15 ms·

Heart risks, data gaps fuel debate over Covid-19 boosters for young people

58 points by Metacelsus 4y ago

hovden 4y ago
I fear we may have rushed things for younger age groups. There was little space for debate. It was an uncomfortable time, but I get the sense intellectual debate is returning.
- zug_zug 4y ago
  I think we rushed in the sense that this was a very accelerated vaccine program, but whether the rush was optimal (on a per age-group basis) will depend on what the data comes to show. It's true that most people didn't really want to debate covid then, which is par-for-the-course on political issues. I think though in our post-mortem for covid the my curiosity why we got so left/right political over an illness. I'd love to have that behind us.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  There was so little space for debate that the Biden administration attempted to force employers to mandate either the vaccine, or routine testing at the employee's expense, for most working American adults. If this move hadn't been struck down by the Supreme Court, you can bet some version of this restriction would still be in place and would be defended by many. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072165393/supreme-court-blocks-bidens-vaccine-or-test-mandate-for-large-private-companies https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072165393/supreme-court-bloc...
- random314 4y ago
  Why the hell do we think scientific research needs a so called "debate". Are we trying to become school valedictorians? What is needed is peer review, not debate. Debate is simply a euphemism for validation seeking for confirmation bias on random social forums. If there was any problem with the peer review, there is cause for complaints. Are we going to hold a debate on whether the proof of fermat's last theorem is actually correct now?
  - postsantum 4y ago
    Nah, it's not the job of science to tell people what to do. We are not going to debate the correctedness of a theorem, but we need debates to justify lockdowns because of the theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
    - random314 4y ago
      This is a discussion of vaccines, not lockdowns. The numbers are pretty damn clear.
      - postsantum 4y ago
        They advertised the clear number of zero when it comes to transmission rate between vaccinated people. Turned out, it was all lies
      - chitowneats 4y ago
        There's quite a difference between what the numbers actually say vs. what claims were made by public health bureaucrats to justify both vaccine mandates and other NPI-style restrictions.
      - tinus_hn 4y ago
        Except when you consider the adverse effects, then we couldn’t have known that!
SnaggyJoker 4y ago
What fuels the debate more than anything is how easily and quickly the goalposts move in discussion over COVID and the vaccines. The inconsistency and the blatant suppression of dissenting viewpoints does not help either.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago
  What do you mean? The goalposts were always clear, and open discussion was always acceptable.
  - dijonman2 4y ago
    Open discussion was never acceptable, even here on HN. I was quickly downvoted for saying anything against masking and vaccinations. Not even objecting, mere questions elicited this reaction.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Sometimes, heroes will lose karma points when they caution people against best practices. This is the price heroes pay.
      - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
        "Best practices", like mass vaccination of a group of people for whom the vaccine may have been more risky than the disease?
    - junofan 4y ago
      It was pretty ridiculous. Anyone who’s interacted with health policy at the national level knows it’s just a big power game. Anthony Fauci doesn’t wake up in the morning thinking “what can I do for the American people?”—he wakes up thinking “Todd from the VA was an asshole at that budget hearing. What can I do about that?”
      - Erem 4y ago
troon-lover 4y ago
nikolay 4y ago
Bureaucrats are stupid! First, they rushed to vaccinate the young (up to infants now!), which were not dying, and even after the indications that something's going wrong! Secondly, they removed all measures and let them get reinfected every 2-3 months. What a double whammy! I still wear an N95 mask and have no plans to get covid every 4+ times per year!
dom2 4y ago
> A study ... suggested it may be driven by an inflammatory response associated with SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, which the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines coax the body to produce. The group reported finding certain antibodies in both vaccine-induced myocarditis patients and patients with severe COVID-19, which itself can cause myocarditis. If those who had this reaction to the vaccine gotten COVID without the vaccine, would it not be likely that they would see the same inflammation response and the same heart damage? If that were the case, receiving the vaccine still seems like a reasonable choice.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago
  If you get the vaccine, then you definitely get the vaccine.
  - moistly 4y ago
    Is there not near-unanimous agreement that everyone is going to catch Covid at some point. Like, cave hermits are pretty much the only exception.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      My family hasn't yet, and we're far from cave hermits — we just pretty consistently do smart, reasonable things. Around 25% of children and adolescents who get COVID-19 will get long COVID, the long-term effects of which are not well understood. I have no plans to surrender to "fate" and to stop doing smart, reasonable things.
      - andrewflnr 4y ago
        We're only, what, two years in? Give it a couple more. "Doing smart, reasonable things" only reduces the odds, not put them at zero. Iterate enough times, and the cumulative odds approach 1. FWIW I predicted that would be the situation in like March 2020. This isn't some new forced narrative, at least for me.
      - Llamamoe 4y ago
ohiovr 4y ago
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
thworp 4y ago
To me the larger issue beyond any comparisons of risk profiles is the ethical question. If a government through its agencies coerces people to get a medical treatment that harms them in any way they are responsible for that harm. Even if vaccinations are unquestionably a net benefit to everyone, the coercion makes the whole thing a serious breach of medical ethics. "First do no harm". The "public health" (called "Volksgesundheit" ca. 1935) crowd of course have no such ethics and their goals often have conflicting aims with medicine. They gladly trade a few individuals' well-being for a greater good. Usually the diseases are so bad that this sort of approach is at least understandable (see damage from the first few iterations of polio or smallpox vaccines). But with covid they have completely lost many people. If they had just refrained from coercion (as with flu vaccines) everything would be just fine.
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Mandatory vaccination has been in place for a long time, and nobody complained - not least because they understood it was for their own benefit, if not for the greater good. The question arises, why was Covid vaccination such a problem for a significant vocal minority? You mention 'do no harm', but I really don't think that is the root of it.
  - ohiovr 4y ago
    Because you can't introduce new technology without testing. Most people just took the vaccine on faith. In fact I'd say the faith in the vaccine was higher than any faith I have seen in my life.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      Even religious fundamentalists have a core understanding that they frequently have serious doubts, and that it's okay if it takes time to get back to full faith.
  - joemazerino 4y ago
    Some serious false equivalence here. Mandatory vaccination for deadly diseases like measles and the mumps. COVID is not deadly for the young.
tb_technical 4y ago
For people in this thread confused at the pushback you're receiving in light of all this evidence. No matter how right you were to be skeptical, they will never stop calling you names for not doing as they say.

58 points by Metacelsus 4y ago

I fear we may have rushed things for younger age groups. There was little space for debate. It was an uncomfortable time, but I get the sense intellectual debate is returning.

zug_zug 4y ago
I think we rushed in the sense that this was a very accelerated vaccine program, but whether the rush was optimal (on a per age-group basis) will depend on what the data comes to show. It's true that most people didn't really want to debate covid then, which is par-for-the-course on political issues. I think though in our post-mortem for covid the my curiosity why we got so left/right political over an illness. I'd love to have that behind us.
chitowneats 4y ago
There was so little space for debate that the Biden administration attempted to force employers to mandate either the vaccine, or routine testing at the employee's expense, for most working American adults. If this move hadn't been struck down by the Supreme Court, you can bet some version of this restriction would still be in place and would be defended by many. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072165393/supreme-court-blocks-bidens-vaccine-or-test-mandate-for-large-private-companies https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072165393/supreme-court-bloc...
random314 4y ago
Why the hell do we think scientific research needs a so called "debate". Are we trying to become school valedictorians? What is needed is peer review, not debate. Debate is simply a euphemism for validation seeking for confirmation bias on random social forums. If there was any problem with the peer review, there is cause for complaints. Are we going to hold a debate on whether the proof of fermat's last theorem is actually correct now?
- postsantum 4y ago
  Nah, it's not the job of science to tell people what to do. We are not going to debate the correctedness of a theorem, but we need debates to justify lockdowns because of the theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
  - random314 4y ago
    This is a discussion of vaccines, not lockdowns. The numbers are pretty damn clear.
    - postsantum 4y ago
      They advertised the clear number of zero when it comes to transmission rate between vaccinated people. Turned out, it was all lies
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      There's quite a difference between what the numbers actually say vs. what claims were made by public health bureaucrats to justify both vaccine mandates and other NPI-style restrictions.
    - tinus_hn 4y ago
      Except when you consider the adverse effects, then we couldn’t have known that!

SnaggyJoker 4y ago

What fuels the debate more than anything is how easily and quickly the goalposts move in discussion over COVID and the vaccines. The inconsistency and the blatant suppression of dissenting viewpoints does not help either.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago
What do you mean? The goalposts were always clear, and open discussion was always acceptable.
- dijonman2 4y ago
  Open discussion was never acceptable, even here on HN. I was quickly downvoted for saying anything against masking and vaccinations. Not even objecting, mere questions elicited this reaction.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Sometimes, heroes will lose karma points when they caution people against best practices. This is the price heroes pay.
    - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
      "Best practices", like mass vaccination of a group of people for whom the vaccine may have been more risky than the disease?
  - junofan 4y ago
    It was pretty ridiculous. Anyone who’s interacted with health policy at the national level knows it’s just a big power game. Anthony Fauci doesn’t wake up in the morning thinking “what can I do for the American people?”—he wakes up thinking “Todd from the VA was an asshole at that budget hearing. What can I do about that?”
    - Erem 4y ago

troon-lover 4y ago

nikolay 4y ago

Bureaucrats are stupid! First, they rushed to vaccinate the young (up to infants now!), which were not dying, and even after the indications that something's going wrong! Secondly, they removed all measures and let them get reinfected every 2-3 months. What a double whammy! I still wear an N95 mask and have no plans to get covid every 4+ times per year!

dom2 4y ago

> A study ... suggested it may be driven by an inflammatory response associated with SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, which the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines coax the body to produce. The group reported finding certain antibodies in both vaccine-induced myocarditis patients and patients with severe COVID-19, which itself can cause myocarditis. If those who had this reaction to the vaccine gotten COVID without the vaccine, would it not be likely that they would see the same inflammation response and the same heart damage? If that were the case, receiving the vaccine still seems like a reasonable choice.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago
If you get the vaccine, then you definitely get the vaccine.
- moistly 4y ago
  Is there not near-unanimous agreement that everyone is going to catch Covid at some point. Like, cave hermits are pretty much the only exception.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    My family hasn't yet, and we're far from cave hermits — we just pretty consistently do smart, reasonable things. Around 25% of children and adolescents who get COVID-19 will get long COVID, the long-term effects of which are not well understood. I have no plans to surrender to "fate" and to stop doing smart, reasonable things.
    - andrewflnr 4y ago
      We're only, what, two years in? Give it a couple more. "Doing smart, reasonable things" only reduces the odds, not put them at zero. Iterate enough times, and the cumulative odds approach 1. FWIW I predicted that would be the situation in like March 2020. This isn't some new forced narrative, at least for me.
    - Llamamoe 4y ago

ohiovr 4y ago

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

thworp 4y ago

To me the larger issue beyond any comparisons of risk profiles is the ethical question. If a government through its agencies coerces people to get a medical treatment that harms them in any way they are responsible for that harm. Even if vaccinations are unquestionably a net benefit to everyone, the coercion makes the whole thing a serious breach of medical ethics. "First do no harm". The "public health" (called "Volksgesundheit" ca. 1935) crowd of course have no such ethics and their goals often have conflicting aims with medicine. They gladly trade a few individuals' well-being for a greater good. Usually the diseases are so bad that this sort of approach is at least understandable (see damage from the first few iterations of polio or smallpox vaccines). But with covid they have completely lost many people. If they had just refrained from coercion (as with flu vaccines) everything would be just fine.

somewhereoutth 4y ago
Mandatory vaccination has been in place for a long time, and nobody complained - not least because they understood it was for their own benefit, if not for the greater good. The question arises, why was Covid vaccination such a problem for a significant vocal minority? You mention 'do no harm', but I really don't think that is the root of it.
- ohiovr 4y ago
  Because you can't introduce new technology without testing. Most people just took the vaccine on faith. In fact I'd say the faith in the vaccine was higher than any faith I have seen in my life.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Even religious fundamentalists have a core understanding that they frequently have serious doubts, and that it's okay if it takes time to get back to full faith.
- joemazerino 4y ago
  Some serious false equivalence here. Mandatory vaccination for deadly diseases like measles and the mumps. COVID is not deadly for the young.

tb_technical 4y ago

For people in this thread confused at the pushback you're receiving in light of all this evidence. No matter how right you were to be skeptical, they will never stop calling you names for not doing as they say.