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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I suppose the surge of infections from the Delta variant have made developed world governments re-think their approach to vaxing younger citizens. In the UK a fifth of hospital admissions with covid are 18-34 years old and we're extending vaccination to 16-17 year olds.

I'm sure it's true these vaccines would save more lives in developed nations, but politically governments are still accountable to their own citizens first. It's an ugly situation. Delta has seriously thrown a spanner in the works, and I'm sure there are more variants to come. Suppose a variant pops up that's deadly to children, but the current vaccines protect against it. How would governments explain shipping vaccines abroad instead of vaxing children then?

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It's tough to see any potential evolutionary path that would make SARS-CoV-2 deadly to children. There are four other endemic human coronaviruses that have been around for a long time, including HCoV-OC43 which is another betacoronavirus genetically quite similar to SARS-CoV-2. The only reason that OC43 doesn't cause many deaths today is that most of us get infected when we're young and build up protective natural immunity. It's had a long time to evolve other variants but so far none of them kill kids.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S152166162...

This seems like a misunderstanding of how evolution works. Viruses don't choose to be deadly or not based on some evolutionary path that they see ahead, the causation goes the other way around - viruses that were deadly in the past might not have an evolutionary path to the present.

We do not know how Sars-Cov-2 will end up - we cannot pre-emptively discount the potential of deaths just because it seems like a bad evolutionary strategy.

> I'm sure it's true these vaccines would save more lives in developed nations

One of the main points is that it is also in the average person's self interest to get the whole world vaccinated before a bunch of old people get boosters. It is likely even in the old person's self interest to reduce the odds of a new variant that isn't targeted by the vaccine.

> Suppose a variant pops up that's deadly to children,

Which is most likely to happen in the unvaccinated world. One of the main points is that it is also in the average person's self interest ... etc etc ad infinitum.

Not getting the whole world vaccinated as quickly as possible is potentially catastrophic. No amount of boosters will be any good against a variant that ignores the vaccine-induced immune response (or non-response, really).

How are the younger patients faring? I see the UK as a canary to the USA for the upcoming school year but have no sense of it from the news.

In Germany we vaccinate from 12 years old, to my knowledge there haven't been any newsworthy incidents.

The only thing we have is the (political) squabble if it is officially recommended by the vaccine commission, and the debate on how we are going to protect the young children - especially those at high risk - when ignorant unvaccinated adults will be spreading COVID around.

> Suppose a variant pops up that's deadly to children, but the current vaccines protect against it. How would governments explain...

All sorts of mad things could happen. But this fantasy scenario is really quite unlikely.

> But this fantasy scenario is really quite unlikely

Based on what exactly. The delta variant was unlikely. The COVID-19 was unlikely. I think I'll back governments taking precautions against the possible rather than somebody thinking it's a fantasy(def: the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things) scenario, ignoring the last 18 months of world life.

What if there's a gamma variant and drinking bleach would have protected against it? Shouldn't governments distribute bleach "just in case"?

Sure, but Delta started in India. Because of how connected we all are, if we want to protect ourselves we need to protect the world.

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