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Were thousands of the children for whom the FDA issued emergency use authorizations for COVID vaccines dying from COVID every day?

gcanyon 2y ago
Okay so you’re going with even given the circumstances. That means you need to provide cites for how, at the time and given the information they had, their decision making was flawed. Meaning, to your exact point, cite how they should have known at the time that the overall cost/benefit analysis for vaccinating children was negative.
- cempaka 2y ago
  The only trials that they ran, in very small numbers of around a few thousand children, did not even attempt to demonstrate a clinical benefit to children, because SARS-CoV-2 was already such a mild illness for them it would have been impossible to discern one. So they simply measured an increase in "antibody levels" and called it a day. I think risk-benefit calls should be pretty easy to make when "no discernable benefit" is what's been put on the table. And yes, it was obviously a mistake at the time to issue an "emergency use authorization" for use of the vaccines in people for whom COVID was not even remotely an emergency.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    You're not considering: - the risk of transmission by children to others. You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish. But we shouldn't have that debate since you didn't bother to bring it up in the first place. - the potential unknown long-term effects of covid on children who otherwise recovered. But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur? Or put simply: are you substituting your judgement for that of medical researchers based on a full and clear understanding of the facts, which you simply interpret differently? Or are you speculating based on an armchair understanding of the situation?
    - cempaka 2y ago
      > You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish. Then you would demonstrate that your sense of morality is quite warped indeed. I would argue that no one is obligated to undergo a potentially hazardous medical procedure in order to mitigate potential threat to others, but this is especially the case with COVID, where we are talking about a disease that was primarily a threat to elderly people who had lived a long life already. Also, I'm not sure why you would bring up effects on transmission when it was clear by the time of the pediatric EUAs that the vaccines had almost none. I'm also not sure why you bring up "long-term unknown effects of COVID" when the vaccines did not prevent infection, so there was no benefit to be had there. > But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur? This is a deeply unscientific process you are describing, fraught with exactly the sorts of biases and guesswork that objective and repeatable processes are meant to eliminate. With regard to the question "how many children were killed by the vaccine?" I would say it's completely impossible to know because the plain institutional imperatives of the FDA and medical community were to assiduously avoid acknowledging any such events. I would reference VAERS, but every time I do I'm told that's not a reliable system, and there's no other operational pharmacovigilance system I'm aware of, so we seem to just not have one at all. But the anecdotes from numerous people who experience severe AEs in close proximity to COVID vaccination, and experienced tremendous difficulty getting doctors to consider the link, and saw no follow-up from the FDA to their reports, does not give me confidence we have any real handle on such numbers at all.

gcanyon 2y ago

Okay so you’re going with even given the circumstances. That means you need to provide cites for how, at the time and given the information they had, their decision making was flawed. Meaning, to your exact point, cite how they should have known at the time that the overall cost/benefit analysis for vaccinating children was negative.

cempaka 2y ago
The only trials that they ran, in very small numbers of around a few thousand children, did not even attempt to demonstrate a clinical benefit to children, because SARS-CoV-2 was already such a mild illness for them it would have been impossible to discern one. So they simply measured an increase in "antibody levels" and called it a day. I think risk-benefit calls should be pretty easy to make when "no discernable benefit" is what's been put on the table. And yes, it was obviously a mistake at the time to issue an "emergency use authorization" for use of the vaccines in people for whom COVID was not even remotely an emergency.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  You're not considering: - the risk of transmission by children to others. You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish. But we shouldn't have that debate since you didn't bother to bring it up in the first place. - the potential unknown long-term effects of covid on children who otherwise recovered. But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur? Or put simply: are you substituting your judgement for that of medical researchers based on a full and clear understanding of the facts, which you simply interpret differently? Or are you speculating based on an armchair understanding of the situation?
  - cempaka 2y ago
    > You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish. Then you would demonstrate that your sense of morality is quite warped indeed. I would argue that no one is obligated to undergo a potentially hazardous medical procedure in order to mitigate potential threat to others, but this is especially the case with COVID, where we are talking about a disease that was primarily a threat to elderly people who had lived a long life already. Also, I'm not sure why you would bring up effects on transmission when it was clear by the time of the pediatric EUAs that the vaccines had almost none. I'm also not sure why you bring up "long-term unknown effects of COVID" when the vaccines did not prevent infection, so there was no benefit to be had there. > But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur? This is a deeply unscientific process you are describing, fraught with exactly the sorts of biases and guesswork that objective and repeatable processes are meant to eliminate. With regard to the question "how many children were killed by the vaccine?" I would say it's completely impossible to know because the plain institutional imperatives of the FDA and medical community were to assiduously avoid acknowledging any such events. I would reference VAERS, but every time I do I'm told that's not a reliable system, and there's no other operational pharmacovigilance system I'm aware of, so we seem to just not have one at all. But the anecdotes from numerous people who experience severe AEs in close proximity to COVID vaccination, and experienced tremendous difficulty getting doctors to consider the link, and saw no follow-up from the FDA to their reports, does not give me confidence we have any real handle on such numbers at all.