Comment by conz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conz | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that we 'force unnecessary medical treatment' on kids.

What is being made available to parents is the option to vaccinate their children if they deem it necessary.

Also, while kids are less at risk of death or hospitalisation from COVID than adults, the risk is not insignificant:

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/susan-jones/cdc-335...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/child-covid-19-hospital...

Regardless, COVID remains a much greater risk to kids than the vaccines:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/covid-vaccine-kid...

Therefore, parents need to make up their own minds.

Except, at least in the UK, vaccinators will be in schools and will "evaluate" if the child is informed and competent to make the decision without parent consent. Mixed with financial incentives, for each child vaccinated, looks like a bad stance

    Except, at least in the UK, vaccinators will be in schools and will "evaluate" if the child is informed and competent to make the decision without parent consent. Mixed with financial incentives, for each child vaccinated, looks like a bad stance

Vaccinations in schools are an absolute commonplace in Australia. Again, the proviso here is that no one is forcing the vaccinations on anyone. Incentives? Sure.

We'll have to disagree then on what is significant. 335 kids dying over the course of the pandemic is not to me:

There are an estimated 78,720,000 kids in the US under the age of 18. That means 0.0004256% kids have died from Covid. To put that in perspective, more than half of that number died of the flu over the same period (not trying to compare all of covid to the flu). Also, overall, more than 10,000 kids under the age of 18 died of other causes.

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