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Comment by hitpointdrew | Hacker News Reader

The risk of anyone un-vaxxed going to the hospital after catching covid is 0.89% (source: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...) and it is even lower than that if you are vaxxed.

It is incredibly unnecessary and risky to vax children, and probably most adults. The only people that this vax should be recommended to are people in high-risk categorizes.

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There is an uncharacterized unknown risk in the long term post-sickness effects of Covid. Many may survive the immediate sickness but virus remains in the most for at least months, and there could be long term tissue damage or other changes.

Also I’m not sure why you say the vaccine is such a risk for children. It’s currently undergoing study and an even younger age range is close to being approved. In general we are talking about a vaccine with some minuscule portion of the dna pattern of the virus vs getting exposed to the virus itself which includes the same pattern, and will get multiplied to millions of times higher exposure - along with many many other sequences of the full virus - all with unknown long term effects.

0,89% is a lot. That's why you vaccinate.

To be clear the 0.89% figure was obtained by dividing hospitalizations by population, so it includes many unvaccinated people who have not caught COVID (yet).

The chance that an unvaccinated person who is COVID-positive will require hospitalization is around 3%.

Are these numbers for the US?

Yes. You can do a quick and dirty estimate working backwards from the article's own figure of 2.6 million COVID hospitalizations in the US. If you very generously assume 1/3 of Americans have been infected, you get a hospitalization rate of 2.3%. If you assume the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, then the risk to the unvaccinated must be higher.

I wouldn't call 1/3 "generous". https://covidestim.org/ has some estimates of the fraction of people ever infected by US state. I can't seem to find an US aggregate figure, but by clicking on a few random states they all seem to be at least 50%. California (the most populous state) is around 60% even before omicron.

Your estimate is likely off by a factor of two.

What’s the risk for non-obese people? Not that obese people should be considered less healthy, just curious because much of America, outside of San Francisco, is obese.

But they are obviously less healthy?

Obese people are less healthy, that's a fact.

No, not "anyone", just average healthy people.

3-5% of the adult population have serious immune deficiency and are at very high risk (the vaccine has limited to zero impact on them). Everyone else (including children) getting vaccinated protects them.

How much is 0.89% of 7.7 billion?

Others have called out various bits of misinformation/lies in your post but I'll call out another.

We vaccinate children against a wide variety of things on a routine basis and a pre-requisite for attending school, and the covid vaccine is literally no more risky than those, and they aren't risky. It honestly feels straight anti-vax to make up lies calling it unnecessary and risky, especially with our health care systems once again succumbing to mainly unvaccinated covid idiots.

> It honestly feels straight anti-vax to make up lies calling it unnecessary and risky ...

I suggest that we charitably assume that everyone here is discussing in good faith. Otherwise it's hard to have productive arguments on contentious topics.

At what point do you stop assuming people are arguing in good faith? Because it seems unbelievable that everyone is.

I don't have a great answer. But I'm guessing that typically we'll have better discussions if we set a high bar for assuming bad intent.

While I agree it's a good default to assume good faith, there has to be a point where we assume a specific person is arguing in bad faith. I'm not advocating assuming everyone who disagrees with me is disingenuous, but merely that it seems some people are.

How many other medications do you take, or more specifically _require your children to take_ that:

1. were invented 18 months ago, have been available for only a year, and were hurried through the FDA's processes

2. underwent limited clinical trials

3. the manufacturers and providers are immune from lawsuits

4. the effectiveness was cited as 95% 8 months ago, but has proven to be much less.

...

I'm betting that the number is 0.

One has to admit, these vaccines and their rollout is all very unusual and against normal order. People having hesitation and skepticism is actually very healthy.

There's good reason to be skeptical. Here's a video on pfizer's own clinical study, that raises many questions on the rate of side effects, all cause mortality.

https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/th...

This is literally anti-vax propaganda, and a shameful one at that. The Pfizer vaccine has saved millions of lives. This community has gone downhill. Ironic that I am called out for calling someone "anti-vax", too.

Well, "anti-vax" is a sweeping generalization, and usually meant as an insult. The comment speaks of skepticism, not denial or opposition; and, skepticism is very healthy. Critical thinking is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Oh come on now, we all know the Covid vaccines pushed in the west are nothing like what came before.

It's a completely new approach, which is why we know very little about long term consequences yet.

I'd say it feels straight insane to run this experiment on children when there's little to no risk of them getting sick from the actual virus.

Oh come on now, the MRNA vaccines (which are not the only ones in the west, as the west also uses more traditional vaccines like the J&J) are not that new and have been in production for decades.

And yes it's a completely new approach -- that is out of your body in weeks and sparks the same immune response that other approaches do.

The idea that there is long term consequences to this is a claim that needs evidence to back it. There's no reason to suggest there would be any new long term effects.

I'd say it feels straight insane to doom teachers, parents and grandparents to infection by school age children, while our hospitals are at capacity and rationing care, and I would call such a policy an intentional murder by policymakers. We know children bring covid-19 home, we know it tears through older populations, we know teachers are at risk, we know our hospitals are triaging care and declining patients, and you'd let that vector go unvaccinated.

All because you're afraid of long term consequences of a 2 decade old technology that causes the same physiological effects as the older technology.

BS.

Yes, we vaccinate children with established vaccines with well known risks that have been understood across decades. We simply do not have that knowledge with these vaccines. I believe saying it’s “no more risky” is relying on an assumption that simply is not based on any factual data, since the factual data to make that statement definitive will not exist for years.

Consider the following with these (mRNA) vaccines (speaking from a U.S. perspective): 1. This is a new type of vaccine that was developed extremely rapidly and the companies behind the vaccines have lawsuit protection against damage the vaccines may cause (now and in the future). 2. An accelerated testing protocol was used. 3. There are political drivers behind these mandates. 4. It is unknown if there are long term effects across the population at all ages and there some known specific risks for boys at a certain age group that has caused some countries to pause using these vaccines at certain age groups. 5. They don’t prevent infection in the same way that we understand other vaccines to work. 6. We have not yet established that the vaccine provides a greater severe disease protection rate in children beyond their already existing rate against severe disease Covid (there are just not enough kids experiencing severe disease to make a statistically significant prediction of vaccine protection).

I’m a thrice vaccinated individual, and I believe the risk/reward ratio for the vaccine for folks above 50 is frankly a no brainer decision. However, if I had young children…I’d be hesitant about vaccinating them with an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and I think it’s simply much better to vaccinate the at risk population around the kids at this time where the severe Covid disease risk ratios are higher.

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