2. Reducing R flattens the curve, and pushing it below 1.0 ends the pandemic.
> vaccines have been shown to make anything else than a dent in the levels of infections
Oh?
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2022011...
This applies to all ages, but if I had linked to an ICU with adults I'm sure you would have blamed the pattern on old people.
Vaccines make a big difference, it's just that the vaccine doesn't protect people who don't take it. Even so, it kinda does: herd immunity and R are real. It's hilarious that anti-vaxxers seem to think that anything less than the vaccine somehow managing to protect 100% of people who don't take it is some kind of failure on its part.
I have two children and they are not getting any COVID vaccine unless a second generation one that is not experimental is developed. I don't want any shot developed during the Trump administration in a rushed federal program injected into my kids and you shouldn't either. They've already both caught the virus and had no symptoms whatsoever. We wouldn't have even known they had it if not for the fact that I had lost my sense of smell and got tested.
Children are at lower risk from COVID-19 than they are from influenza. That is the data and it might not agree with your priors but it doesn't change the fact that that is the data.
It should be noted that the second generation of the COVID vaccine is going to look nothing like the first. They are likely not going to use the same components of the virus that they did with the first generation because the spike protein payload has unintended consequences in some human beings. I acknowledge that this subgroup of human beings is a small minority but it happened to include my mother-in-law who is now dead after suffering cardiac arrest 4 hours after her second shot.
In case you think I am a nutty anti-vaxxer I assure you I am not. I firmly believe that my father is alive today because of the vaccine. He was in a high-risk category and I just don't believe he would have survived COVID infection if he had caught it. It's a great idea for people like him and people in his age group. Hell, it was a good idea for my mother-in-law, but unintended consequences are going to happen when you have a practically untested vaccine administered to a massive population. Both of them are at high risk from the virus. My children are simply not. People seem to be unwilling to admit that a vaccine developed for a rapidly evolving virus in 2020 isn't very effective in 2022. I don't know why this cognitive dissonance is so strong, but it's just the fact. It prevents hospitalization but not spread. That's a good thing, but it's a private health effect, not a public one.
"small" is doing a lot of work here. As a society, we are generally comfortable with mandates that contain a small amount of risk. This had better be a large value of "small."
> Among more than 2.5 million vaccinated HCO members who were 16 years of age or older, 54 cases met the criteria for myocarditis. The estimated incidence per 100,000 persons who had received at least one dose of vaccine was 2.13 cases (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56 to 2.70). The highest incidence of myocarditis (10.69 cases per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 6.93 to 14.46) was reported in male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. A total of 76% of cases of myocarditis were described as mild and 22% as intermediate; 1 case was associated with cardiogenic shock.
Oh, it isn't. It's tiny. How many thousands of people do you have to stack on the railroad before you pull the switch on the trolley problem? Not this many. Not a hardship.
I really dislike these public health studies where they wave their hands at myocarditis and treat it like it's not a big deal. There's no cardiologist that would tell you that. It's very serious and carries with it a dramatically elevated risk of lifelong cardiac problems down the road.
I will not allow the paranoia of a bunch of self-righteous cowards to put my kids at risk. Get the shot, move on with your life and leave the rest of us alone. We aren't responsible for soothing your paranoia anymore. The virus is now endemic courtesy of a lab in China funded by self-righteous arrogant scientists in the US. That's a controversial statement but it's the truth. Unfortunately, most of the people complaining about my kids not being vaccinated would rather be angry at me than angry at the people who unleashed this virus on the world.
https://ravarora.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-vaccine-indu...
https://peterattiamd.com/why-im-for-covid-vaccines-but-again...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-vaccines-are...
The other thing to remember is that kids don’t have a problem with the extremely mild inconvenience of wearing a mask — that’s mostly adults complaining for political reasons. If you ask a teacher, it’s just something they do like wearing shoes, and vaccination is no different than all of the other ones they get (95% rate in the US prior to Republicans choosing to politicize medicine).
This should all be indexed to vaccination and spread rates: relax restrictions on high risk activities like indoor dining as the former climbs and the latter declines, and prioritize keeping schools safe to avoid disruptive closures.
All care should have focused on the elderly (early treatment, access to doctors even when positive...). No restrictions (mask, mandatory vaccine, lockdowns..) makes sense for those aged under 45yo.
Not necessarily 'long covid' stuff, just the basic injury that comes from the illness. I sure don't want to lose my sense of smell.
Even in young children, the consequences of infection appear to be worse statistically than the consequences of vaccination. It's of course not all that well understood yet, but for example, compare this syndrome that appears to be associated with Covid infection to the myocarditis due to vaccination:
https://www.cdc.gov/mis/mis-c.html
If you look at what pediatricians and epidemiologists with children are doing, they are being pretty cautious and are eager to vaccinate them.
> Vaccinated people suffer much less from a course of infection than unvaccinated, in all age groups.
I don't know how you can measure that. And that's not how these vaccines have been sold. They were supposed to have 95% efficacy at lowering risk of getting COVID-19 compared with the control group. We know now that is not the case as it does not help to control the epidemic (most vaxed countries with the highest cases). Transmission and contamination are not reduced with the vaccine.
So now we are told that it was never supposed to stop transmission, but miraculously, it makes your body handle the COVID better.
I don't know what data is used, but if you look for example in scotland (Page 44 https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/11223/22-01-19-covid...) There is no obvious difference between the vax or unvaxed in term of hospitalization or covid positivity (p.38) unvaxed even seem to do better.
This is health, people are always going to get sick, not just from COVID. We need to fight all diseases with the best weapons we got. Against Covid, vaccines are 1 weapon, so is anti-viral drugs, antibiotics anti inflammatory and anti coagulant.
But we should let each individual choose with his doctor what treatment he wants. And not guilt young children to take an experimental drug where we don't know the long term efficacy or side effects.
And it's a mistake to evaluate the vaccines in terms of what was said about them over time versus the impact they currently have. They currently confer lots of protection to people that have received them.
Like the fact that the officials and manufacturers failed to properly communicate that it's a dynamic, changing situation doesn't actually undermine the very real value that the vaccines still provide.
What? This is completely, wildly,untrue. See for starters Spanish Flu (killed mostly those aged under 45), smallpox (disproportionately affecting children)
For the stated and proven reasons, the commonly known basis of vaccination: 1: It is much, much, much more dangerous to get COVID than the vaccine. 2: The immune response from vaccination is much more protective and much more consistent than the immune response from infection, especially with this disease.
This is known.
Also, established scientific knowledge lies counter to the statements you have as premise.