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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

It's unbelievable that this far into the pandemic people are still making this argument. It has been known from near the beginning that the direct risk to kids is relatively small. The risk is secondary exposure. Kids in school spread diseases like kudzu and can expose hundreds of adults very quickly. Protecting kids will prevent spread. Not to mention kids who are vaccinated can still possibly be exposed to covid and have a further immune response as strong as full infection (this bit is not proven, I'm speculating).

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> Kids in school spread diseases like kudzu

I was expecting this at the start of this school year but it hasn’t really borne out as bad as I thought.

It hasn't happened in my kids' schools because they have stringent safety protocols. Mandatory masking, faculty and staff are required to vaccinate and spot testing. They will also shut down at least cohorts of kids to do two weeks of remote learning if there's a confirmed case. This is NYC schools who administer about 1M kids of varying means.

A buried story from last year is that nationwide there was exactly 1 confirmed child influenza death in the entire country. There was 200 the year before. It speaks to the disease prevention protocols being very effective.

> A buried story from last year is that nationwide there was exactly 1 confirmed child influenza death in the entire country. There was 200 the year before. It speaks to the disease prevention protocols being very effective.

Obviously, nobody wants children to die from influenza or COVID, but what are the long-term consequences of young immune systems receiving significantly less exposure to pathogens?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/sunday/covid-quar...

I find the hygiene hypothesis argument to be unconvincing. The notion that over sterilization leads to weaker immune response is plausible if not settled science. But it certainly seems the long-term outcomes in terms of life expectancy and quality of life come out heavily in favor of the sanitized and vaccinated life. Aside from the immediate benefit of fewer deaths due to acute illness, I bet there's a host of long-term syndromes akin to Long Covid that haven't been identified.

> But it certainly seems the long-term outcomes in terms of life expectancy and quality of life come out heavily in favor of the sanitized and vaccinated life.

For who?

As of October 6, according to CDC data[1], 181 children 0-4 and 406 children 5-18 have died from COVID. Obviously, all of these deaths are sad but it's also impossible to ignore how small these numbers are in terms of the overall population of children under the age of 18.

> Aside from the immediate benefit of fewer deaths due to acute illness, I bet there's a host of long-term syndromes akin to Long Covid that haven't been identified.

You bet? What evidence do you have to back up the suggestion that there are long-term syndromes in children that "haven't been identified"?

Isn't this the same argument put forth by some people opposed to vaccination -- that there might be long-term side effects we don't yet know about? So why would this argument be acceptable in promoting vaccination and restrictions but not in opposing vaccination?

[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...

I'm not specifically talking about covid vaccination but rather the general approach of disease avoidance.

But to that point we have very clear evidence that vaccines leave the body quickly and long term effects have been carefully studied and found to not exist for any vaccine ever. Conversely human DNA is littered with the remnants of eons if viral DNA. And as someone suffering the effects of a retrovirus (canker sores) it is well known that they can stick around for a lifetime. Not to mention the scar tissue of severe illness that can take years to heal.

I will almost certainly choose to have my children vaccinated as soon as they become eligible. On the other hand I find your argument difficult to accept. I am happy to be injected and subjected to lots of things for the greater good, that’s my choice as an adult, however as a parent I’m wary of any attempt to use my children in furtherance of the greater good.

Put it this way: if for arguments sake it was better for kids to simply become infected to gain immunity and the trade off is that adults might be more likely to be exposed, I think that the correct choice for a parent is what’s best for their child, not the group.

This is the natural response of parents who’s paramount concern is their children. Treating that concern as antisocial is how we end up with raging lunatics at school board meetings.

There's not much reason to believe that getting infected is statistically safer for children than vaccination though.

Even among young males (12-17), ACIP found that severe illness from infection had a higher incidence than myocarditis.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

So people doing what is best for their children shouldn't be getting angry about vaccination.

Dismissing careful evaluation of evidence and showing up raging at a public meeting is antisocial.

> this bit is not proven, I'm speculating

Thank you. This is the first time I hear someone admitting we are running an open ended experiment with no long term data for guidance. The immune system is not linear. We cannot simply pile up 'immunity tokens' on top of each other. The specific immunization history matters.

"Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting or the Hoskins effect,[1] refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version of that foreign pathogen (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. Antibodies or T-cells induced during infections with the first variant of the pathogen are subject to a form of original antigenic sin, termed repertoire freeze."

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

We don't understand how vaccines interact with the long-term immune system. The OA cites one of the first studies I know about that looks into the issue. The answer is far from encouraging for mass covid mRNA vaccination campaigns in children: "Secondary immune response stronger after infection than after shot". "By comparison, vaccine-induced memory B cells are less robust, evolving for only a few weeks and never "learning" to protect against variants."

If you feel that child covid mRNA vaccinations are the way to go, provide evidence for your case, instead of obfuscating the issue. No, citing yet another antibody levels study is not very relevant to long term immunity discussions. Antibody levels suffer exponential decay over a few months. B-cells are supposed to kickstart antibody generation for the next infection event. If the vaccines are poor at eliciting B-cell generation, this is a major weakness.

"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof."

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

Perhaps covid mRNA vaccine + infection works well in the long run. Perhaps it doesn't. At this point it's a gamble. I'm not sure what happened that we are willing to gamble the future health of our children.

I don't think the point needs to be proven because the notion that kids can spread Covid to adults is just a given. As is the rate of non-fatal hospitalization among children. And "gamble the future health of our children" is not a plausible concern given that we have proof of safety. My only speculation is on the result of both vaccine plus infection. Which isn't really informative to the debate since deliberate exposure isn't a valid public health policy.

Pfizer vaccine doesn’t prevent infection from delta. Vaccines prevent hospitalization. This is well documented. My friend, a doctor, was just infected by delta this week and she’s vaccinated. Getting kids vaccinated wont prevent other vaccinated kids from being infected.

The kids vaccine is 1/3 of the dose of the adult vaccine. And the adult vaccine is known to drop down to 20% efficacy after 4 months. Kids already have an extremely high resistance to severe problems from Covid.

So what exactly is the point of vaccinating kids? It sounds like a way for Pfizer to justify vaccinating and then boosting the vaccine every 6 months for nothing.

> Getting kids vaccinated wont prevent other vaccinated kids from being infected.

It will. Vaccinated people who get COVID have a lower viral load and less severe symptoms (in particular, coughing, sneezing etc) that would help spread the disease. No, it isn’t 100% but it will help, and it’ll also help stop kids from spreading COVID to more vulnerable people like their grandparents.

This is dangerously misinformed on two counts:

1. Vaccinated people with an infection have similar viral load to unvaccinated people.

> Data from COVID-19 tests in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore are showing that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta SARS-CoV-2 can carry as much virus in their nose as do unvaccinated people. This means that despite the protection offered by vaccines, a proportion of vaccinated people can pass on Delta, possibly aiding its rise.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1

2. Lightweight symptoms are good. The #1 pandemic control mechanism is self quarantine on symptom onset. Or perhaps you are one of those people that sends their kid with a running nose to school because it's slightly more convenient?

Please stop spreading misinformation. I recommend that everyone get vaccinated if they can, but the vaccines have only a limited and temporary effect in reducing transmission.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

The reality is that those grandparents are going to be exposed to the virus regardless of what their grandchildren do. Those grandparents have had plenty of time to get vaccinated themselves.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Pfizer is very effective against Delta. Only very marginally less effective than previous strains. And the reason to vaccinate kids despite the low risk to their personal health has been mentioned multiple times in this thread.

Please don’t spread misinformation. This is absolutely false.

No.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02261-8

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