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Data shows that being vaccinated divides your odds of dying and being hospitalized from covid by about 10. There's no evidence I'm aware of showing that the va

Data shows that being vaccinated divides your odds of dying and being hospitalized from covid by about 10. There's no evidence I'm aware of showing that the vaccines create additional risk anywhere close to outweighing that benefit.

gfodor 5y ago
There is. Because kids (basically) don’t die from COVID. The side effect risk, while small, is material in a risk calculation for them, since their entire risk from the disease is small. At a minimum, mandating it for kids (as is openly stated to be the plan in CA) is unethical.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  Can you point me in the direction of studies comparing side effect risks for young children against COVID-19 risks for children? Presumably there's such a thing that you're basing your opinion on. I would find that useful, given that I have an 8 y/o who is now vaccine-eligible and her mother and I are discussing.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    There is one in the Pfizer application for FDA authorization in 5-11 age group, see Table 14, page 34. It is not a direct study, it's an extrapolation based on antigen titers in a 2000 kid 2 months clinical trial, but it's the only one I am aware of. https://www.fda.gov/media/153447/download https://www.fda.gov/media/153447/download
  - gfodor 5y ago
    CDC admits that there has been severe cardiac damage to young people from the mRNA vaccines. This leads to an obvious series of questions: just how dangerous is COVID for children? What mechanism is causing this heart damage? Could heart damage be happening without diagnosis, and manifest later? In a year, will we be able to fix this problem with the vaccines, or have protocols to prevent it? Are the vaccines more likely to cause permanent damage in children, than COVID, as opposed to temporary health problems? Are the non-mRNA vaccines completely de-risked from the proposition from causing permanent harm to children? Will CDC guidance in a year guide parents away from mRNA vaccines and towards different ones? Is there a correlating variable we will discover so we know which specific population of children would get heart damage from this? Etc. https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1306689138612203520 https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1306689138612203520 More recent paper I found: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056135 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.0... More questions: given this known to manifest in younger people, could it imply that age is inversely correlated with frequency? Will young children be less likely to report or articulate symptoms, even if they have increased risk? Given it seems sex coupled, is there an underlying variable correlated with sex that is a root cause we will soon understand, resulting in a vast risk reduction for parents who will be able to know if their children apply? People claiming you can know if vaccination is a good idea or not for your kids have primitive mental models: the choice isn't to vaccinate or not vaccinate, but vaccinate now or (maybe) vaccinate later. When something is risk laden on both sides and is a dynamic system, the smart choice may be to wait if the marginal de-risking per unit time is high. My personal view is that wrt children taking mRNA vaccines, there's basically close to free "money on the table" - wait a few months. If you've avoided COVID until now, its pretty unlikely your kids will catch it, nevermind be unlucky enough to get a severe case, which is extremely unlikely. On the other hand, it could turn out in a few months we identify the root cause of the heart issues of the vaccines, or alternative vaccines become available that de-risk it entirely. In any case, personal views aside, it's incredibly immoral to mandate this for schools, and it wouldn't surprise me if CA does this before we fully understand what is going on.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      The abstract from your linked paper seems to indicate the risk is minimal. >According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, myocarditis/pericarditis rates are ≈12.6 cases per million doses of second-dose mRNA vaccine among individuals 12 to 39 years of age That's a 0.0013% chance of getting something that "almost all" patients had resolution of with or without treatment: >Almost all patients had resolution of symptoms and signs and improvement in diagnostic markers and imaging with or without treatment. Despite rare cases of myocarditis, the benefit-risk assessment for COVID-19 vaccination shows a favorable balance for all age and sex groups; therefore, COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for everyone ≥12 years of age.
    - jjuel 5y ago
      So that link you sent says there is 12.6 instances per million doses. So that is 0.00126% chance of happening. This article from March mentions around 22 per 100,000 chance from getting COVID. Much larger incidence rate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988375/ Now obviously might not be the same age ranges or such, but I do know last year the Big-10 almost cancelled it's football season due to myocarditis risk from COVID so clearly it has been an issue for a while. Might need to weigh that in the decision you make for your children. Too many people look for one side and use that to prove their point otherwise know as confirmation bias. I would study the incidence of both sides of this before making the decision. Although my children are less than 5 so they can't get it yet anyway.
      - gfodor 5y ago
        Here's the problem with those stats. First, if this has a mechanism which is damaging heart tissue, the diagnosed cases may just be the ones which are manifesting severely enough to the point of getting to through the entire funnel of a diagnosis. The actual blast radius may be much larger, and only result in problems later in life. Especially for children whose hearts are developing, it is extremely risky to administer a drug which we know has the capacity to damage heart muscle and we do not yet understand why and have a handle on the expected distribution of that damage across the whole population. Second, the stat you mention on COVID is misleading, because a) it is a broad age group, my concern is primarily in the very young, many of whom are now being vaccinated in the US, and b) it is conditional on a positive COVID test. Many, many young children are contracting COVID and not developing symptoms or are not getting severe enough infections to get through the funnel of being determined to be a positive case. So the incidence rate you mention is effectively a meaningless number if you account for these two elements. Based on our current understanding, it could very well turn out that the data we have now is consistent with a situation where eg, the vaccine administered to 5-6 year olds is in fact damaging their hearts with a sizable % liklihood, and their risk of having such kinds of permanent damage to their bodies from COVID (across the entire funnel, beginning at a non-infection) is much lower. I'm not sure of the liklihood of this reality, but it's not zero. We just don't know yet.
- Latty 5y ago
  This argument makes no sense. Even if we completely ignore that some children do in fact die (being rare doesn't stop it being terrible when it happens and worth avoiding), and that even if they don't, suffering while ill is bad: when we are talking about risks of completely unknown side effects, the side effect risk of the vaccine is obviously lower than the side effect risk of COVID itself. The vaccine is relatively simple thing specifically designed to do one task. While there is always a chance there is something we didn't understand or see coming, the chance of a virus, a hugely complex and mutating thing with broad and varied effects, having some long-term side-effect is far, far higher.
  - mattbuilds 5y ago
    It's obvious to you because you are following a logical train of thought. These antivax people always do the same nonsense argument. It goes, COVID has risks and vaccines have risks, therefore it's impossible to know which is worse. It's literally the dril drunk driving tweet[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en
    - gfodor 5y ago
      I'm not anti-vax, the logical train of thought you are incapable of yourself is based on the very factual reality that COVID presents highly variable risk to people based on their age. This, in combination with the known risks of the vaccine, in combination with the extremely early stage of wide-scale deployment of the vaccine in children, in combination with Hippocratic principles, in combination with risk-adjusted thinking, leads to the conclusions that no, it is not completely obvious if a parent should make an appointment for their 5 year old to get a medicine EUA authorized a week ago. Besides, if you're so smart, and it's so obvious, why do you think you're smart enough to state that Sweden, a modern country, is objectively wrong for banning mRNA vaccines for children? In any case, my primary point was that it should be up to parents if they give their kids this vaccine, and when. Not the government mandating it.
      - abakker 5y ago
- consp 5y ago
  Considering they then become the primary host and spreader to all others there definitely is ethics involved in giving it to them.
refurb 5y ago
Don’t mistake relative risk for absolute risk. Not everyone who is vaccinated gets Covid, but everyone vaccinated is at risk of vaccine side effects. If a 30 year old has a 0.08% chance of hospitalization, the risk drops to 0.008%. But they might stand a 1 in 5 chance of getting infected so now it’s 0.016% to 0.0016%. But if they get injected with a vaccine, the risk of a rare side effect might be 1 in 100,000 or 0.001% which is pretty similar to Covid. It’s the same analysis the UK did that caused them to recommend against the AZ vaccine for certain age groups.
- allturtles 5y ago
  In the long run, everyone will get Covid (though many may be asymptomatic). It's not going away.
- morsch 5y ago
  I think 1 in 5 is very optimistic. Unless you intend to remove yourself from society, you are very likely to catch Sars-Cov-2 in the upcoming years. Probably more than once. It's endemic and easily transmittable.
- nradov 5y ago
  Your numbers are way off. The CDC estimated the hospitalization rate in the 18-49 age group at 3%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
  - refurb 5y ago
    Dying, not hospitalization.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Nope. Look at the data again. The risk of dying from an infection in the 18-49 age group is 0.06%. The risk of hospitalization from an infection in that age group is 3%; you claimed 0.08% which is wrong by two orders of magnitude.

gfodor 5y ago

There is. Because kids (basically) don’t die from COVID. The side effect risk, while small, is material in a risk calculation for them, since their entire risk from the disease is small. At a minimum, mandating it for kids (as is openly stated to be the plan in CA) is unethical.

EvanAnderson 5y ago
Can you point me in the direction of studies comparing side effect risks for young children against COVID-19 risks for children? Presumably there's such a thing that you're basing your opinion on. I would find that useful, given that I have an 8 y/o who is now vaccine-eligible and her mother and I are discussing.
- angelzen 5y ago
  There is one in the Pfizer application for FDA authorization in 5-11 age group, see Table 14, page 34. It is not a direct study, it's an extrapolation based on antigen titers in a 2000 kid 2 months clinical trial, but it's the only one I am aware of. https://www.fda.gov/media/153447/download https://www.fda.gov/media/153447/download
- gfodor 5y ago
  CDC admits that there has been severe cardiac damage to young people from the mRNA vaccines. This leads to an obvious series of questions: just how dangerous is COVID for children? What mechanism is causing this heart damage? Could heart damage be happening without diagnosis, and manifest later? In a year, will we be able to fix this problem with the vaccines, or have protocols to prevent it? Are the vaccines more likely to cause permanent damage in children, than COVID, as opposed to temporary health problems? Are the non-mRNA vaccines completely de-risked from the proposition from causing permanent harm to children? Will CDC guidance in a year guide parents away from mRNA vaccines and towards different ones? Is there a correlating variable we will discover so we know which specific population of children would get heart damage from this? Etc. https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1306689138612203520 https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1306689138612203520 More recent paper I found: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056135 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.0... More questions: given this known to manifest in younger people, could it imply that age is inversely correlated with frequency? Will young children be less likely to report or articulate symptoms, even if they have increased risk? Given it seems sex coupled, is there an underlying variable correlated with sex that is a root cause we will soon understand, resulting in a vast risk reduction for parents who will be able to know if their children apply? People claiming you can know if vaccination is a good idea or not for your kids have primitive mental models: the choice isn't to vaccinate or not vaccinate, but vaccinate now or (maybe) vaccinate later. When something is risk laden on both sides and is a dynamic system, the smart choice may be to wait if the marginal de-risking per unit time is high. My personal view is that wrt children taking mRNA vaccines, there's basically close to free "money on the table" - wait a few months. If you've avoided COVID until now, its pretty unlikely your kids will catch it, nevermind be unlucky enough to get a severe case, which is extremely unlikely. On the other hand, it could turn out in a few months we identify the root cause of the heart issues of the vaccines, or alternative vaccines become available that de-risk it entirely. In any case, personal views aside, it's incredibly immoral to mandate this for schools, and it wouldn't surprise me if CA does this before we fully understand what is going on.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    The abstract from your linked paper seems to indicate the risk is minimal. >According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, myocarditis/pericarditis rates are ≈12.6 cases per million doses of second-dose mRNA vaccine among individuals 12 to 39 years of age That's a 0.0013% chance of getting something that "almost all" patients had resolution of with or without treatment: >Almost all patients had resolution of symptoms and signs and improvement in diagnostic markers and imaging with or without treatment. Despite rare cases of myocarditis, the benefit-risk assessment for COVID-19 vaccination shows a favorable balance for all age and sex groups; therefore, COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for everyone ≥12 years of age.
  - jjuel 5y ago
    So that link you sent says there is 12.6 instances per million doses. So that is 0.00126% chance of happening. This article from March mentions around 22 per 100,000 chance from getting COVID. Much larger incidence rate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988375/ Now obviously might not be the same age ranges or such, but I do know last year the Big-10 almost cancelled it's football season due to myocarditis risk from COVID so clearly it has been an issue for a while. Might need to weigh that in the decision you make for your children. Too many people look for one side and use that to prove their point otherwise know as confirmation bias. I would study the incidence of both sides of this before making the decision. Although my children are less than 5 so they can't get it yet anyway.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      Here's the problem with those stats. First, if this has a mechanism which is damaging heart tissue, the diagnosed cases may just be the ones which are manifesting severely enough to the point of getting to through the entire funnel of a diagnosis. The actual blast radius may be much larger, and only result in problems later in life. Especially for children whose hearts are developing, it is extremely risky to administer a drug which we know has the capacity to damage heart muscle and we do not yet understand why and have a handle on the expected distribution of that damage across the whole population. Second, the stat you mention on COVID is misleading, because a) it is a broad age group, my concern is primarily in the very young, many of whom are now being vaccinated in the US, and b) it is conditional on a positive COVID test. Many, many young children are contracting COVID and not developing symptoms or are not getting severe enough infections to get through the funnel of being determined to be a positive case. So the incidence rate you mention is effectively a meaningless number if you account for these two elements. Based on our current understanding, it could very well turn out that the data we have now is consistent with a situation where eg, the vaccine administered to 5-6 year olds is in fact damaging their hearts with a sizable % liklihood, and their risk of having such kinds of permanent damage to their bodies from COVID (across the entire funnel, beginning at a non-infection) is much lower. I'm not sure of the liklihood of this reality, but it's not zero. We just don't know yet.
Latty 5y ago
This argument makes no sense. Even if we completely ignore that some children do in fact die (being rare doesn't stop it being terrible when it happens and worth avoiding), and that even if they don't, suffering while ill is bad: when we are talking about risks of completely unknown side effects, the side effect risk of the vaccine is obviously lower than the side effect risk of COVID itself. The vaccine is relatively simple thing specifically designed to do one task. While there is always a chance there is something we didn't understand or see coming, the chance of a virus, a hugely complex and mutating thing with broad and varied effects, having some long-term side-effect is far, far higher.
- mattbuilds 5y ago
  It's obvious to you because you are following a logical train of thought. These antivax people always do the same nonsense argument. It goes, COVID has risks and vaccines have risks, therefore it's impossible to know which is worse. It's literally the dril drunk driving tweet[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en
  - gfodor 5y ago
    I'm not anti-vax, the logical train of thought you are incapable of yourself is based on the very factual reality that COVID presents highly variable risk to people based on their age. This, in combination with the known risks of the vaccine, in combination with the extremely early stage of wide-scale deployment of the vaccine in children, in combination with Hippocratic principles, in combination with risk-adjusted thinking, leads to the conclusions that no, it is not completely obvious if a parent should make an appointment for their 5 year old to get a medicine EUA authorized a week ago. Besides, if you're so smart, and it's so obvious, why do you think you're smart enough to state that Sweden, a modern country, is objectively wrong for banning mRNA vaccines for children? In any case, my primary point was that it should be up to parents if they give their kids this vaccine, and when. Not the government mandating it.
    - abakker 5y ago
consp 5y ago
Considering they then become the primary host and spreader to all others there definitely is ethics involved in giving it to them.

refurb 5y ago

Don’t mistake relative risk for absolute risk. Not everyone who is vaccinated gets Covid, but everyone vaccinated is at risk of vaccine side effects. If a 30 year old has a 0.08% chance of hospitalization, the risk drops to 0.008%. But they might stand a 1 in 5 chance of getting infected so now it’s 0.016% to 0.0016%. But if they get injected with a vaccine, the risk of a rare side effect might be 1 in 100,000 or 0.001% which is pretty similar to Covid. It’s the same analysis the UK did that caused them to recommend against the AZ vaccine for certain age groups.

allturtles 5y ago
In the long run, everyone will get Covid (though many may be asymptomatic). It's not going away.
morsch 5y ago
I think 1 in 5 is very optimistic. Unless you intend to remove yourself from society, you are very likely to catch Sars-Cov-2 in the upcoming years. Probably more than once. It's endemic and easily transmittable.
nradov 5y ago
Your numbers are way off. The CDC estimated the hospitalization rate in the 18-49 age group at 3%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
- refurb 5y ago
  Dying, not hospitalization.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Nope. Look at the data again. The risk of dying from an infection in the 18-49 age group is 0.06%. The risk of hospitalization from an infection in that age group is 3%; you claimed 0.08% which is wrong by two orders of magnitude.