5 ms·

Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Children Aged 5–11 Years – US, Nov 3–Dec 19, 2021

24 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

timintheglades 5y ago
- progfix 5y ago
  People like you forget: * Vaccination are meant to prevent the spread of the virus * we don't know anything about long term effects of an Covid infection * Covid could mutate into a super deadly virus if it stays around
  - unmole 5y ago
    > * Covid could mutate into a super deadly virus if it stays around If the virus mutates so drastically as to become super deadly to children, how likely is it that current vaccines will make a difference?
    - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
      They might not make a difference. The point is to stop it spreading now, so it hopefully never gets a chance to mutate into something much much worse.
    - smorgusofborg 5y ago
      That sounds like a calculation by poetic metaphors. There's always been a concern that mutations that cause greater virulence could shift death to younger people via a metabolism paradox like swine flu seemed to have. Death sounding drastic doesn't mean a more drastic genetic difference than the mutations so far.
  - guilhas 5y ago
    People forget: * Vaccines don't prevent the spread of the virus * We don't know anything about the long term effects of the vaccine * Covid could mutate into a super mild virus. In line with the science, and the current mutation trajectory
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  You know, if you really must insult me, at least write „moron“ correctly.
- Arnt 5y ago
  You can wait for thirty years. This will also give you time to learn about long-term effects of the disease. Read this, for example, and then think about what you think is most risky in the long term, the virus or the vaccines: https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2021/covid-19-cognitive-impact.asp https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2021/covid-19-cognitive-im...
- rsfern 5y ago
  Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? I’ve never encountered any credible hypotheses, whereas we have plenty of preliminary evidence and proposed mechanisms for long term health effects arising from Covid. The vaccines have held up very well at reducing risk of severe Covid, and it’s becoming clear that with appropriate dosing the side effect profile is lower than the risk from infection, even if that risk is relatively low for some demographics. Also, consider the early reports from South Africa and New York that omicron is resulting in more severe disease in children.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Original antigenic sin could be considered a side effect of getting immunized. Whether it ends up being helpful or harmful won't be known until we've moved our way through multiple waves of different variants (i.e. months years). The die is cast but the result unknown.
    - rsfern 5y ago
      Yeah, that is interesting. It does look like a large fraction of the population is going to get omicron regardless of vaccination. I’m not sure what the implications of a breakthrough infection are for this scenario, but I would imagine it would have a mitigating effect
      - peteradio 5y ago
        Here is something interesting with regard to the flu vaccine and the apparent impacts of vaccines year after year: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-adds-more-data-effects-consecutive-year-flu-shots https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-ad... I don't get the impression this is anything earth imploding but its like come'on man, mandates?
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
    > Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? The whole goal of a vaccine is to induce a long term effect (a change in your immune system). Should we just assume it can only have desireable long term effects? If some treatment caused (for example) a tiny cancer to form internally, and only be diagnosable years later, what are the odds that we would ever understand the connection (let alone in the first couple years of that treatments use)? And that's for something obvious like cancer. What about weird new ailments, like strange allergies, or anything mental health related? This is why I've never been able to buy the argument that "no vaccines cause long term adverse effects". I can buy that we've never succeeded at linking the two, but that doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies. Other than that, do things only go wrong in ways that we can predict? How many of us have seen our own (or our colleagues) code changes lead to unexpected results that we would only understand after the fact? Even in codebases that we wrote ourselves, let alone in an enormous legacy codebase. My own prediction is that most things that do go wrong weren't something that we envisioned happening beforehand, otherwise we wouldn't have done them in the first place. Of course there are high profile counterexamples of this, but I would expect them to be the exception. I don't have the same faith in the speed of our collective knowledge building abilities that some people do. We accomplish amazing things eventually, but the road there is strewn with the wreckage of prior attempts. This isn't to say I think people shouldn't get vaccinated, just that they should beware of hubris in attempting to force everyone else to.
- moeris 5y ago
  > an experimental vaccine The technology for this vaccine is over 20 years old. Just because it's the first authorized one of its kind doesn't make it "experimental" > with no long term studies There are also no long term studies on the effects of COVID. There are no modern vaccines that have ever had and significant long term effects that didn't manifest within the first month or so after vaccination. (Dr. Offit goes over this in an episode of Oh No! With Ross and Carrie: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/ross-and-carrie-help-vaccinate-claire-covid-19-immunity-edition/ https://maximumfun.org/episodes/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/ross-a...). > questionable efficacy In fact, we know the efficacy to be quite high. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't make it worthless. It's still the best way to prevent infection. > A lower mortality than the flu We're talking about a difference in mortality for children of around .01%. Even if true, it's an irrelevant fact. The main personal argument is to protect others in the family, including possible immunocompromised individuals. I've personally lost a mother and two grandparents during this pandemic. You really think, if given the choice between killing their grandparents (with a high likelihood) and a 1/80,000 chance of serious side effects (and no reported deaths) from a vaccine, that most people should opt not to get the vaccine? You fucking psychopath.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    > You really think, if given the choice between killing their grandparents (with a high likelihood) and a 1/80,000 chance of serious side effects (and no reported deaths) from a vaccine, that most people should opt not to get the vaccine? That is not the choice. Despite vaccination, there is a high likelyhood they will get infected, especially with Omikron. The residual risk posed to the parents and grandparents, who are expected to be vaccinated, is not mitigable by vaccination to a significant degree.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Of course it is, because those parents and grandparents can also be vaccinated unless there is a severe contraindication that would upset the risk/benefit equation.
- pcdoodle 5y ago
Supermancho 5y ago
It's interesting how science-like yt video channels like https://youtu.be/vpwSYQelMEg?t=176 https://youtu.be/vpwSYQelMEg?t=176 make the case that endocarditis is unusually high (let's say 14 of 7.14million), and saying "we don't know what the baseline is but..." when you can easily look back a few years and look up stats (took me 10 seconds): https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.005306 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.005306 where baseline is 1/50k^ Any comment to this effect is deleted/unapproved. I can only assume this is the new kind of anti-vax propaganda, to get around yt rules. ^While the instances of vaccine-related endocarditis are relatively high for the 20s to 40s male groups, for children there's nothing to suggest endocarditis is a specific side-effect, afaik.
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  That's 1 in 50k person years
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > That's 1 in 50k person years You are correct. That was helpful clarity. Maybe divide 7.14million by (50000 * 6 year average age or whatever), and you might find a statistical baseline from that? Probably a bad idea. The information is freely available from studies, was more to the point.
vasuki 5y ago
WHO: "As a matter of global equity, as long as many parts of the world are facing extreme vaccine shortages, countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage in their high-risk populations should prioritize global sharing of COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility before proceeding to vaccination of children and adolescents who are at low risk for severe disease." - https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-for-children-and-adolescents https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-o... Germany: "Since children and adolescents have a relatively low risk of getting seriously ill with COVID-19, the risk-benefit assessment of illness or vaccination is different than for adults. Therefore, the STIKO has not issued a general recommendation to vaccinate all children from the age of 12, but recommends that children and adolescents with certain underlying conditions who are particularly at risk get the coronavirus vaccination" - https://www.zusammengegencorona.de/en/corona-schutzimpfung-ab-12-jahren-welche-kinder-sich-impfen-lassen-sollten/ https://www.zusammengegencorona.de/en/corona-schutzimpfung-a... France: "In the light of these elements and taking into account the evolution of the epidemic, the HAS considers that the individual benefit of the vaccination has been established for children aged 5 to 11 years with comorbidities and who are at risk of severe forms of Covid-19 and death. In total, this concerns a little over 360,000 children in France." - https://www.has-sante.fr/jcms/p_3302411/fr/covid-19-la-has-recommande-la-vaccination-des-enfants-fragiles https://www.has-sante.fr/jcms/p_3302411/fr/covid-19-la-has-r...
guilhas 5y ago
It is funny how the VAERS data is only reliable when thought convenient Although looking at the high number of reports it is apparent that children suffer way more from the vaccine than covid. In the short term, long term is impossible to know the consequences of both
- rsfern 5y ago
  This is based on VAERS and also v-safe data, and the CDC has done some review. They don’t seem to be trying to estimate rates from this data, which is one of the more common errors made when looking at VAERS data Also, it’s a bit more than 4k reported adverse, and only 100 serious ones, for a population of 8.9 million. That’s not a large number of reports; the number of serious adverse events is less than the number of children that died of Covid in the US since the start of the pandemic. Finally, I don’t think there’s any a priori reason to think the long term effects of this vaccine will be any different than for previous vaccines.
  - bsaul 5y ago
    Previous vaccines didn’t hijack your cell to produce the antigen. Saying « there’s no reason to think » would be better phrased in a more honest way as « we have no idea, but let’s hope so, since we don’t have a choice anyway »
    - rsfern 5y ago
      Obviously we don’t know everything, and we may never know with 100% certainty, but I disagree that we have “no idea”. We have prior knowledge from established vaccines about when to expect side effects, and what kinds are likely. Most known vaccine side effects are triggered by the immune response itself in the first few weeks, and we already have solid evidence on that time scale. That doesn’t mean that novel side effects or delayed side effects are not possible, but I think without a plausible hypothesis it is reasonable to believe the risk is low, especially compared to a definite risk from infection.
      - 5y ago

24 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

progfix 5y ago
People like you forget: * Vaccination are meant to prevent the spread of the virus * we don't know anything about long term effects of an Covid infection * Covid could mutate into a super deadly virus if it stays around
- unmole 5y ago
  > * Covid could mutate into a super deadly virus if it stays around If the virus mutates so drastically as to become super deadly to children, how likely is it that current vaccines will make a difference?
  - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
    They might not make a difference. The point is to stop it spreading now, so it hopefully never gets a chance to mutate into something much much worse.
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    That sounds like a calculation by poetic metaphors. There's always been a concern that mutations that cause greater virulence could shift death to younger people via a metabolism paradox like swine flu seemed to have. Death sounding drastic doesn't mean a more drastic genetic difference than the mutations so far.
- guilhas 5y ago
  People forget: * Vaccines don't prevent the spread of the virus * We don't know anything about the long term effects of the vaccine * Covid could mutate into a super mild virus. In line with the science, and the current mutation trajectory
ManuelKiessling 5y ago
You know, if you really must insult me, at least write „moron“ correctly.
Arnt 5y ago
You can wait for thirty years. This will also give you time to learn about long-term effects of the disease. Read this, for example, and then think about what you think is most risky in the long term, the virus or the vaccines: https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2021/covid-19-cognitive-impact.asp https://www.alz.org/aaic/releases_2021/covid-19-cognitive-im...
rsfern 5y ago
Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? I’ve never encountered any credible hypotheses, whereas we have plenty of preliminary evidence and proposed mechanisms for long term health effects arising from Covid. The vaccines have held up very well at reducing risk of severe Covid, and it’s becoming clear that with appropriate dosing the side effect profile is lower than the risk from infection, even if that risk is relatively low for some demographics. Also, consider the early reports from South Africa and New York that omicron is resulting in more severe disease in children.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Original antigenic sin could be considered a side effect of getting immunized. Whether it ends up being helpful or harmful won't be known until we've moved our way through multiple waves of different variants (i.e. months years). The die is cast but the result unknown.
  - rsfern 5y ago
    Yeah, that is interesting. It does look like a large fraction of the population is going to get omicron regardless of vaccination. I’m not sure what the implications of a breakthrough infection are for this scenario, but I would imagine it would have a mitigating effect
    - peteradio 5y ago
      Here is something interesting with regard to the flu vaccine and the apparent impacts of vaccines year after year: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-adds-more-data-effects-consecutive-year-flu-shots https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-ad... I don't get the impression this is anything earth imploding but its like come'on man, mandates?
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  > Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? The whole goal of a vaccine is to induce a long term effect (a change in your immune system). Should we just assume it can only have desireable long term effects? If some treatment caused (for example) a tiny cancer to form internally, and only be diagnosable years later, what are the odds that we would ever understand the connection (let alone in the first couple years of that treatments use)? And that's for something obvious like cancer. What about weird new ailments, like strange allergies, or anything mental health related? This is why I've never been able to buy the argument that "no vaccines cause long term adverse effects". I can buy that we've never succeeded at linking the two, but that doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies. Other than that, do things only go wrong in ways that we can predict? How many of us have seen our own (or our colleagues) code changes lead to unexpected results that we would only understand after the fact? Even in codebases that we wrote ourselves, let alone in an enormous legacy codebase. My own prediction is that most things that do go wrong weren't something that we envisioned happening beforehand, otherwise we wouldn't have done them in the first place. Of course there are high profile counterexamples of this, but I would expect them to be the exception. I don't have the same faith in the speed of our collective knowledge building abilities that some people do. We accomplish amazing things eventually, but the road there is strewn with the wreckage of prior attempts. This isn't to say I think people shouldn't get vaccinated, just that they should beware of hubris in attempting to force everyone else to.
moeris 5y ago
> an experimental vaccine The technology for this vaccine is over 20 years old. Just because it's the first authorized one of its kind doesn't make it "experimental" > with no long term studies There are also no long term studies on the effects of COVID. There are no modern vaccines that have ever had and significant long term effects that didn't manifest within the first month or so after vaccination. (Dr. Offit goes over this in an episode of Oh No! With Ross and Carrie: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/ross-and-carrie-help-vaccinate-claire-covid-19-immunity-edition/ https://maximumfun.org/episodes/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/ross-a...). > questionable efficacy In fact, we know the efficacy to be quite high. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't make it worthless. It's still the best way to prevent infection. > A lower mortality than the flu We're talking about a difference in mortality for children of around .01%. Even if true, it's an irrelevant fact. The main personal argument is to protect others in the family, including possible immunocompromised individuals. I've personally lost a mother and two grandparents during this pandemic. You really think, if given the choice between killing their grandparents (with a high likelihood) and a 1/80,000 chance of serious side effects (and no reported deaths) from a vaccine, that most people should opt not to get the vaccine? You fucking psychopath.
- incrudible 5y ago
  > You really think, if given the choice between killing their grandparents (with a high likelihood) and a 1/80,000 chance of serious side effects (and no reported deaths) from a vaccine, that most people should opt not to get the vaccine? That is not the choice. Despite vaccination, there is a high likelyhood they will get infected, especially with Omikron. The residual risk posed to the parents and grandparents, who are expected to be vaccinated, is not mitigable by vaccination to a significant degree.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Of course it is, because those parents and grandparents can also be vaccinated unless there is a severe contraindication that would upset the risk/benefit equation.
pcdoodle 5y ago

It's interesting how science-like yt video channels like https://youtu.be/vpwSYQelMEg?t=176 https://youtu.be/vpwSYQelMEg?t=176 make the case that endocarditis is unusually high (let's say 14 of 7.14million), and saying "we don't know what the baseline is but..." when you can easily look back a few years and look up stats (took me 10 seconds): https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.005306 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.005306 where baseline is 1/50k^ Any comment to this effect is deleted/unapproved. I can only assume this is the new kind of anti-vax propaganda, to get around yt rules. ^While the instances of vaccine-related endocarditis are relatively high for the 20s to 40s male groups, for children there's nothing to suggest endocarditis is a specific side-effect, afaik.

0-_-0 5y ago
That's 1 in 50k person years
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > That's 1 in 50k person years You are correct. That was helpful clarity. Maybe divide 7.14million by (50000 * 6 year average age or whatever), and you might find a statistical baseline from that? Probably a bad idea. The information is freely available from studies, was more to the point.

vasuki 5y ago

WHO: "As a matter of global equity, as long as many parts of the world are facing extreme vaccine shortages, countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage in their high-risk populations should prioritize global sharing of COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility before proceeding to vaccination of children and adolescents who are at low risk for severe disease." - https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-for-children-and-adolescents https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-o... Germany: "Since children and adolescents have a relatively low risk of getting seriously ill with COVID-19, the risk-benefit assessment of illness or vaccination is different than for adults. Therefore, the STIKO has not issued a general recommendation to vaccinate all children from the age of 12, but recommends that children and adolescents with certain underlying conditions who are particularly at risk get the coronavirus vaccination" - https://www.zusammengegencorona.de/en/corona-schutzimpfung-ab-12-jahren-welche-kinder-sich-impfen-lassen-sollten/ https://www.zusammengegencorona.de/en/corona-schutzimpfung-a... France: "In the light of these elements and taking into account the evolution of the epidemic, the HAS considers that the individual benefit of the vaccination has been established for children aged 5 to 11 years with comorbidities and who are at risk of severe forms of Covid-19 and death. In total, this concerns a little over 360,000 children in France." - https://www.has-sante.fr/jcms/p_3302411/fr/covid-19-la-has-recommande-la-vaccination-des-enfants-fragiles https://www.has-sante.fr/jcms/p_3302411/fr/covid-19-la-has-r...

guilhas 5y ago

It is funny how the VAERS data is only reliable when thought convenient Although looking at the high number of reports it is apparent that children suffer way more from the vaccine than covid. In the short term, long term is impossible to know the consequences of both

rsfern 5y ago
This is based on VAERS and also v-safe data, and the CDC has done some review. They don’t seem to be trying to estimate rates from this data, which is one of the more common errors made when looking at VAERS data Also, it’s a bit more than 4k reported adverse, and only 100 serious ones, for a population of 8.9 million. That’s not a large number of reports; the number of serious adverse events is less than the number of children that died of Covid in the US since the start of the pandemic. Finally, I don’t think there’s any a priori reason to think the long term effects of this vaccine will be any different than for previous vaccines.
- bsaul 5y ago
  Previous vaccines didn’t hijack your cell to produce the antigen. Saying « there’s no reason to think » would be better phrased in a more honest way as « we have no idea, but let’s hope so, since we don’t have a choice anyway »
  - rsfern 5y ago
    Obviously we don’t know everything, and we may never know with 100% certainty, but I disagree that we have “no idea”. We have prior knowledge from established vaccines about when to expect side effects, and what kinds are likely. Most known vaccine side effects are triggered by the immune response itself in the first few weeks, and we already have solid evidence on that time scale. That doesn’t mean that novel side effects or delayed side effects are not possible, but I think without a plausible hypothesis it is reasonable to believe the risk is low, especially compared to a definite risk from infection.
    - 5y ago