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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

There's no legitimate reason to doubt the safety or the efficacy of these vaccines such that the benefits of immunity don't vastly outweigh the reason.

You seem like you're trying to normalize some midpoint between vaccine acceptance and anti-vaxxing to radicalize individuals here. Reddit went ahead and banned anything resembling your post to avoid anti-vaxx wolves amongst sheep. I hope HN does the same here too.

Edit: I’m okay with all the anti-vaxxers in this thread. I think you’re all arguing in good faith and I’m more than happy to compare information with you. You’re all to be commended for engaging in the marketplace of ideas. It’s just the guy I was replying to that I think is a bad-faith actor trying to perniciously sway otherwise moderate people to his side by misrepresenting his initial position on the topic to be more moderate than it actually is.

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I mean, they're still working on getting data on efficacy/safety on children, it's not like they have years of data to point to. I can kinda understand why some people might be wary, even when faced with extremely rare odds of complications; mechanically it seems very similar to the sort of belief that leads people to play lottery games, despite the obviously low odds of winning.

What the GP is saying is that us-vs-them rhetorics have a tendency to make parties illogically double down on doubts (not just with vaccines, but with literally every topic under the sun). If one wants to claim the intellectual higher ground, not taking this phenomenon into account seems like a pretty big blind spot, especially if we're on the topic of method efficacy.

> There's no legitimate reason to doubt the safety or the efficacy of these vaccines such that the benefits of immunity don't vastly outweigh the reason.

This doesn't apply to all age groups, even if you trust the FDA implicitly. The vaccines are not approved for children under 12 because the proven benefits do not exceed the risks. The benefit of the vaccine slides dramatically with existing health and age; 12-17 year olds that are healthy will receive virtually no benefit from the vaccine.

Are there actually concrete risks to children, or is this a political pressure thing (if the vaccine hurts children, then it will blow up badly in the FDA's faces if they approve it, so they're being hesitant)?

That is, are the "risks" real scientifically-documented complications (either from a clinical trial, or from solid arguments about mRNA vaccines and children), or are the "risks" just unknown-unknowns and a lack of sufficient data?

I don't trust the FDA. I believe they're subject to a bunch of nonsense political pressures. I believe they employ a bunch of good people trying to do the best job they can within a US federal bureaucracy and all the confines of that (including the inability to compete on salary with the private sector for skilled/experienced candidates). I have no reason to believe they're more competent than, oh, the DoD. So my distrust of the FDA doesn't extend to believing that they approve the vaccine, it's because they really want to implant microchips in us, but it absolutely extends to believing that if they don't approve the vaccine, it may well be for reasons entirely unrelated to its scientific merit.

if a child does not have an existing health issues the risk of covid itself is so low that even if the vaccine had no complications the cost of the vaccine itself would probably outweigh the individual benefits conferred to the child. it's very difficult to justify a medical intervention when the risk is so low. if you are taking a more utilitarian view then it is certainly better to be sending vaccines that would be given to children to other countries that currently have a shortage of vaccines for at risk groups.

the UK had a vaccine committee that authored a report on the benefit and risks of giving a vaccine to children. they concluded the benefits outweigh the risks but the benefits are so small that it is impossible to justify taking action.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-se...

The COVID-related risks around children are not to themselves, but to the families they will bring the disease home to. The benefit of administering COVID vaccines to children is not that it will significantly save their own lives, but that it will help save the lives of their older family members.

Prescribing a medication that puts one at risk to save another would violate medical ethics.

There's no evidence of any risk of mRNA vaccines at all. The only issue so far has been extremely rare blood clot issues with the adenovirus vaccines (AstraZeneca & J&J).

The vaccines are not approved for children under 12 because the risks to young children from the virus are the lowest of any population group, so older groups were prioritized for efficacy and safety testing. It is being tested now in that age group (I know people with kids in the trial group) and will hopefully be approved shortly.

If this virus worked the way the flu does, doing the most damage to children and the elderly, then the vaccine would have been tested on children much sooner and would have been available to that group sooner. In that world, that's not because the vaccine was more dangerous to 25 year olds.

> There's no evidence of any risk of mRNA vaccines at all.

You need to add "short run" since these vaccines have not been tested long term. Not to say it is likely at all since other mRNA vaccines have not had long run issues, but to say there is "no evidence" is cheap when long run studies have not been conducted.

Extraordinary claim: Vaccines cause negative side effects that can't be detected until years later.

Please cite a case where this extraordinary claim has held true. Where a vaccine has caused a side effect not noticeable within the first year.

Globally hundreds of millions have been vaccinated and we've had enough data to get really precise numbers on even the absolute rarest of side effects; which are vanishingly rare and pale in severity and incidence to the disease in the wild.

With all due respect there seems to be some rhetorical sleight of hand involved in transforming the claim "we don't know about the possible long-term effects of mRNA vaccines" into the extraordinary claim you wrote. The sleight of hand consists in not acknowledging the fundamental novelty of mRNA vaccines compared to traditional vaccines, which allows you to conflate them and use the proven long-term safety of the one as an argument for the long-term safety of the other. Not everyone agrees with this conflation, because the mechanism of action is quite different.

That is incorrect. The CDC believes that mRNA vaccines have caused myocarditis and pericarditis, mainly in young males. The risk is very low (possibly lower than the risk of getting those symptoms from a viral infection) but not zero. I'm not suggesting that anyone avoid vaccination for this reason but let's be honest about the risks. False claims that there is no evidence of any risk just leads to public mistrust.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...

The UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) currently doesn't recommend universal COVID-19 vaccinations for healthy children ages 12-15 because the health benefits are marginal. That guidance may shift as more data comes in.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advic...

What is your opinion on these articles ? These are just some of many deaths and health issues immediately after mRNA vaccination which barely get any media attention.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2021/08/24/national/soc...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pf...

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/nz-myocarditis-dea...

Wait, did you just argue that there is zero room for dissent?

That is generally how arguments about claims of fact work, yes. If you genuinely believe that, say, the earth is round, then your position isn't going to be that the earth is probably round but there are valid reasons to believe otherwise, or that you can have the opinion that the earth is flat, or whatever. It's fundamentally not a matter of opinion, and part of your belief is that it isn't a matter of opinion.

What you are describing is explicitly not science. It's dogma.

I find this specific example a bit amusing. Remember when authority thought the earth was at the center of the solar system, and that was a fact and there wasn’t room for dissent?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

> Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.

Sounds familiar.

I don’t say that vaccines are bad, or unhealthy. I do say that banning one side of the conversation, even if they’re crazy, is a great way to end up on the wrong side of history.

That's my point exactly. Do you think Galileo thought there was room for dissent about whether the earth moved? Did he famously say "Eppur si muove, forse"?

There's no room for dissent. There's room for argument, and by all means we should argue about it and not ban one side of the conversation. But only one of the sides can be right.

What do you think argument is, but dissent? Science doesn't progress if there isn't dissent. If there is no dissent from the status quo, there's no reason to do any research.

Galileo also thought the orbits of the planets were circular, but he was wrong about that. It doesn't matter what he thought or said at the time. Newton's laws of motions worked well... until they didn't and Einstein gave us something better. We also don't think Einstein is 100% correct, either, because relativity breaks down in some important corner cases. But it's the best explanation we have at the time.

Science is fundamentally built upon the principle of falsifiability. Without falsifiability all you have is belief and dogma. It's also why there's a fundamental difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law.

Your "argument" that we should all just shut up and walk the line is, ironically, the true anti-science position.

> Remember when authority thought the earth was at the center of the solar system

Authority? Oh, you mean a church who espoused having a divine mandate and a monopoly on truth and therefore the only path to a good afterlife? The Catholic Church's fortunates were literally derived from common people and nobles giving them money and resources.

The Church's persecution of Galileo was about maintaining its monopoly position, it didn't actually concern itself with truthfulness. Maybe at some levels there were the extremely pious that actually believed Galileo was professing literal heresy but the actions of the Church were entirely about defense of their monopoly position.

But yes, other than all the details of the situation, anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers, COVID deniers, and all the other Dunning-Kruger conspiracy theorists are just like Galileo using detailed and falsifiable experiments to bolster their claims. They're being persecuted for their science and unflinching devotion fo truth!

Telling people their concerns are not valid also does not help

Well good thing this isn’t reddit. I’m not sure why you would ever use reddit as an example on what good moderation looks like.

Truly anti-vaxx behavior is a mental illness. They are being a danger to themselves and others and should be locked up.

I just want to live. This is not a political argument. People who purposely spread deadly diseases are criminals. It's just the same as firing a loaded gun at someone and pretending you don't know what a gun is. I don't care about what argument you're making anymore if I'm ending up shot either way.

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