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Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's still good news, but an injected vaccine may not lead to sterilizing immunity - i.e. vaccinated persons might still be able to transmit the disease:

> Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protected from severe disease, but could still be infected, experience mild symptoms and occasionally pass small quantities of the germ onto others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-...

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Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.

Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.

Because it's substantially more deadly than the flu. (That's not counting the survivors who suffer permanent organ damage.) Please update your facts before posting in public on this topic again. I suggest sources other than Fox News.

If you're about repost right-wing canards about how it's less deadly for children, please review salient facts about infectious diseases, such as the fact that they are infectious. The goal of vaccinating younger people is to protect those whom they might infect.

> That's not counting the survivors who suffer permanent organ damage.

That's extremely rare, if it happens at all.

> The goal of vaccinating younger people is to protect those whom they might infect.

You want to subject children to a medical procedure that they won't even benefit from?

Articles like this: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201026/COVID-19-now-like... make me think that's seriously unlikely. I mean unless, you are talking about one of the historical flu pandemics. Yes, this is less deadly then the 1918 flu was in 1918. Then again, I think the 1918 flu would also be less deadly then it was in 1918 if it occurred for the first time today because of other medical advancements.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Less than 80 people under age age of 15 have died from COVID. Child deaths from COVID are essentially zero.

In the same timeframe about 110 died from influenza. Immunizing children for influenza also seems unnecessary.

For the same reason I'd vaccinate a child against the flu, surely [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/diseases/flu.html

There's never been any belief among the scientific community that any of the vaccine candidates would provide sterilizing immunity. That was just a pipe dream.

It seems that COVID-19 is often passed at superspreading events. If the vaccine could nevertheless prevent people from superspreading then it might still have a substantial effect.

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