You might want to reevaluate your definition of low risk thanks to the delta variant.
My wife is a pediatric ER doctor (because the adult ER is swamped they're now seeing all patients up to 25), during the first few waves of COVID, she saw almost no severe cases in children and young adults. There were plenty of kids who came in with COVID, but she didn't admit a single otherwise healthy kid or young adult because of COVID.
In the last week, she's admitted 3 17 year olds to the PICU, and they've admitted many more than that to the floor for treatment.
>It's stories like this --gov't makes out of court settlements and vaccine retracted-- that give a lot of credibility to those against/ hesitant towards vaccination.
We have now administered billions of doses of MRNA vaccines. The safety profiles are more well known than a large percentage of drugs on the market that most people would take without a moment's hesitation.
Historically vaccines have been taken off the market b/c of issues that were too uncommon to show up in trials, which consist of only a few thousand or tens of thousands of people. The side effects were so rare that they only showed up once millions of people started taking them.
There has never been a vaccine that was pulled off the market for a side effect that took a year to show up.
Not zero, but so incredibly low as not to be matter for concern in terms of risk assessment. One of the few upsides of this pandemic is that young children are the least affected, and with vaccines available for ages 5 and up this risk is well mitigated for older children (teens in particular).
I have heard of this too, but never looked into it.
So I just looked into it. I found a couple of news articles [0][1]. [2] says:
> Kids remain, as they have been throughout the pandemic, at much lower risk of getting seriously sick with the coronavirus, especially compared with unvaccinated adults. But the recent rash of illnesses among the nation’s youngest is a sobering reminder of the COVID-19 adage that lower risk is not no risk. With so many children unable to access vaccines and their health contingent on those around them, parents and guardians must now navigate the reality that Delta represents a more serious danger to everyone—which means it’s a more serious danger to kids as well.
Well yeah, the problem with Delta is that it's so infectious that the tiny fraction of kids that face real risk is still a huge number as an absolute value.
While I agree that it seems children are very low risk you have to remember they are partly lower because of the precautions taken(lockdowns, mandates, vaccines, masks, fear, etc). We don't know the "normal" death rate for Covid just yet.
While I would have made the point differently than the GP—your children are not at serious risk from COVID because of their age. (They are at some risk—life involves risk—but it’s low.)
The people seriously at risk from COVID are unvaccinated adults.
Pushed reply too soon. Children are at low risk, but not no risk. To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation. That is not productive.
Let’s get the kids vaccinated. It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.
It's not an unreasonable opinion where small children with no comorbidities are concerned. Extremely low risk from COVID; tiny but not non-existent risk from the vaccine. It's a different matter when you're in your early 70s though.
I think a major reason the FDA is dragging their heels is because children under 12 are not at serious risk from COVID in the first place, so the risk vs reward calculous is very different.
Which is subsequently why I'm not particularly worried. Yes, the stories of the children who are in the hospital are heartbreaking, but they're the outliers.
Edit: Actually, I just realized something... now that the Pfizer vaccine is fully FDA approved, parents should be able to find a pediatrician who will administer the vaccine off-label, if they want their kids to have it badly enough...
The problem I see is that it is applied to everyone. Children have an extremely low risk profile and the potential side effects might surpass a covid infection by some magnitudes.
very common fallacy: absolute vs relative risk. kids have a miniscule risk of dying from covid (0.01%?) therefore reducing this already very very small risk isn't doing much at all. Of course kids do not require an experimental vaccine for a not at all very lethal viral infection.
The risk to children from COVID-19 is much lower than most of those other things you listed. It's basically just a cold for children who don't have serious co-morbid conditions.
The risk to 5–11 year olds of the mRNA Covid vaccines is ~0, orders of magnitude lower than the (still very low compared to older adults) risk of Covid. These are incredibly safe vaccines. Out of ~9 million vaccinations, there have been ~100 "serious" adverse effects reported, most of those fever or vomiting but also e.g. 5 experiencing new-onset seizures and 11 with (recovered or recovering) myocarditis. 2 girls (5 and 6) with "complicated medical histories" in "fragile health" died after vaccination, and their deaths are being investigated but are not believed to be caused by the vaccine https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm705152a1.htm?s_cid=...
> The studies did not evaluate rates of less-severe illness or debilitating ‘long COVID’ symptoms that can linger months after the acute phase of the infection has past. “The low rate of severe acute disease is important news, but this does not have to mean that COVID does not matter to children,” says paediatrician Danilo Buonsenso at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome. “Please, let’s keep attention — as much as is feasible — on immunization.”
Death is not the only bad outcome to be avoided.
> The reason the vaccines aren't being approved for children is that there is compelling evidence that children are at greater risk from the vaccines than the virus.
A Nature article [0] says:
> Most of those affected have recovered, and the data suggest that the risk of these conditions is “extremely low”, says paediatrician David Pace at the University of Malta in Msida — about 67 cases per million second doses in adolescent males aged 12–17, and 9 per million in adolescent females in the same age group.
There are ~48 million kids under 12 in the US. Assuming they are evenly split between male and female, that would mean 1,824 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis if 100% of them were vaccinated. Given that nowhere near 100% of children have been exposed to COVID and yet 340 have died, I don't see clear evidence here that the vaccine is more risky than not being vaccinated.
The risk to young children is low. But not having symptoms or being low death rate doesn't mean shit.
Kids require adults to take care of them. That means those kids who may have the infection could VERY easily spread it to higher risk people.
They aren't immune, they still get the virus, they can still spread it. That is not immune. They just don't show symptoms like older people. That's not an immunity.
On top of that we don't know the long term effects of this thing. While kids may not show symptoms what long term effects might this have on kids? There's still a huge risk there.
Young people were at extremely low risk from covid. It is entirely possible that the vaccine killed more people than it saved under a certain age. It is not certain but it is plausible as the covid deaths for young people were so low.
I wasn't actually talking about children, however, while they themselves are not at elevated risk from COVID, children are little filth monsters who spread disease to everyone around them. The risk is they pass it on, and we are talking about aggregate population risk.
Nothing is risk-free, and demanding 80 years of data to know a vaccine has absolutely no long-term results when vaccine risk profiles are pretty well understood is not a reasonable ask.
My wife is a pediatric ER doctor (because the adult ER is swamped they're now seeing all patients up to 25), during the first few waves of COVID, she saw almost no severe cases in children and young adults. There were plenty of kids who came in with COVID, but she didn't admit a single otherwise healthy kid or young adult because of COVID.
In the last week, she's admitted 3 17 year olds to the PICU, and they've admitted many more than that to the floor for treatment.
>It's stories like this --gov't makes out of court settlements and vaccine retracted-- that give a lot of credibility to those against/ hesitant towards vaccination.
We have now administered billions of doses of MRNA vaccines. The safety profiles are more well known than a large percentage of drugs on the market that most people would take without a moment's hesitation.
Historically vaccines have been taken off the market b/c of issues that were too uncommon to show up in trials, which consist of only a few thousand or tens of thousands of people. The side effects were so rare that they only showed up once millions of people started taking them.
There has never been a vaccine that was pulled off the market for a side effect that took a year to show up.
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