7 ms·

> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Serology is a t

> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy. > Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.

unanswered 5y ago
The vaccine is 100% safe and if you believe otherwise you're probably listening to too many racists.
Izkata 5y ago
I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-risk-vaccines-covid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-ris... https://archive.is/ixG5G https://archive.is/ixG5G
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Woah, that's super intense. Wow. I think i will still vaccinate my 12 year old boy because he wants to get the shot and these numbers are still low, but yeah, now i want more info. Thank you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    Regardless of where we end up with respect to vaccination of children for COVID-19, I hope we can all agree that the child's opinion is irrelevant, given that they are not equipped to make an informed decision.
    - ogma 5y ago
      Strongly disagree.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      Neither can we expect an average adult to be able to make an informed decision on a topic like this. But if he really wants it, and the shot is optional, why do you believe that should be irrelevant to my decision?
    - Zpalmtree 5y ago
      The child's opinion certainly isn't irrelevant, especially if they are a child with special needs who can find the process of getting a vaccine very traumatic.
- VintageCool 5y ago
  That one study found a 1 in 5000 risk. The background here is that hospitalization from covid increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers transmitting the virus to others.
- weaksauce 5y ago
  > Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised[sic] from Covid-19 there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to getting long covid and also to bring it home and potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks suddenly don't matter.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    The vaccines only reduce risk of long COVID symptoms by about 50% on average: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
    - weaksauce 5y ago
      only?
- ufo 5y ago
  That is a misleading headline. Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization, so it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization As are the vast majority of COVID cases in young boys and girls.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      If you want to say COVID and myocarditis are equally bad, you should compare the rates of both of them. You are saying myocarditis (often mild) should be compared to COVID (but only the cases that require hospitalization.) By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that won.)
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      So wouldn't the correct comparison be comparing hospitalizations due to CAE to hospitalizations due to covid?
      - ufo 5y ago
        Another important thing to ask is the risk of myocarditis due to covid, vs the risk of myocarditis due to the vaccine.
- Jenk 5y ago
  Non-paywalled article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... Link to (as yet not peer-reviewed) study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
- n8henrie 5y ago
  > Researchers found that the risk of heart complications for boys aged 12-15 following the vaccine was 162.2 per million, which was the highest out of all the groups they looked at. > Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7 per million. This means the risk they face from heart complications is 6.1 times higher than that of hospitalisation. It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of hospitalization due to myo/pericarditis to hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each condition. The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Unfortunate regardless.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    > The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Do we want to see it? I've just found out about the this boy, who died in April: https://twitter.com/rgvrunner01 https://twitter.com/rgvrunner01 How did I find out about it? It's trending on Twitter because the father was on Alex Jones. I've looked at the VAERS reports of 16-year-old males that died in 2021. There are four cases (one suicide), none match this one. While it's likely that the boy died due to a pre-existing condition, his case should still show up on VAERS (even suicides are included). The takeaway is that if you hear about something like this, it's not mainstream media. Nobody wants to "harm" the vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, suppressing such cases further erodes trust in media/authorities, which has the opposite of the intended effect. Also, VAERS data appears to be incomplete, rendering risk estimates unreliable.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself: That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis. This is the conclusion from the study: > Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence. Full text: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v... ) They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. If anything, this would make the vaccines look even worse.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of transient issues that didn't require hospitalization. Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively quickly. Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too. They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't try to compare against that.
- tylermenezes 5y ago
  In addition to being somewhat misleading as other commenters hawe pointed out, the first author of this non-peer-reviewed study appears to have a degree in the questionably relevant field of sports medicine.
wpietri 5y ago
> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Serology is a thing, sure. But two points: Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious. Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore less likely to do it. In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost) everybody.
- mattparcens 5y ago
  Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value. The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large. And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.
EGreg 5y ago
Do some people simply photoshop their names onto the cards and show them on their phones ? Is it really such a dumb system?
- steelframe 5y ago
  You probably don't even need to photoshop your name on the card. In most scenarios you could take a small and slightly blurry photo of anyone's card, bring it up on your phone to show someone, and they'll shrug and accept it as evidence that you're vaccinated.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    They usually ask for your ID to match the info on the card I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards — then you simply stand in line behind someone and see whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually inspecting. If the latter — you are good to go
- tshaddox 5y ago
  That doesn't strike me as particularly dumb. It's pretty easy to print out a fake driver's license (or use someone else's) that's going to work fine getting into most bars, and the risks of getting into legal trouble for attempting to use a fake ID to buy alcohol are probably pretty similar to the risks of using a fake vaccine card, and yet most people don't argue that that system is a dumb way to enforce the drinking age (ignoring whether the drinking age itself is a reasonable policy).
shockeychap 5y ago
For decades, we gave young children aspirin, before eventually connecting it to Reye syndrome. Indeed, children are not just small adults.
weaksauce 5y ago
there was a fitness instructor in colorado that didn't get the vaccine because he had tested and had antibodies in his blood. then he got covid again(or maybe the first time?) and it just absolutely decimated his body. he lost 70 lbs and is walking around with an oxygen bottle. the only real way to make sure you have proper antibodies and B and T cell responses is to have either gotten a symptomatic case of covid that lasted a while or getting the vaccine.(yes that's also not foolproof wrt antibodies/t/b response but it's a generally good method)
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Bill Phillips, author of Body For Life and founder of EAS supplements before selling it to Abbott. https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.htm... (Unvaccinated fitness guru gets COVID and spends 47 days intubated. ‘I made a mistake’) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author)
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    yeah that guy is the one I was talking about. The virus is like playing russian roulette without a vaccine in you.
    - q-big 5y ago
      > The virus is like playing russian roulette without a vaccine in you. Some people love to gamble. There exist people who are risk averse, risk neutral, or risk loving (in an economic or psychologic sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion
      - munk-a 5y ago
        That's cool - you can also love playing Russian Roulette itself - that doesn't mean we have to make it legal for you to actually do that. If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is preventing you from getting your jollies from being an idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.
summerlight 5y ago
> Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy. One critical difference is that there will be legal consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.
- djrogers 5y ago
  That makes absolutely no sense, why would the same penalties not apply for lying about natural immunity?
  - summerlight 5y ago
    Because we don't have a good legal definition of "natural immunity"? Compared to that, vaccination status is official record which is subject to forgery law and its effectiveness has been well studied against most COVID variants. Note that it is pretty tricky to define natural immunity in a legal way since there is no good scientific consensus on the correlation between some proxy of natural immunity (e.g. antibody level) and its effectiveness against infection/transmission.
jeromegv 5y ago
Yep, crazy that this is the top comment when clearly we already know that none of the studies for kids are completed. Is it likely to be safe? Yes. But we still need to go through the proper process to ensure confidence in the vaccine.
GuB-42 5y ago
> We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children. True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable. If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there would be no reason for vaccinating kids.

unanswered 5y ago

The vaccine is 100% safe and if you believe otherwise you're probably listening to too many racists.

Izkata 5y ago

I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-risk-vaccines-covid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-ris... https://archive.is/ixG5G https://archive.is/ixG5G

dr_dshiv 5y ago
Woah, that's super intense. Wow. I think i will still vaccinate my 12 year old boy because he wants to get the shot and these numbers are still low, but yeah, now i want more info. Thank you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Regardless of where we end up with respect to vaccination of children for COVID-19, I hope we can all agree that the child's opinion is irrelevant, given that they are not equipped to make an informed decision.
  - ogma 5y ago
    Strongly disagree.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Neither can we expect an average adult to be able to make an informed decision on a topic like this. But if he really wants it, and the shot is optional, why do you believe that should be irrelevant to my decision?
  - Zpalmtree 5y ago
    The child's opinion certainly isn't irrelevant, especially if they are a child with special needs who can find the process of getting a vaccine very traumatic.
VintageCool 5y ago
That one study found a 1 in 5000 risk. The background here is that hospitalization from covid increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers transmitting the virus to others.
weaksauce 5y ago
> Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised[sic] from Covid-19 there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to getting long covid and also to bring it home and potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks suddenly don't matter.
- incrudible 5y ago
  The vaccines only reduce risk of long COVID symptoms by about 50% on average: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    only?
ufo 5y ago
That is a misleading headline. Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization, so it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization As are the vast majority of COVID cases in young boys and girls.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    If you want to say COVID and myocarditis are equally bad, you should compare the rates of both of them. You are saying myocarditis (often mild) should be compared to COVID (but only the cases that require hospitalization.) By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that won.)
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    So wouldn't the correct comparison be comparing hospitalizations due to CAE to hospitalizations due to covid?
    - ufo 5y ago
      Another important thing to ask is the risk of myocarditis due to covid, vs the risk of myocarditis due to the vaccine.
Jenk 5y ago
Non-paywalled article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... Link to (as yet not peer-reviewed) study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
n8henrie 5y ago
> Researchers found that the risk of heart complications for boys aged 12-15 following the vaccine was 162.2 per million, which was the highest out of all the groups they looked at. > Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7 per million. This means the risk they face from heart complications is 6.1 times higher than that of hospitalisation. It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of hospitalization due to myo/pericarditis to hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each condition. The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Unfortunate regardless.
- incrudible 5y ago
  > The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Do we want to see it? I've just found out about the this boy, who died in April: https://twitter.com/rgvrunner01 https://twitter.com/rgvrunner01 How did I find out about it? It's trending on Twitter because the father was on Alex Jones. I've looked at the VAERS reports of 16-year-old males that died in 2021. There are four cases (one suicide), none match this one. While it's likely that the boy died due to a pre-existing condition, his case should still show up on VAERS (even suicides are included). The takeaway is that if you hear about something like this, it's not mainstream media. Nobody wants to "harm" the vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, suppressing such cases further erodes trust in media/authorities, which has the opposite of the intended effect. Also, VAERS data appears to be incomplete, rendering risk estimates unreliable.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself: That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis. This is the conclusion from the study: > Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence. Full text: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v... ) They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.
- incrudible 5y ago
  It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. If anything, this would make the vaccines look even worse.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of transient issues that didn't require hospitalization. Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively quickly. Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too. They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't try to compare against that.
tylermenezes 5y ago
In addition to being somewhat misleading as other commenters hawe pointed out, the first author of this non-peer-reviewed study appears to have a degree in the questionably relevant field of sports medicine.

wpietri 5y ago

> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Serology is a thing, sure. But two points: Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious. Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore less likely to do it. In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost) everybody.

mattparcens 5y ago
Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value. The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large. And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.

EGreg 5y ago

Do some people simply photoshop their names onto the cards and show them on their phones ? Is it really such a dumb system?

steelframe 5y ago
You probably don't even need to photoshop your name on the card. In most scenarios you could take a small and slightly blurry photo of anyone's card, bring it up on your phone to show someone, and they'll shrug and accept it as evidence that you're vaccinated.
- EGreg 5y ago
  They usually ask for your ID to match the info on the card I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards — then you simply stand in line behind someone and see whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually inspecting. If the latter — you are good to go
tshaddox 5y ago
That doesn't strike me as particularly dumb. It's pretty easy to print out a fake driver's license (or use someone else's) that's going to work fine getting into most bars, and the risks of getting into legal trouble for attempting to use a fake ID to buy alcohol are probably pretty similar to the risks of using a fake vaccine card, and yet most people don't argue that that system is a dumb way to enforce the drinking age (ignoring whether the drinking age itself is a reasonable policy).

shockeychap 5y ago

For decades, we gave young children aspirin, before eventually connecting it to Reye syndrome. Indeed, children are not just small adults.

weaksauce 5y ago

there was a fitness instructor in colorado that didn't get the vaccine because he had tested and had antibodies in his blood. then he got covid again(or maybe the first time?) and it just absolutely decimated his body. he lost 70 lbs and is walking around with an oxygen bottle. the only real way to make sure you have proper antibodies and B and T cell responses is to have either gotten a symptomatic case of covid that lasted a while or getting the vaccine.(yes that's also not foolproof wrt antibodies/t/b response but it's a generally good method)

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Bill Phillips, author of Body For Life and founder of EAS supplements before selling it to Abbott. https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.htm... (Unvaccinated fitness guru gets COVID and spends 47 days intubated. ‘I made a mistake’) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author)
- weaksauce 5y ago
  yeah that guy is the one I was talking about. The virus is like playing russian roulette without a vaccine in you.
  - q-big 5y ago
    > The virus is like playing russian roulette without a vaccine in you. Some people love to gamble. There exist people who are risk averse, risk neutral, or risk loving (in an economic or psychologic sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion
    - munk-a 5y ago
      That's cool - you can also love playing Russian Roulette itself - that doesn't mean we have to make it legal for you to actually do that. If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is preventing you from getting your jollies from being an idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.

summerlight 5y ago

> Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy. One critical difference is that there will be legal consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.

djrogers 5y ago
That makes absolutely no sense, why would the same penalties not apply for lying about natural immunity?
- summerlight 5y ago
  Because we don't have a good legal definition of "natural immunity"? Compared to that, vaccination status is official record which is subject to forgery law and its effectiveness has been well studied against most COVID variants. Note that it is pretty tricky to define natural immunity in a legal way since there is no good scientific consensus on the correlation between some proxy of natural immunity (e.g. antibody level) and its effectiveness against infection/transmission.

jeromegv 5y ago

Yep, crazy that this is the top comment when clearly we already know that none of the studies for kids are completed. Is it likely to be safe? Yes. But we still need to go through the proper process to ensure confidence in the vaccine.

GuB-42 5y ago

> We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children. True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable. If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there would be no reason for vaccinating kids.