Comment by Mordisquitos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mordisquitos | Hacker News Reader

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> I'm really starting to wonder why I bothered with the vax. This will just go on and on.

Don't worry. This will not go on an on, we're just living through the death rattles of the pandemic completely dominating global, collective, and media awareness over the past year and a half. Of course the BMA are concerned: they are doctors, they have taken the worst of the pandemic, and they just want this damn thing to stop. The difference is that for them, this damned thing is people needing medical attention, and they can only wish it were possible for everything to just bloody stop if that would release them with dealing with the worst of COVID-19. But it will get better, with minor ups and downs.

SARS-CoV-2 is of course not going anywhere. There will continue to be new variants, the media will for a while loudly (and clumsily) echo any clinical paper about breakthrough infections, or increases of cases in this or that population, or collapsed ICUs [0]. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers will try to lobby governments into buying and administering newly developed booster doses for this or that variant of concern. The new variant may or may not really be truly concerning for public health, but their business is manufacturing and selling pharmaceuticals, so fair enough.

But in any case, once a critical mass of the population is vaccinated, COVID-19 will gradually become irrelevant. Virtually everyone will have significant immunity, a few people will catch it and think it's just a cold, fewer people will catch it and develop a nasty flu-like case which will be correctly diagnosed as COVID-19, and there will even be nasty and even deadly cases in vaccinated people. But there are nasty and deadly cases of flu, and even nasty and deadly cases of common cold viruses. However, as the media little by little gets bored of making a big thing every time this happens, the epidemiology of COVID-19 will slowly become only of interest to people actually working in the field — just like they have been silently studying the epidemiology of every seasonal flu strain without any media attention.

[0] For Spain at least, I can find you news about collapsed ICUs... during pre-2019 flu seasons!

> This will not go on an on

At what point would you be willing to admit you were wrong? If we're still doing whatever-variant this time next year, would you reconsider?

I will be willing to admit I am wrong if, in a given country, we're still doing whatever-variant 6 months after the vaccination of school-age children is completed.

Are school-age children at risk from this virus? If not, what is the medical justification for performing a medical procedure on them?

If it's virtually zero risk and it protects others, that's pretty justified. You know, like how we already take into account more than just individual risk when we vaccinate children.

Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.

FYI - there have been about 30 kids in hospital in the UK with covid in the last month, so the risks are non-negligible.

> If it's virtually zero risk

It would be great if we knew that, but we don't. We usually have long testing periods, but we didn't this time, for reasons that remain unclear.

> Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.

Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?

> Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically

Constantly, it's always part of why we vaccinate, to stop people being a vector as well as personal protection.

> We usually have long testing periods, but we didn't this time, for reasons that remain unclear

A pandemic ravaging the globe doesn't seem clear?

> Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?

Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand. I'm surprised this is even a discussion on a place like HN... I guess I'm feeding the trolls...

> A pandemic ravaging the globe doesn't seem clear?

A fear campaign ravaged the globe. If there hadn't been a fear campaign, I don't think anybody but doctors and immunologists and such would have been aware anything significant was happening. Similar to previous seasonal illnesses that were technically pandemics, but no normal person recalls doing anything about it. For example, ask people who are old enough what they remember about the HK flu in 1968.

> Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand

I'm still waiting for the example from the past where we administered a vaccine to someone, saying to them "this is not to protect you, since you are not at risk from this virus, but it is just to protect someone out there, we don't know whom". Are you able to provide such an example?

> If there hadn't been a fear campaign, I don't think anybody but doctors and immunologists and such would have been aware anything significant was happening.

So the excess deaths, the health services stretched to capacity, this is nothing, nobody would have noticed at all?

I think this is a very, very strong claim given the numbers and would take some extraordinary evidence to back up.

At an individual clinical level they may not be at significant risk, but the justification for vaccinating them is not about individual clinical risks but public health. As far as I can tell, the potential risks of vaccinating children are overwhelmingly outweighed by the potential public health risks of them spreading the virus, acting as a reservoir, or suffering severe cases of the disease, however rare.

That is, unless we want to take "the long road" to the scenario I mentioned above. Yes, we could expect this to be eventually over by waiting until the population develops significant immunity because children usually catch the disease at school, spread it around, and the more vulnerable people in the population are little by little reduced in numbers. However, I personally prefer the vaccination shortcut.

> At an individual clinical level they may not be at significant risk, but the justification for vaccinating them is not about individual clinical risks but public health.

This is a very serious mistake. The duty of a doctor is to the patient in front of them and no one else. The question they have to consider is, is this proposed treatment more likely than not to help this particular patient? If so, the doctor advises the patient to undergo the procedure. If not, they advise against it. If a doctor is considering anything other than the health of the person presently before them, they need to make that clear, that they are treating a herd rather than a specific patient.

> As far as I can tell, the potential risks of vaccinating children are overwhelmingly outweighed by the potential public health risks

That's not the calculus. The question is the risk/benefit for them individually. And, I will add, the risk for even just them as individuals is not known. Some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, e.g. https://odysee.com/@OracleFilms:1/Dr.-Sucharit-Bhakdi-Oracle...

You're talking about the duty of a doctor with regards to their individual patient, but I'm taking about the duty of public health agencies with regards to the population as a whole.

But fair enough, let's focus on the individual patient. The fact that a child is now 10 years old and would most likely suffer from asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 if they were to catch it today says nothing about their possible condition if they catch it in 20, 30, or 40 years time. As long as SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in the population, and it will be for the near future, deciding not to vaccinate a child because they are at low risk at this very moment is at best wishful thinking about their future, and at worst an active hope that they catch the virus and develop some level of immunity before it is likely to harm them significantly. And if some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, they are more than welcome to publish their findings in a scientific journal rather than producing online films about it.

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