip to the store who most likely gave it to you? A vaxxed person or an unvaxxed person?
"Unvaxxed killing each other off" is a hysterical take and inaccurate.
This is one of those "obvious" things that mathematically isn't obvious at all.
Any slope of a line could be steeper or shallower, so looking at that alone obviously can't tell you if the slope is 1% shallower than it could be, 5%, 10%, 50%... it's not like we hit "100% of the population has had covid now" overnight.
According to NatGeo "mass die off" is 90% of the population. I'd be alarmed at 6% die off in humans and not even be posting on the topic, but we are at less then 1%. For the unvaxxed.
"Killing each other off" just doesn't fit here.
Some countries reported more all-cause deaths for 2020.
Some states/countries sent Covid-infected patients into nursing homes, which did not help.
UK numbers show that only 1% of Covid-recovered people are reinfected, which is why the EU pass equated recovery with vaccination (which does not prevent infection or transmission).
It would be more accurate if US hospital data was separated into:
Fully vax
Partly vax
Unvax + Covid-recovered
Unvax + Covid-naiveWhere I live, in California, there has been a months-long-and-holding-steady trend that vaccinated people have much lower cases per capita and much, MUCH lower deaths per capita. Total cases went up when we relaxed restrictions which coincided with when vaccines were widespread. That's not the same as vaccinations causing those higher total case numbers! Now total case numbers are going up again due to seasonal factors + omicron having a lot of mutations; it's too early to say just yet exactly how the vax/unvax per-capita numbers will look for this wave when it's over. As of Dec 26, it was tracking pretty similarly, though[0]... it seems to blow up that dude's case: many fewer vaccination doses are being given now than during the last big waves!
EDIT: here are the money bits that I would need to see really compelling evidence to believe are coincidental/misinterpreted/etc:
* From December 20, 2021 to December 26, 2021, unvaccinated people were 3.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
* From December 13, 2021 to December 19, 2021, unvaccinated people were 10.1 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
* From December 6, 2021 to December 12, 2021, unvaccinated people were 16.6 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
Transmission, severity, and death, all. And that's after the omicron variant reached the state, especially for transmission, though admittedly before it has peaked (it possibly hasn't even peaked yet, still).
Bicyclist probably get way more injuries per mile than motorcyclists. It's risky!
Dedicated, fully separated paths with no conflict points have very low fatality rates. Also, even in risky areas there is a net positive effect on mortality.
Cyclists have to figure out safety by guesswork. One thing that's reasonably certain is that cars cause the majority of cycling injuries (not counting mountain biking, which I'm not equipped for). I have a rule of thumb, which is that if a car can crash into another car, or into stationary objects such as buildings, then it can crash into a cyclist. So I look at where car crashes occur: Mostly on higher speed, congested roads, and especially at intersections. My first safety rule is route choice, and I avoid routes with a lot of car traffic. I rarely encounter cars on my commute to work.
From what I can tell, Europe has more regulations and fewer lawsuits.
We do place limits on risking death in our society. I don't know if it can be based on objective criteria. We don't let people drive cars without seat belts, or attend school without certain vaccinations. Widespread exposure to a disease of the nature of COVID, under a flood of misinformation, had exactly zero advocates two years ago.
I don't have an answer, and was deliberately being a bit vague about whether I'm at peace with it or not. I'm willing to leave it at being on the fence.
Why?
If someone in the US continues to reject vaccination, I don't know what to do about it at this point. But there's big populations that haven't been vaccinated because they haven't had a chance. It's crucial to give them that chance.
2. Because the quicker and more widely covid spreads the more chance it has to evolve new variants, and those variants will spread worldwide. So everyone has an interest in slowing it down everywhere in order to protect themselves against potential future variants.
This tautology doesn’t inform me of anything.
Are you this unempathic and selfish in real life?
> Are you this unempathic and selfish in real life?
I do as little as possible for people who do not do for me.
& for those who want to go “buhh we don’t know how duh vaccine will effect their developmental growth either” - I don’t have much to say to you other than I wish you had an education…
My main point is that everyone just seems to have moved on from under 5s. We've adopted a stance of "vaxxed and done" for adults and older children and paid no attention to the vax trials for under 5s taking forever. It's barely even mentioned. So we have parents across the country relying on the generosity of their employer in handling shutdowns, illnesses and so on. I'm lucky, my employer has been flexible and understanding. But I know that's not the case for a lot of people.