Also pretty sure risk of death outweighs literally any possible long-tail risk, so still seems sensible for the young to get the vax. Also don't think the long-tail risk of an mRNA vaccine can be worse then COVID's long-tail risk.
That's not that many. Despite my wife and I getting vaccinated, I'm not completely sure what the correct answer is for our kids.
To put those numbers into perspective, more kids die from the flu in any given year (despite vaccination!). And far more kids die from car related accidents, and cars are a daily fact of life here.
I'm also interested in the other longer term effects of COVID on kids, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there about it.
You talk as if it's a clear cut answer. Given the numbers involved I don't see how it can be.
A college-enrolled 18-24 year old is 3.67x more likely to die of suicide [1][2][3].
A college-enrolled 18-24 year old is 6.08x more likely to die of alcohol [3][4].
A child (0-14 years) is 6.75x more likely to die by motor vehicles [5].
A child (0-14 years) is 3.93x more likely to die of drowning in a pool [6].
All fatalities are compared to present CDC numbers [7].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809451/
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...
[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_302.60.a...
[4] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...
[5] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
[6] https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/w...
[7] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-...
BTW the "long tail" of COVID-19 in children is totally unproven and the whole "long haulers" phenomenom is likely (a) a small part normal post-viral fatigue which we see with basically any virus, and (b) mostly psychosomatic/psychogenic illness.
So when faced with the choice of vaccine or virus, it should be a foregone conclusion.
It absolutely could, and that should be self-evident.
> Also pretty sure risk of death outweighs literally any possible long-tail risk, so still seems sensible for the young to get the vax.
This is just not true. The risk of death in children from COVID-19 is so low you literally should not ever worry about it. If you want to compare numbers in an academic sense go ahead, but the fact that actual adults are wasting valuable cognitive and emotional energy worrying about their kids is a great tragedy.
The recorded COVID-19 deaths in children are, by the way, using the absurd definition of a COVID-19 case/death that most of the western world is using; a definition where having PCR-confirmed SARS-2 infection means that ANY death is classified as a COVID death. This is not how this is supposed to work; there is supposed to be a distinction between the virus and the disease, but we define the disease as merely having the virus! It's completely absurd. Indeed I'm writing an article about this concept (pathological vs physiological) right now
Again, we are talking about introducing something that is guaranteed to be in your body anyway if you contract COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 is viral to the point where, without perpetual lockdowns/mask-wearing/vaccinations, you will get it. So it is still definitely better to get vaccinated, at least with an mRNA vaccine – please stop spreading FUD. Your concerns could be more warranted for vaccines like J&J which use modified viral vectors, but again, exceedingly unlikely that this could be any worse than the virus itself.
Wasn't that the case with J&J also, till they decided to not ignore the clots.
To open up again we need to bring the demand on healthcare services down and we need to do it sustainably, i.e. in a way which prevents another exponential spike. If we can achieve that aim without mass vaccination of healthy young people then great, of course, let's do that. But: if the only way to squash this thing and return everyone to a somewhat normal life turns out to be to keep vaccinating until we get right down to the twenty year olds, shouldn't we do so -- for their sake as much as everyone else's?
How exactly are you so confident about the long-tail risks of contracting COVID-19? Sounds like epistemic arrogance to me.
Continuous mutation of common viruses is the background risk that human beings have evolved over three billion years to withstand as a species. That is different than a completely novel man-made intervention.
In neither case is it possible to know what hidden long-term effects they could have on you. But the virus is known to kill and maim people in the short-term at a much higher rate than the vaccine, which is known to protect you from the virus.
For all we know, mRNA vaccines can alter your gametes. We don't know because this is the first time we ever use them. They aren't like viruses or weakened viruses. They are just a massive injection of genetic material (much of it deformed) that encodes a single foreign protein. No human being has ever had such a thing done to them until very recently. mRNA vaccines are not part of any natural process that modern humans or our ancestors have had to withstand to get to the present day.
I don't know why you have this special concern about the gametes. In any case, if there's a significant bump in miscarriages / infertility from the vaccine, we'll probably know very soon, now that lots of younger people are being vaccinated.
First: does the rate at which the cells are made to artificially produce spike protein follow a different curve than the rate at which SARS-2 would? i.e. could mRNA vaccination cause a much more aggressive "inflammatory cliff", thus the huge percentage of "mild" adverse reactions (mild meaning, you feel like death for a day but end up fine with no detectable long-term issues)? It's possible.
And switching to efficacy, while personally I think resistance to the spike protein alone will be sufficient, because SARS-2 does not have the same ability to mutate/evolve the way Influenza does (for example, I can't imagine SARS-2 evolving away from the spike protein), it's very possible that the diverse epitopes produced by real SARS-2 infection give a much more robust and enduring immunity.
I don't know a single person that has that after flue and cold - and those are with us much longer.
As for viruses mutations etc. do we for sure know that this one is not man made?
> I don't know a single person that has that after flue and cold - and those are with us much longer.
Look into ME/CFS, whose existence is still contested (or rather I should say, whether it's a physical or psychogenic illness is disputed). I know you're just speaking anecdotally but just wanted to mention that post-viral issues (fatigue, memory, etc) absolutely does happen.
> As for viruses mutations etc. do we for sure know that this one is not man made?
At most SARS-2 is the result of extensive gain of function research on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13. I don't know any credible individual that thinks it's fully artificial / manmade (and to be clear, my definition of "credible" is not the "anyone who agrees with the WHO/CDC and nobody else" definition that the establishment relies on).
Personally I think it's more likely that SARS-2 was GoF'd into existence rather than was a purely natural zoonotic leap, whereas I think the probability that it was fully artificial is almost zero.
If we pick the 25-29 year olds and an estimated infection fatality rate of 0.01% [1] it's still 13.5M x 0.01% = 1,350 deaths. It's not a lot by any means, but it's not 'almost nothing' either.
This is the worst case scenario of cause, sibling comment has already mentioned long Covid, where we don't know prevalence precisely.
I'm aware I've picked the 'worse half' of the 20 year olds, 20-24 will fare better obviously.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2
The mRNA in the vaccine lasts a matter hours.