Hacker News Reader

Comment by Guthur | Hacker News Reader

For me it's a simple risk proposition, how much at risk do I feel my children or I are from covid. For my children it's a slam dunk; their risk from covid is statistical non existent and weigh that against vaccines that may or may not have long term negative impact on them.

View on HN

For me, it's not quite so simple as that. I will vaccinate my children, partly to protect them (though the risk to them is low, as you say), but mostly to protect me and my wife, and more importantly our elderly parents. None of the vaccines are 100% effective, and if I can reduce the chances of my kids bringing Covid into the family, I will.

By the time the vaccine is available for my kids, hundreds of millions of people will have already been vaccinated, and there will be very extensive safety data. Part of the requirements for emergency use authorization is extensive monitoring of safety, so if there's any problem with one particular vaccine, it will be known by then.

The timescale is still so short, "very extensive" it will not be compared to previous vaccines tested over many years, a decade.

This issue seems to solve itself. When the risk is higher/more unknown in the early stage, groups that have high/known risk with Covid can take the vaccine. As time passes, more and more data will be gathered on the vaccine risk so the group that can make the correct statistical call to take the vaccine grows. Whether healthy children will take it in 1, 2, 5 or 10 years deepends on what the statistics turn out to be and whether it's required to protect others.

Just to be clear, you have no solid evidence on the long term negative impact on children for either the virus or the vaccine. We have no long term data on anything related to this disease.

But for the deadly virus you interpret the lack sufficient evidence on children as no risk, for the vaccine as as a sign of risk. How do you justify that inconsistency?

>But for the deadly virus you interpret the lack sufficient evidence on children as no risk, for the vaccine as as a sign of risk. How do you justify that inconsistency?

Not the person you're replying to, but looking at similar viruses, there's basically never been a flu-like virus that has no short-term symptoms but serious long-term symptoms, however there have been rushed vaccines that had serious long-term symptoms.

From my perception it’s not that easy. Recently there have been research papers released that estimate long term effects also with children comparable to young adults. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they are right and that we know that COVID-19 has significant long-term risks for children. How do you outweigh that against the uncertainty of risk of the vaccine?

>> estimate long term effects also with children comparable to young adults

So, like nil then? I still can’t find anything beyond dramatized anecdotes to suggest any special danger beyond what is commensurate with the symptoms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com