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Comment by waiseristy | Hacker News Reader

This right here is the argument, and has been since February 2020. We got a little lost along the way, but our original social measures to reduce the spread of COVID was due to our inability to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. Now that we have the vaccines, we have no moral reason to now baby the people who refuse to protect themselves.

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Children can't get vaccinated yet, though, and I do still want to protect them. It's why my wife and I, though fully vaccinated, haven't totally returned to normal, since our toddler and infant are still susceptible.

Good point! And I don't want to imply that the only people left without a vaccine are those who "refuse" it. We're not there yet, but were close! Stay safe!

(what in the world is going on with downvotes in this thread? Are HNers really unable to have difficult conversations?)

On an objective basis, the risk to children is in line with colds and flu.

Which isn't zero, colds and flu kill a few children a year.

I support you in keeping your children healthy, not trying to second guess you as a parent. But "think of the children" is not a good basis for policy here.

I understand wanting to protect your kids, but here’s some statistics (United States): on average, 500 kids a year die from RSV, a respiratory virus for which there is no vaccine. Last year, 200 kids died from COVID-19, for which a seemingly safe and effective vaccine exists. I understand this probably doesn’t help much since you don’t hear and think about RSV every day for a year straight, but hopefully the vaccines are approved for children soon. Hang in there :)

For children, COVID is less dangerous than the seasonal flu, and we've never mandated masks or vaccines to protect children from that.

Source for this??

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm

> The risk of complications for healthy children is higher for flu compared to COVID-19.

Kind of amazing people are still so unaware of the vastly varying relative risk among different demographic groups

Kids are more likely to die in the car/bus on the way to school than by covid. Still it's good to get them vaccinated so they don't end up killing older people.

Forcing children (or anyone really) to undergo a medical procedure for the benefit of other people is evil.

What the fuck? You're aware that we vaccinate children for a lot of things, right?

It's not evil, it's common sense. COVID may be the first pandemic you've lived through/remembered, but it's not the first pandemic, and there are far more dangerous diseases out there we don't want coming back.

I was vaccinated as a child of things i am still immune to today.

> You're aware that we vaccinate children for a lot of things, right?

Yes. So they don't get sick, i.e. it's for their own benefit.

We also vaccinate them so they don't infect people who can't be vaccinated.

If their own health wouldn't justify a vaccination, we should stop that. They can still consent to get vaccinated out of altruism when they're adult.

Insurance might not cover some vaccinations for an adult. I know for certain this is the case for HPV; it may also be true for others.

Thankfully, you don't make health policy. Stay away from legislation.

Children grow into adults. We're protecting those future adults.

Against what, a pandemic that's over by then? For more than a year, children's interests have been largely ignored, their well-being and education sacrificed for the sake of scared adults. Now we start vaccinating them, which doesn't actually benefit them but does benefit aforementioned adults, to protect them just in case they catch Covid after the pandemic is over, but not until they're old enough that this is actually a problem? Because they're suddenly that important to us? I don't buy it.

What makes you think the pandemic is over?

New variants are still emerging, and some of them are pretty worrying. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

You didn't even finish reading my first sentence.

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