Also at this point EVERYONE is going to be infected by COVID. It's a highly contagious respiratory virus that's not only carried by humans, but animals too. This fantasy that all we have to do is vaccinate everyone and we will be alright really needs to die.

Vaccines are still shown to reduce risk of hospitalization and death even with omicron. So, if everyone is going to get it, wouldn't you rather be more protected when you get it?

The risk of hospitalization for children is virtually zero. The risk of hospitalization for healthy people under 50 is miniscule.

Risk of hospitalization for children aged < 5 years with Omicron is quite a bit higher than previous variants. Take a look at the CDC data, compare age groups this year vs. one year earlier.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitali...

This trend exists because children are being tested for COVID after being admitted to the hospital for entirely unrelated issues (broken bones, etc). They're in the hospital _with_ COVID, not in the hospital _because_ of COVID.

I hear people say that, but is there research backing it up? I'm a bit dubious because inevitability is a common fall-back position in public affairs, similar to climate change deniers saying that climate change is inevitable so we just have to learn to adjust. They still get what they want, and try to create despair in their opponents.

It's gone endemic, the inevitability is on par with the common cold; you're almost certainly going to get exposed to some variant of it.

Plus AIUI Omicron has demonstrated recombinant replication, which means we're playing a flu-like cat and mouse game with the vaccines. Nobody in their right mind would argue we have any hope of effectively vaccinating everyone against influenza.

Repeating it isn't evidence or even an argument that it's true. Is there evidence? Research?

Pardon me for assuming HN readers are capable of basic keyword searches:

https://virological.org/t/omicron-is-a-multiply-recombinant-...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787944

Would you like me to wipe your ass next as well?

> Tell this mom that the infinitesimal chance that her child would have from COID side affects was worth it for the problems she is now facing

That's an awful way to analyze risk.

If you have a one in a million risk of something, and you trade it for a different but nearly-identical one in a million risk for the same thing, and then get the bad outcome, you did not make the wrong choice. Let alone if you traded for a lower risk.

Every step you take, you trade out trillions of potential futures. You are always, always creating new risks and destroying old risks. A decision like getting vaccinated is easy to point at and say "oh I shouldn't have done it" but you could just as realistically say "if I hadn't eaten tuna seven weeks ago these problems wouldn't have happened".

You do not get to compare the outcome of a specific case, only knowable in hindsight, with the "infinitesimal risk" of the alternative.

The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own. This is proven false and the true risk is still uncertain. Officials are only recently acknowledging for example that vaccines can influence monthly cycles - that was just a cooky conspiracy a few months ago.

Data collection regarding adverse events was laughably inadequate based on testimony over Pfizer's clinical trial protocol, and their data is still not available for review by anyone other than the FDA, which is known to suffer from regulatory capture. Rosy claims about the vaccines have been repeatedly walked back...the safety of these vaccines is likely overstated.

> The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own.

That's a good point, but it's not the point being made when someone links to a side effect report and implies it was wrong to get vaccinated, as if vaccines need to meet an impossible 0-side-effect standard.

Yes, that's one end of the cost benefit analysis and on the other end the 6,400 cases of MIS-C in children who got covid in the US.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surve...